CIVS Associate Director for Operations Presents Hydrogen Research at 2024 Summer Heat Transfer Conference
On July 15, CIVS Associate Director for Operations Armin Silaen presented “Simulating Hydrogen Fuel Usage in a Steel Reheating Furnace” at the ASME 2024 Summer Heat Transfer Conference in Anaheim, CA. Co-authors of the paper include CIVS Senior Research Engineer Nicholas Walla, Graduate students Misbahuddin Syed and Abhishek Kolakotla, and CIVS Director Chenn Zhou.
The traditional reheating furnace is not only a key part of the steelmaking process, it is also a process that creates large amounts of CO2 emissions from natural gas combustion. The use of hydrogen gas as an alternative fuel to augment or replace the use of natural gas has become a major focus in the decarbonization of steel production. Due to the critical nature of the reheating furnace process, the steel industry cannot risk process interruptions and potential equipment damage towards hydrogen fuel testing in commercial units. To help understand the benefits and impacts of using hydrogen fuel, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be used to replicate the full-scale process under a variety of conditions. In this work, the usage of hydrogen fuel a walking beam reheating furnace is simulated to explore potential impacts the process, such as the heating of steel slabs (and potential for thermal stress), changes to emissions and flue flow rates, and potential impacts on production rates. This includes partial (zone-limited) and whole replacement of natural gas fuel with hydrogen fuel, modification of heating zone burners using air lancing to reduce NOx emissions from hydrogen fuel usage, regenerative burner systems to improve fuel efficiency, and exploration of hydrogen and methane fuel blending in furnace operations.
The conference brought together international researchers and engineers focusing on heat and mass transfer in a variety of applications. The program of SHTC 2024 included technical paper sessions, plenary lectures, committee meetings and social events. The objectives of the meeting were to provide a forum for presentations of state-of-the-art research and opportunities for technical interactions among participants.