Burner 4.0
According to the type of furnace and thermal process carried
out into the combustion chamber, the cost of the burners with the relevant combustion
system typically ranges from 5% to 15% of the cost of the entire furnace. Their
importance goes really far beyond these figures. Burners are in fact the direct
interface with the thermal process carried out in a furnace and therefore can
be considered the principal components of a combustion system, and of the
furnace, thus determining its performance in terms of energy efficiency, environmental
impact and final product quality.
The European industrial furnace manufacturers are leading
market actors in the world. The world exports of
industrial furnaces and burners in 2014 amounted to 8.7
billion EUR, of which more than 58% where exports from the EU 28, mainly
Germany and Italy.
Over recent years, combustion systems for the steel industry
have continuously been improved by introducing new process technologies such as
flameless combustion, high temperature preheating of combustion air and/or
preheating of low calorific value fuels, oxygen air enrichment as well as
oxy-combustion techniques, able to achieve emission performance well under the
regulatory limits and high energy efficiency (>70%).
Anyway, there are still some potential improvements relevant
to:
These goals can be pursued by balancing outcomes from design-to-performance and design-to-cost approaches, thus allowing the identification of a sustainable design for the industrial burners of the future.
Oppositely to the general trend observed in other
industries, modern automation of combustion systems for the steel industry
still rely on relatively few sensors from the field and consequently on a
limited amount of information and detail about single operating components.
Only the principal process parameters are effectively measured and are usually
limited to feed the control system, while status and health of single critical components
is usually established only as a result of scheduled maintenance inspections.
This
strategy was originated from a cost-wise approach when sensors and signal
processing equipment were characterized by non-negligible investment costs. A
limited level of information, without a prompt detection, could lead sometimes to
unexpected failures and unplanned shut-downs of the furnace with high costs for
restructuring the plant and mainly for the missed production.
Other limitations are a consequence of the traditional
manufacturing technologies (e.g. casting, welding, machining) which are not
allowing to reach higher performance.
A typical example are self-recuperative burners
heat exchangers, which are integrated into the burner. These components maximize
their efficiency only through high heat transfer surfaces combined with the
need of having an overall compact dimension of the burner.
Industry 4.0 is rapidly affecting all the manufacturing
sectors and production processes. The challenging question: “How Industry 4.0
technologies can positively transform the world of burners and combustion
systems for the industrial furnaces?” finds answers in Burner 4.0 Project
extending the present above mentioned technological limits to new ones leading
to a break-through burner concept.
Among
the other
type of burners typically installed onto the reheating and heat treatment
furnaces, three specific typologies designed and manufactured by Tenova were
selected for Burner
4.0 Project.
The
choice of the burners for the application of some Industry 4.0 technologies, is
intended to represent wide example of the combustion best
available techiques as far as energy saving, very low NOx
emissions, for different types of thermal processes, fuels, internal components
and materials.
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