Burner effects on melting process of regenerative aluminum melting furnace

According to the features of melting process of regenerative aluminum melting furnaces, a three-dimensional mathematical model with user-developed melting model, burner reversing and burning capacity model was established. The numerical simulation of melting process of a regenerative aluminum melting furnace was presented using hybrid programming method of FLUENT UDF and FLUENT scheme based on the heat balance test. Burner effects on melting process of aluminum melting furnaces were investigated by taking optimization regulations into account. The change rules of melting time on influence factors are achieved. Melting time decreases with swirl number, vertical angle of burner, air preheated temperature or natural gas flow; melting time firstly decreases with horizontal angle between burners or air-fuel ratio, then increases; melting time increases with the height of burner.

Multiple-response optimization for melting process of aluminum melting furnace based on response surface methodology with desirability function

To reduce the fuel consumption and emissions and also enhance the molten aluminum quality, a mathematical model with user-developed melting model and burning capacity model, were established according to the features of melting process of regenerative aluminum melting furnaces. Based on validating results by heat balance test for an aluminum melting furnace, CFD （computational fluid dynamics） technique, in association with statistical experimental design were used to optimize the melting process of the aluminum melting furnace. Four important factors influencing the melting time, such as horizontal angle between burners, height-to-radius ratio, natural gas mass flow and air preheated temperature, were identified by PLACKETT-BURMAN design. A steepest descent method was undertaken to determine the optimal regions of these factors. Response surface methodology with BOX-BEHNKEN design was adopted to further investigate the mutual interactions between these variables on RSD （relative standard deviation） of aluminum temperature, RSD of furnace temperature and melting time. Multiple-response optimization by desirability function approach was used to determine the optimum melting process parameters. The results indicate that the interaction between the height-to-radius ratio and horizontal angle between burners affects the response variables significantly. The predicted results show that the minimum RSD of aluminum temperature （12.13%）, RSD of furnace temperature （18.50%） and melting time （3.9 h） could be obtained under the optimum conditions of horizontal angle between burners as 64°, height-to-radius ratio as 0.3, natural gas mass flow as 599 m3/h, and air preheated temperature as 639 ℃. These predicted values were further verified by validation experiments. The excellent correlation between the predicted and experimental values confirms the validity and practicability of this statistical optimum strategy.

Numerical Simulation of Magnetic Field Distribution in Aluminum Melting Furnace With Electromagnetic Stirring

In metallurgical processing,effective and reliable electromagnetic stirring of the melt is one of the prerequisites for higher productivity and improved process performance.Reasonable structure and electrical parameters of the stirrer are greatly significant on improving and enhancing the stirring quality.In this paper,ANSYS software is used to research the effect of stirrer parameters on magnetic field distribution in aluminum melting furnace.The results show that magnetic flux density distributes as two humps at the direction(X)of metal length.Magnetic flux density distributes as a hump at the direction(Z)of metal width,reaches its maximum at the pool center and decays gradually toward the edge.It is also demonstrated that magnetic flux density increases by 2.65mT,as kilo-ampere-turns increase by 2.The center distance between two coils changes the distribution of magnetic flux density rather than its magnitude,while the distance from coils to the bottom of molten aluminum changes the magnitude of magnetic flux density but no change of distribution.