Mathematical model-based design of an industrial box furnace

Highlights: • Results represent applied theory in a new concept for designing industrial furnaces. • The proposed approach is based on a 0D thermodynamic model with experimental proof. • 0D model-based furnace design has similar simulation results than a complex 2D-model. • A user interface allows including in the design model customized product requests. • This approach is a solution to provide a customized furnace design in fast response. -- Abstract: A zero dimensional thermodynamic model (0D-model) is used to represent the conservation equations of energy in an industrial box furnace for designing purposes. Thus, this paper proposes a 0D model-based design approach for industrial box furnaces which results very processing time efficient, minimizing the design analysis time period that can exist when two-dimensional (2D) or Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling is used. 2D or CFD models can be highly accurate but with also high computational load; the time spent in an industrial design from the concept to the prototype can take several months where the bottleneck is the simulation phase. The modeling results in the proposed approach consists on analyzing the fuel energy power requirement required to achieve a desired temperature profile, given the most important design parameters such as physical furnace dimensions, composition material in the insulation section, thermal load properties, fuel/air ratio conditions, etc. In this case, the proposed approach for a 0D-model based furnace design has been validated with different operation set-ups and compared with simulation data provided by a complex 2D model as well as with experimental data from an industrial box furnace. Quantitatively, the modeling result was up to 96.77% of fit with respect to the simulator behavior, taking less than 5% of processing time considered by the complex 2D model.