Today we are announcing the publication of IFRF Study Report No: G108/y/3 by René Hekkens entitled: “Non Isothermal CFD Model of the HEC Furnace and Burners (Additional Calculations)”.  René Hekkens is one of the group from CORUS RD&T who co-operated with the IFRF in the execution of the IFRF Members Programme, High Efficiency Combustion.

The combination of compact regenerative burners with flameless firing delivers the high thermal efficiency needed for reducing carbon emissions and fuel costs while at the same time reducing NOx emissions.

The IFRF Research Station has undertaken detailed measurements and modelling of such a system in the IFRF High Efficiency Combustion (HEC) furnace, the objective being to provide generic information on the combustion behaviour of regenerative flameless combustion systems, together with data that may be used to develop and validate mathematical models of such processes. Although the HEC furnace design is intended as a simulation of a large steel-reheating furnace, it is anticipated that the output from the HEC tests will find application over a wide range of industrial processes.

G108/y/3 is the third of three reports dealing with the CFD modelling of a high temperature furnace fired by a pair of compact regenerative burners operating in the ‘flameless’ mode. The report describes the validation of a non-isothermal CFD models used to simulate mixing, combustion and heat transfer taking place in the IFRF’s HEC furnace when fired flamelessly.

A comprehensive description of the model configurations adopted is given in G108/y/1 and G108/y/2. Further details of the furnace and burner geometry are available in the HEC Planning report (D108/y/1) and the HEC Furnace Commissioning reports (C108/y/1 and C108/y/2).

In this report, additional comparisons are made between the output of the G108/y/2 CFD model and data collected when firing the furnace on natural gas and which was not available at the time of the original comparisons. At the same time, the opportunity has been taken to better reproduce the actual furnace boundary conditions in the CFD model.

All HEC reports cited in this summary are available to IFRF Members as downloads from:

http://www.research.ifrf.net/research/programme.html?pid=8