Scale modeling of aluminum melting furnaces

Conference · Tue Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 2005

OSTI ID:899666

Penmetsa, S S ^[1]; Li, T ^[1]; King, Paul E; Saito, K ^[1]

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1. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of Kentucky Lexington, KY

Improving energy efficiency in secondary aluminum melting, done in large rectangular or round-top reverberatory furnaces, has been one of the major interests to the aluminum industry. To assist the industries in improving energy efficiency in aluminum melting, an experimental research furnace (ERF) with 907 kg capacity has been built at the Albany Research Center of the U.S. Department of Energy as part of this multi-partner research program. To verify that the results from experiments conducted in the ERF furnace is validate for the operations of industrial furnaces, we use scale modeling technology to assist the validation. In this paper we present the results from our experiments in the model furnace, which was scale-down from the ERF furnace (as a prototype), and then compare them to the tests on the ERF furnace. The scaling laws which are applied to the thermal conduction loss through the walls of the model furnace were first developed, and the partial modeling relaxation technique was applied in the development of modeling to derive achievable scaling laws. Temperature distributions across the model furnace walls were measured and found to compare with the prototype favorably. Good agreement between the results obtained from the model experiments and from the ERF tests demonstrate that the scale modeling is expected to be a useful tool because the physical behavior of melting phenomena in the industrial furnaces can be explored by conducting experiments in a small, scaled-down furnace, and can be applied in the study of improving energy efficiency in aluminum melting.

• Research Organization: University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; Albany Research Center (ARC), Albany, OR
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE - Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE); SECAT, Lexington, KY; University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; USDOE - Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
• OSTI ID: 899666
• Report Number(s): DOE/ARC-2005-079
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ALUMINIUM
CAPACITY
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
FURNACES
MELTING
RELAXATION
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
SCALING LAWS
SIMULATION
TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION
THERMAL CONDUCTION
VALIDATION
aluminum foundries
energy use
heat transfer
light metals
melting furnaces
prototypes
reverberatory furnaces
scaling laws
temperature distribution