Temperature control for thermal treatment of aluminum alloy in a large-scale vertical quench furnace

The temperature control of the large-scale vertical quench furnace is very difficult due to its huge volume and complex thermal exchanges. To meet the technical requirement of the quenching process, a temperature control system which integrates temperature calibration and temperature uniformity control is developed for the thermal treatment of aluminum alloy workpieces in the large-scale vertical quench furnace. To obtain the aluminum alloy workpiece temperature, an air heat transfer model is newly established to describe the temperature gradient distribution so that the immeasurable workpiece temperature can be calibrated from the available thermocouple temperature. To satisfy the uniformity control of the furnace temperature, a second order partial differential equation(PDE) is derived to describe the thermal dynamics inside the vertical quench furnace. Based on the PDE, a decoupling matrix is constructed to solve the coupling issue and decouple the heating process into multiple independent heating subsystems. Then, using the expert control rule to find a compromise of temperature rising time and overshoot during the quenching process. The developed temperature control system has been successfully applied to a 31 m large-scale vertical quench furnace, and the industrial running results show the significant improvement of the temperature uniformity, lower overshoot and shortened processing time.

β-Sialon Produced by Carbon Thermal Nitriding Reaction of Bauxite

β-Sialon was produced by carbon thermal nitriding reaction in N_2 gas atmosphere when the mixtures of bauxite and anthracite were put into vertical furnace. According to the mass loss of raw materials and the result of X-ray diffration (XRD) of products, the influences of the process parameters on the compositions and relative contents of products, such as the fixed carbon content, the flow of N2, the soaking time and the temperature, were researched.

Modeling of Strip Heating Process in Vertical Continuous Annealing Furnace

The mechanism for heat transfer of radiation is usually adopted to heat strip in vertical continuous annealing furnace. The rate of heat transfer among strip and other objects can be hugely affected by the parameters of strip speed, geometry factors and radiating characteristic of surfaces of strip, radiating tubes and walls of furnace. A model including all parameters is proposed for calculating the heat transfer coefficient, predicting the strip tempera- ture and boundary temperature of strip through analyzing these parameters. The boundary temperature is a important datum and different from average arithmetic value of temperature of strip and temperature in furnace. Also, the model can be used to analyze the relation for temperature of strip and heat transfer coefficient, total heat transfer quantity and heating time. The model is built by using the radiating heat transfer rate, the Newtonrs law of cooling, and lumped system analysis. The results of calculation are compared to the data from production line. The comparisons indicate that the model can well predict the heating process. The model is already applied for process control in pro- duction line. Also, this research will provide a new method for analyzing the radiation heat transfer.

Simulation of gas-solid flow in sinter vertical cooling furnace

The velocity distribution of sinter and gas in vertical cooling furnace(VCF)has an important influence on gas-solid heat transfer.Based on the slot model of single hopper in the VCF of Meishan Iron and Steel Co.,Ltd.,the velocity and particle size distribution of sinter and the velocity and pressure distribution of gas were studied using a computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method model to obtain the gas-solid flow rule in the VCF.The results showed that the velocity of sinter near the wall and the edge of vent cowl was lower than that in the rest of the same plane.Therefore,the rectangular section of the vertical cooling furnace can be divided into a quasi-static zone,a plug flow zone and a convergent flow zone according to the flow velocity of the sinter.The average particle size and the void fraction of sinter bed were distributed in"W"and"V"shape along the width direction,respectively.The distribution of gas velocity in the furnace cavity was uneven,and the high-velocity area gradually changed from the center to the edge of the furnace cavity with the rise of gas.Reducing the ratio of edge to center gas flow from 2.7∶1 to 0.7∶1 could improve the gas velocity,but could not change the gas velocity distribution.The gas velocity distribution was more affected by the average particle size distribution of the sinter bed.It was suggested that measures need be taken to adjust it to improve the gas velocity distribution in the VCF.