Mathematical Modelling of Combustion and Heat Transfer inside a Soaking Pit Furnace

Operating conditions of the furnaces has the major effect on the quality of steel during steel production process. Furnaces also are the biggest energy consumer in the whole production process which make them a center of concern, in order to get to the most optimized condition through both energy and quality aspects. Soaking pit furnaces are for heating steel ingots before rolling, in order to provide convenient conditions for ingots for further procedures. These batch furnaces are characterized by heat and temperature conditions that vary in time. The structure permits rapid heating of the metal inside the furnace, since heat is supplied over the entire surface of the ingot. One serious problem that these furnaces might contain is the existence of non-uniform temperature gradient inside the chamber that causes different temperature distribution on the ingots surface which leads to a bad surface quality of them, considering further rolling process. As the first step through obtaining the best temperature gradient inside the chamber, is to ensure the exact temperature condition in the current running procedure. In here as the first step through the problem solving of these furnaces, temperature profile, radiation profile and other effective parameters are investigated with the aid of CFD software. The simulation is done by ICEM and FLUENT programs for geometry and mesh designing, and modeling in respect. Modeling is based on four main steps: I. Modeling of the furnace chamber geometry and applying appropriate mesh style with ICEM II. Modeling the chamber with fluent, and taking the results (case 0) III. Modeling of six cases with different excess air, in order to investigate the best λ magnitude IV. Modeling of six cases with different burner capacities in order to investigate its affection on combustion parameter