Improving Energy Efficiency of Tunnel Furnace by Using Heat Optimization Model

Abstract

Reheating furnace of an integrated steel plant consumes intensive fuel as input energy to heat up stocks prior to hot rolling process. In current scenario, the elevated cost of productivity due to increasing fuel price is emerging as a key concern for the steel industry. A continuous improvement in reduction of fuel consumption is one of the key objectives for the manufacturing units. Numerous research work is going on worldwide to increase the energy efficiency of reheating furnaces. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and numerical modelling are mostly being used for predicting thermal and reactive fluid characteristic inside a furnace. However, the said methods are very expensive and require a huge infrastructure to compute the results. In addition, these results are not available on real time basis to take corrective action due to high computational time. In this article, an alternative approach has been adopted where complete heat and mass balance of entire tunnel type reheating furnace has been carried out. This study includes first principle-based model where heat conduction, convection and radiation with combustion reactions of the fuel components have been considered. Based on these theoretical calculations, the model is used to identify heat losses at various locations of the furnace. Moreover, a method to optimize the mixing ratio of air and fuel (mixed gas) along with monitoring of heat recovery from combined recuperator have been covered. Based on the model outcome, a significant improvement in furnace efficiency has been achieved, leading to reduction in fuel consumption in the range of 12%.