Thermal optimization for the tangential swirl burner at the rotary furnace of steel pipe industry to save energy and reduce emissions

Abstract

In this research, the geometric optimization of a tangential swirl burner for the rotary furnace of Luleh Gostar of Esfarayen (LGE) as a steel pipe industry has been studied, experimentally and numerically. To improve the combustion process in the burner, three different parameters namely Diffuser Diameter (DD), Clearance Space (CS) and Fuel Inlet Tube Length (L) are considered and optimized by Response Surface Methodology (RSM). ANSYS-Fluent software with SST k-ω turbulence model has been used for the simulation where the modeling results confirmed that the applied method had good accuracy with a maximum error of 2.42% for temperature greater than the experimental values. A multi-objective optimization for the temperature, NOx and CO emissions as responses is applied and results show that when the parameters are DD = 13.73 cm, CS = 5 cm and L = 30 cm, the burner will be optimized where the temperature increased 9.15%, NOx and CO emissions were reduced 4.42% and 39.08%, respectively.