Investigation of combustion and heat transfer in an industrial reheating furnace using CFD

Abstract

The reheating furnace is used to reheat steel slabs to a target rolling temperature in the steelmaking process. The flue gas temperature distribution inside the reheating furnace is one of the main determining factors of the furnace performance. In this study, a three-dimensional steady-state computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to investigate the flow field in an industrial reheating furnace. The commercial software ANSYS Fluent ® was employed to solve the transport equations to calculate gas flow, combustion and heat transfer. The simulation was carried out based on real operating conditions and data collected from industrial manufacturers. Validation of the CFD model was conducted by comparing the temperature prediction by the model with the real thermocouple measurements. The simulation results indicate that the combustion gas flow characteristics inside the reheating furnace have a significant effect on the temperature distribution. The effect of fuel/oxidant input flow rate on the temperature distribution was also investigated.