Use of Mathematical Modelling to Study the Behavior of a Horizontal Anode Baking Furnace

Kocaefe, Yasar S.; Oumarou, Noura; Baiteche, Mounir; Kocaefe, Duygu; Morais, Brigitte; Gagnon, Margaret

doi:10.1002/9781118663189.ch193

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…From their experiments, Kocaefe et al [20] have provided an enhanced physical understanding of ABF performance. An enhanced performance may be reached using different computational tools with different levels of complexity.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Mesh Generation on Modelling Aluminium Anode Baking Furnaces

Libreros

Trujillo

2021

Fluids

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Anode baking is critical in carbon anode production for aluminium extraction. Operational and geometrical parameters have a direct impact on the performance of anode baking furnaces (ABF), and hence on the resulting anode quality. Gas flow patterns, velocity field, pressure drop, shear stress and turbulent dissipation rate are the main operational parameters to be optimised, considering a specific geometry that is discretised as a mesh. Therefore, this paper aims to establish the need to generate an appropriate mesh to perform accurate numerical simulations of three-dimensional turbulent flow in a single section of an ABF. Two geometries are considered for generating three meshes, using COMSOL and cfMesh, with different refinement zones. The three meshes are used for creating nine incompressible isothermal turbulent flow models, with varying operational parameters. Velocity field, convergence and turbulent viscosity ratio in the outlet of fuel inlet pipes are the quantification criteria. Quantification criteria have shown that a better physical representation is obtained by refining in the whole combustion zone. COMSOL Multiphysics’ built-in mesh generator allows quadrilateral, tetrahedron and hexahedron shapes. Adaptive cell sizes and shapes have a place within modelling, since refining a mesh in appropriate zones brings the Peclet number down when the incompressible isothermal turbulent flow is simulated.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Mesh Generation on Modelling Aluminium Anode Baking Furnaces

Libreros

Trujillo

2021

Fluids

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“…In this layout, the anode blocks are placed in the pits and covered by the packing coke, as shown in Figure 1B. The packing coke is used to protect the anodes from oxidation by infiltrated air, while the flue‐wall physically supports the anodes and transfers the heat to the anodes block 14 . However, this kind of ABF encounters many practical problems in the following aspects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural and thermal analysis of an innovative baking furnace for carbon anode production

2020

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The urgent demands for the high efficiency and low consumption of carbon anode baking process stimulate the structure optimization of the baking furnace. In this paper, a closed-top innovative anode baking furnace (CTABF) with periodically arranged burners and anode crucibles is proposed, and the thermal process in the CTABF is studied via a coupled multi-physics model and the in situ measurement. Results show that the multi-channel design changes the one-way high-temperature flue gas path and increases its residence time in the furnace, while the temperature distributions in the inner and outer crucibles show good uniformity. The average convective heat flux accounts for about 68% of the total heat flux around the crucible surface, and thus the baking rate of anodes can be controlled by adjusting the power of driven fan. Therefore, due to the above structural retrofits, the baking time and energy consumption are reduced and the baking quality is improved, showing the superiority of the proposed CTABF over the traditional ABF.

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“…In particular, they do not provide a tridimensional temperature portrait of the anode stack in the pit, and the flow in the flue channel is largely simplified to that in an equivalent duct. Nevertheless, with the always increasing performance of computers, the flue gas flow can be modeled as a twodimensional duct flow as described recently in [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of three combustion models for simulating anode baking furnaces

Grégoire

Gosselin

2018

International Journal of Thermal Sciences

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Carbon anode blocks used in the Hall-Héroult process for primary aluminum production have to be baked up to 1100°C in dedicated furnaces. These furnaces are equipped with burner ramps to heat the air circulating in the flues at 1200°C, so that the anodes reach the required temperature. It is therefore mandatory to include the heat provided by the burners in a numerical model of an anode baking furnace. In this work, we modeled the heat input at the burners in three ways: the Eddy-Dissipation model, the Mixture Fraction/PDF approach and a simplified approach consisting in injecting an equivalent calorific value at the burners' inlets. Results obtained with the first two models are very similar in terms of anode baking prediction but slightly different in terms of flame temperature prediction. Results obtained with the simplified approach show that the model can replace combustion model to predict anode baking, but calibration of boundary conditions is necessary in order to match more elaborate combustion models. The importance of other elements of the model in the flue channel of the furnace has been verified: radiation (cannot be ignored, large influence on the spatial temperature distribution), heat transfer due to species diffusion (negligible influence on the baking, but slight effect on flame shape and temperature), and buoyancy (no significant effect on the results in the furnace firing sections).

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Use of Mathematical Modelling to Study the Behavior of a Horizontal Anode Baking Furnace

Cited by 8 publications

References 3 publications

Effects of Mesh Generation on Modelling Aluminium Anode Baking Furnaces

Effects of Mesh Generation on Modelling Aluminium Anode Baking Furnaces

Structural and thermal analysis of an innovative baking furnace for carbon anode production

Comparison of three combustion models for simulating anode baking furnaces

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