What is a furnace?

A furnace is essentially a thermal enclosure and is employed to process raw materials at high temperatures both in solid state and liquid state. Several industries like iron and steel making, non ferrous metals production, glass making, manufacturing, ceramic processing, calcination in cement production etc. employ furnace. The principle objectives are a) To utilize heat efficiently so that losses are minimum, and b) To handle the different phases (solid, liquid or gaseous) moving at different velocities for different times and temperatures such that erosion and corrosion of the refractory are minimum.
The principle components are i. Source of energy a. Fossil fuel: For fossil fuel one requires burner for efficient mixing of fuel and air. Arrangement of burner is important. b. Electric energy: Resistance heating, induction heating or arc heating. c. Chemical energy: Exothermic reactions .

ii.

Suitable refractory material: Refractory design is important. Thermal enclosure of the furnace is designed and constructed keeping in view the requirements. For example refractory facing the thermal enclosure must have high refractoriness, chemically inert etc. Whereas refractory facing the surrounding must have low thermal conductivity to minimize heat. Heat exchanger: Heat exchanger is becoming now as part of the fossil fuel fired furnaces in order to recover and reuse the heat of POC. Heat of POC can be used either external to furnace by installing a heat exchanger .

iii.

Furnaces are used for wide variety of processing of raw materials to finished products in several industries. Broadly they are used either for physical processing or for chemical processing of raw materials. In the physical processing the state of the reactants remains unchanged, whereas in the chemical processing state of the reactants changes either to liquid of gas.

Issues in Furnace Design : 1) Source of energy in processing of raw materials is fossil fuel in most cases. Even if electric energy is used, it is also derived from fossil fuels. Thus energy efficient design of thermal enclosure is important ;particularly heat losses should be minimal. 2) Atmosphere in the furnace is also important to avoid oxidation of the material being heated. 3) Control of furnace temperature is also an important issue. Overheating and underheating lead to inefficient utilization of fuel and also overheating or underheating of material. 4) Furnaces are both batch and continuous type. In the continuous type for example in heating of ferrous material for hot working, the furnace chamber consists of preheating, heating and soaking zones. The material enters through the preheating zone and exits the soaking zone for rolling. But the flow of products of combustion is in the reverse direction. 5) In the batch furnaces, the load is heated for the fixed time and then discharged from the furnace. There are different types of batch furnaces like box type, integral quench type, pit type and car bottom type.

Burner : A thing that burns something or is burned, in particular. Types :

A gas burner is a device to generate a flame to heat up products using a gaseous fuel such as acetylene, natural gas or propane. Some burners have an air inlet to mix the fuel gas with air to make a complete combustion. Acetylene is commonly used in combination with oxygen. It has many applications such as soldering, brazing and welding, the latter using oxygen instead of air for getting a hotter flame which is required for melting steel. For laboratory uses a natural gas fired Bunsen burner is used. For melting metals with melting points of up to 1100 C such as copper, silver and gold a propane burner with natural drag of air can be used. An oil burner is a heating device which burns fuel oil. The oil is atomized in to a fine spray usually by forcing it under pressure through a nozzle. This spray is usually ignited by an electric spark with the air being forced through by an electric fan.

Fuel injection

Used nozzles from an oil burner

Fuel is injected into the combustion chamber by a spray nozzle The nozzles are usually supplied with high pressure oil. Because of problems with erosion, and blockage due to lumps in the oil, they need frequent replacement typically every year. Fuel nozzles are usually rated in fuel volume flow per unit time e.g. USGal/h (U.S. Gallons per hour). A fuel nozzle is characterized by 3 features:

A flow of 7 bar pump pressure (0.65 (USGal / h)) The spray characteristic (S) The spray angle (60 )

Alternatively fuel may be passed over a tiny orifice fed with compressed air. This arrangement is referred to as babington atomiser/nozzle after its inventor. As the oil flows over the nozzle, the fuel needn't be under any great pressure. If the pump can handle such the oil may even contain lumps such as scraps of food. Because it is only compressed air that passes through the orifice hole, such nozzles do not suffer much from erosion. NOZZLE-MIX BURNERS These types of burners accomplish the mixing of the air and gas after they leave the burner port. Up to the burner head the air and gas are kept separate, lower gas and air pressures (unless high velocity is required) may be used and there is no chance of flash back. They generally have greater turn down than other burner types by controlling the gas only and can use preheated air. As the preheated combustion air is kept separate there is no chance of over-heating the gas controls. Basic cast nozzle-mix burners can handle low preheat temperatures providing some fuel savings but deterioration may result if these burners are exposed to high temperatures for a period of time. Nozzle mix burners that will provide high preheat temperatures and maximum fuel savings are constructed from stainless steel internals or in some special cases ceramic materials. Various types of flame shapes and capacities can be designed to suit the customers requirement including flat flame burners. This type of burner has a special ly designed burner tip and refractory quarl to produce a spinning flat flame that spreads at 90 degrees to the mixture outlet. They have been used in industry where little forward flame travel is desirable and efficient radiant heat is best. . Self-Recuperative Burners: Self-Recuperative Burners include a recuperator that is integral to the burner that preheats the incoming combustion air. The exhaust gases are pulled back through the burner by an eductor which is located upstream of the burner. This design arrangement leads to a high air preheat temperature and excellent thermal efficiencies.

Regenerative Burners
Regeneration uses a pair of burners which cycle to alternately heat the combustion air or recover and store the heat from the furnace exhaust gases. When one regenerative burner is firing, the other is exhausting the furnace gases. Regenerative burners have excellent thermal efficiency because they achieve very high preheat temperatures.

Baffle Burner
Burners recirculate furnace gas into the flame. Its appearance is deceptively simple consisting of a body, gas nozzle, baffle and port. Air enters the burner body directly and the gas passes through the body separated from the air with the fuel tube. The refractory baffle separates the body from the burner block (port), which is within the wall of the furnace

Air Staged Burners

In the first stage of an air staged burner, all of the fuel is mixed with a portion of the combustion air. The remaining combustion air is then added in one or more additional stages until the fuel is completely used. The first stage air is introduced through the inner air jets and the second stage air through the outer air jets. Fuel flows through the center.

Radiant Tube Burners

The objective of the radiant tube burner is to transfer heat from combustion gases to the radiant tube and then radiate the energy to the load.

Selection Procedure of Burner:

Burner selection for a particular operation depends on the following 5 characteristics : 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Flame shape. Combustion Volume. Stability. Drive. Turndown ratio.

These five characteristics primarily on burner design and other factors like increase of primary air pressure , increase/decrease of oil pressure etc.have a very little influence on these characteristics. Flame shape : It determines the relative velocities of the fuel and air streams, has the maximum effect upon the flame length and shape. Good mixing, produced by a high degree of turbulence and high velocity, produces a short bushy flame. On the other hand, delayed mixing and low velocities result in long lazy flames.

Combustion Volume:
The space occupied by the fuel and the intermediate products of combustion while burning varies greatly with the burner design , the pressures and velocities of the fluid streams, the fuel and the application. Gas burners can be designed to have a heat release rate as high as 110 *10^6 kcal/hr.m^2 of combustion volume. With the improvement in burner design the present day burners are more stable.

Drive: Drive relates to the velocity and thrust of the stream jet of hot gases that emanates from a burner. Modern high velocity burners can push the hot gases into a loosely piled load with greater velocities than were possible with most of the older excess air burners. Turndown ratio: It is the heat input rates within which burner would operate satisfactorily . This is the ratio of the maximum to the minimum heat input rates with witch the burner will operate satisfactorily. The maximum input rate is limited by phenomenon called the flame blow off. This results when the mixture velocity exceeds the flame velocity . The minimum input rate on the other hand is limited vy the concept called flash back.