Improvement of Ladle Preheating Apparatus with Regenerative Burners

by Jakkrawut Jaroonsaratul, Siripong Cheanklin, Pongtorn Charunyakorn

Publisher - Iron and Steel Institute of Thailand, Chulalongkorn University

Category - General Novel

Steel industry is one of the industries that offers high opportunity for energy conservation. This paper presents the improvement of energy utilization in ladle preheating in steelmaking process. Conventional ladle preheating is controlled by exhaust gas temperature normally set at a maximum temperature of 900-1,000°C. It is evident that the exhaust gas heat loss is very high. One method to reduce this loss is employing regenerative burners in place of conventional burners in order to recover waste heat for combustion air preheating. In experiments with conventional ladle preheating in a factory under several conditions, it was found that exhaust gas temperature was in the range 600-1,000°C. This leads to corresponding heat loss of about 27 -45%. By employing a regenerative burner, fuel consumption reduction of 20-30% may be realized. Furthermore, data from the experiment indicates the possibility of using the wall temperature to control the preheating in place of the exhaust gas or furnace gas temperature.

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