Support to the design of a drying oven for big motors

摘要

Big motors, with diameters up to two meters, are used in several stages of the seamless steel tube manufacturing processes. The maintenance operations of these motors require drying them after they are washed or painted. The oven used for this process has an external blower that recirculates hot air (at a temperature of approximately 120°C) through the drying chamber. The air is heated using electrical resistances that can be either located on the outer circulation duct or into the chamber. This is a time and energy consuming operation that can take up to three days to be completed. This paper deals with the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics for supporting the design of a new drying oven for big motors. ANSYS Fluent software is used to simulate the transient process, but also some stationary conditions are evaluated in order to optimize the oven design process. The objective is to identify the best drying conditions within the framework of the geometric and operational requirements of the plant. Several inlet and outlet configurations are studied, and the influence of the changes in the geometry and the boundary conditions on the heating rate and drying quality is analyzed.