Analysis and Predicting the Energy Consumption of Low-Pressure Carburising Processes

The monitoring of the performance of heat treatment equipment has been the subject of a number of studies. This paper proposes and explores a new study on the models—and the monitoring thereof—for predicting the energy intensity of low-pressure carburisation processes using the DeepCaseMaster Evolution soaking furnace. For research purposes, 18 carburising experiments were performed with different carbon layers, at different input parameters, such as the number of cycles, time, temperature and average carburising pressure. Based on the research experiments conducted and statistical analysis, the influence of individual parameters on the energy consumption of the pump and heating systems was determined. Moreover, the models were verified on real data of low-pressure carburising processes. The innovativeness of the proposed solution is a combination of two areas: (1) defining and measurement of the parameters of the low-pressure carburising process; and (2) predicting the energy consumption of low-pressure carburising processes using correlation and regression analyses. The possibilities of using the results of this research in practice are demonstrated convincingly