A NEW APPROACH TO BAYER LIQUOR ANALYSIS
Petty, J.D. and Sweatman, D.R.
Analysis of caustic soda and alumina in Bayer liquor is crucial to alumina refining. A variety of instrumentation, much of it built in-house, is used for this analysis within Australian and overseas refineries. Most of these instruments are only semi-automated and analysis is slow.
In this paper a new approach is described for the analysis of Bayer liquors using the new technique of discontinuous flow analysis (DFA). The instrument offers advantages over existing instruments in terms of analysis time, reliability, the small volume of sample required and cost.
Determination of caustic soda and alumina content of liquor is achieved using titration with thermometric endpoint detection. Reagent and sample addition during the titration is via a number of piston syringes, giving very accurate volume control. A personal computer is used for data processing and storage.