Update on Regenerative Reheat Furnace Conversions in North America

摘要

Regenerative combustion has been used in the steel industry since the introduction of the open hearth furnace by Sir Charles William Siemens in 1868. Adaption of the regenerative process to continuous steel reheat furnaces was made possible by the availability of PC and PLC-based controls more than 100 years later in the 1980s. The use of regenerative combustion for new reheat furnaces is still rare in North America. It is, however, widespread in Asia due to the chronic high costs for fuels and limited space availability. A more common application in North America is the retrofit of regenerative systems to existing reheat furnaces. This paper will discuss three different regenerative retrofit applications. The differing objectives will be examined, along with the economic and operational results obtained. The future trends in regenerative combustion, as applied to reheat furnaces, will also be examined.