Modeling and determination of total heat exchange factor of regenerative reheating furnace based on instrumented slab trials

Abstract

Regenerative heating furnace as a high-efficiency and energy-saving heating equipment is widely applied in iron and steel industry. Accurate knowledge of total heat exchange factor of regenerative heating furnace is of great significance to improve its on-line control performance. Therefore, determination of total heat exchange factor of regenerative reheating furnace is investigated in this work. A three-dimensional mathematical model of regenerative reheating furnace based on the analysis of heat transfer process is established. The zonal method is used to solve the temperatures of gas zone, slab surface zone and wall surface zone, in which the Monte Carlo method is used to compute the total radiant exchange areas of thermocouple to all other zones in the furnace. The total heat exchange factors of regenerative reheating furnace are determined and the effects of thermal and operational parameters, such as productivity, fuel consumption and slab hot charging temperature are analyzed. The results show that the total heat transfer factor increases with the decrease of fuel consumption or slab hot charging temperature, and increases with the increase of productivity. The present work is valuable for dynamical compensation of total heat exchange factor of the online control mathematical models in regenerative reheating furnace.