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 objective 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 for slab heating. However, the said methods are very expensive and needs a decent infrastructure to execute. 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. In addition, method to optimize the combustion fuel components and heat balance of combined recuperator have been described. By adopting the above strategy , a significant improvement in furnace efficiency has been achieved leading to drastic reduction in fuel consumption.