A BP Neural Network Based on GA for Optimizing Energy Consumption of Copper Electrowinning

In this paper, achieving minimum energy consumption in the copper electrowinning process is taken as the research objective. In the traditional production process, sulfate ion concentration, copper ion concentration, and current density are carried out according to the empirical value, which cannot ensure the energy consumption reaching the optimal level. Therefore, this paper proposes a BP neural network model to optimize energy consumption according to the relationship between current density, sulfate ion concentration, copper ion concentration, electrolytic tank voltage, and current efficiency, and the established BP neural network model is trained by using real data from the enterprise. The simulation results show that there is a definite error between the predicted electrolytic tank voltage and current efficiency and corresponding to predict electrolytic tank voltage and current efficiency measured at the production site. The BP neural network improved by GA is proposed to further improve the prediction accuracy of the BP neural network. Simulation results indicate that the prediction error of electrolytic tank voltage and current efficiency is greatly reduced that meets the accuracy requirements, and then the minimum energy consumption can be calculated. On the premise of guaranteeing the quality of copper electrowinning, the current density, sulfate ion concentration, and copper ion concentration corresponding to the minimum energy consumption accurately predicted by this method can be respectively adjusted in real time, which realizes the optimization of energy consumption in the process of copper electrowinning under the background of low carbon and environmental protection.