Efficient Modeling and Optimal Design of Coal Fired Pusher Type Reheating Furnace

Abstract

A coal fired pusher type reheating furnace is simulated with the help of an efficient numerical model. The authors have improved over a numerical model developed in previous work to save more than 50% of computational time and thus making it feasible to use the model in large number of parametric studies. The transient movement of the billets is modeled as a steady-state problem with suitable assumptions, thus enabling the entire model to be solved in steady-state and thereby save immense computational time and complexity. The result of this model compares well with that from the previous model considering transient movement of billets, which was also validated against experimental data. The model is utilized in optimal design of the furnace, which reduces use of fossil fuel, increases productivity of furnace and maintains standard quality of production. The effect of changing air inlet velocity through burners, height of furnace, soaking and heating zone lengths of the furnace on the billet heating characteristic, both quantitatively and qualitatively, is examined in this work. Suitable values are suggested for each parameter based on thorough physical analysis to enhance thermal efficiency of the furnace and maintain quality of production simultaneously.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the National Institute of Secondary Steel Technology, NISST, Mandi Gobindgarh, for providing complete CAD drawing and process parameters of an operational reheating furnace in an industrial plant.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saurav Chakraborty

Saurav Chakraborty completed his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Prof. Prabal Talukdar at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He received his B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar in Mechanical Engineering in 2014. He works in the field of thermo-fluid modeling of reheating furnaces and continuous casting operations. He has published 4 international journal papers and 4 international conference papers.

Prabal Talukdar

Prabal Talukdar is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He received his M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He has worked with the Institute of Fluid Mechanics, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, as a postdoctoral fellow. His research areas are radiative heat transfer, modeling of reheating furnaces, heat and mass transfer in porous media, continuous casting, inverse heat transfer, and heat transfer through thermal protective fabric. He has authored more than 150 international journal and conference papers.