HOW FLAMES/LOADS INTERACTION AFFECTS FURNACE EFFICIENCY IN ROUND TOP FURNACE OPERATION

摘要

The operation of a round top furnace for melting aluminum involves the lowering of the load into the furnace, closing of the roof and then the firing of the burners until the load is completely melted. When the burners initially fire, the flames will impinge upon the load and will continue to impinge upon the load (to various degrees) until the load is nearly melted. This flame impingement and the varying combustion space configuration affect the mixing of the fuel and oxidizer and thus affect the efficiency of the furnace. In-situ measurements of the furnace efficiency are expensive and difficult to obtain. Computational fluid dynamics is a powerful tool that would allow more efficacious investigation of the efficiency of the furnace under these conditions. However, a complete and detailed transient model of the furnace would be computationally expensive to perform and would result in limited additional information. Instead, a series of 'snapshots' of the furnace are modeled. Each snapshot is a computational model of the load at a particular stage of the melting process. For each snapshot, the thermal efficiency and behavior of the furnace are quantified. This paper presents the results from this analysis along with some suggestions on how to improve furnace performance.