ISSN 1611-616X VULKAN-VERLAG · ESSEN 3

2005

H E AT
PROCESSING
INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE FOR INDUSTRIAL FURNACES · HEAT TREATMENT PLANTS · EQUIPMENT

Direct fired strip preheating

Dipl.-Ing. Uwe Bonnet, WS Wärmeprozesstechnik GmbH, Renningen (Germany)
Dipl.-Phys. Karl Telger, ThyssenKrupp Stahl AG, Bochum (Germany)

Published in HEAT PROCESSING 3/2005

Vulkan-Verlag GmbH, Essen (Germany)
Editor: Dipl.-Ing. Stephan Schalm, Tel. +49 (0) 201/82002-12, E-Mail: s.schalm@vulkan-verlag.de
 R EPORTS

Direct fired strip preheating

Dipl.-Ing. Uwe Bonnet

WS Wärmeprozesstechnik
GmbH, Renningen
(Germany)
A novel design of a preheating unit for electrical steel strip has been developed and
installed in front of a radiant tube heated continuous annealing line. The unit uses
self recuperative FLOX® burners arranged in a “nozzle field” and is designed to
Tel. +49 (0)2302 / 2055699
preheat the strip up to 400 °C. The required heating length is reduced to one fourth u.bonnet@flox.com
of a comparable radiant tube heated furnace section. This results in a large reduc-
tion of furnace length and therefore of lay-out and investment cost. The present Dipl.-Phys. Karl Telger
article describes the new fast heating unit, the feedback from industrial tests and ThyssenKrupp Stahl AG,
Bochum (Germany)
the conclusions derived from the successful installation on the continuous anneal-
ing line.
Tel. +49 (0)234 / 50851655
karl.telger@
thyssenkrupp.com

Introduction Alternatives above conditions was the process with

The Works BNO-Bochum (Thyssen-
krupp) produce 500 000 t/y of “non
oriented grain” (NOG) electric steel strip.
The heat treatment, required to
recrystallize the material after rolling,
takes place in three independent hori-
zontal continuous furnaces, with an
average length of 240 m each. The fur-
nace temperature profile is controlled by
up to 450 radiant tubes; annealing is car-
ried out under protective gas atmos-
phere (N2/H2) and the maximum tempe-
rature can be as high as 1150 °C [1].
Strip width between 700 and 1270 mm,
thickness from 0.2-1.0 mm and a
throughput of circa 30 t/h can be obtai-
ned.
Preliminary basic considerations about
increasing the furnace capacity with the
conventional radiant tube heating have
shown that the inlet section of the conti-
nuous furnace would have had to be
lengthened by some 50 m. This would
however involve additional investment to
enlarge the factory shed and to manage
with enhanced control of the line speed.
In order to avoid additional investment
costs, the following conditions were laid
down when looking for possible, econo-
mic alternative solutions:
• increase of line speed (i.e. process
velocity) about 50 %
• strip temperature > 900 °C
• no enlargement of the continuous fur-
nace, but possible use of the 12 m
free inlet section.
direct heating from gas burners in a
Some producers of electric steel strip
nozzle field.
have been using direct fired zones for
preheating the strip in their continuous
The FLOX® nozzle field
plants for a long time. The direct fired
zones are installed upstream of those With the novel system, the “FLOX®
heated indirectly which are using protec- nozzle field”, a very intensive heating is
tive gas atmosphere. With the common achieved by direct jet impingement.
horizontal layout of burners, an overhea- Besides heating by radiation, a very high
ting of the edges and therefore also a convective heat transfer takes place
non uniform temperature distribution because the burner nozzle is directed
across the strip is possible or even una- straight towards the strip surface. The
voidable. A control of the atmosphere of burners themselves fire in flameless
combustion gases with a continuous mode [2]. This principle was developed
“modulating” control of the gas burners in order to suppress formation of nitric
is quite problematic. oxide (NOx) at high temperatures which
is particularly important in the case of
On the other hand, laboratory tests on
highly preheated combustion air for
electric steel specimen with variable Sili-
improving the thermal efficiency. Typical
con contents (up to 3.2 %) have shown
features of the FLOX® process are a high
that a direct heating up to 300 °C follo-
air velocity at the burner nozzle and a
wed by a heat treatment with protective
very homogeneous temperature distri-
gas is not critical. In order to choose the
bution in the combustion reaction field.
suitable process, further laboratory test
The latter properties and the layout of
were carried out with a high-powered
infrared radiator (electric), with porous
burners (gas fired) and with a direct hea-
ting system based on gas burners arran-
ged in a “nozzle field”. All alternatives
were checked not only for the initial
investment costs, but also for the length
and the running costs (energy and main-
tenance), as well as for the effect on strip
quality.
A high-powered infrared radiator implied
not only high investment costs, but also
extremely high running costs. Introduc-
tion of porous radiators was impossible
because of the very large length requi- Fig. 1: Schematic view of the test installation
red. The only possibility matching the at Renningen

HEAT PROCESSING · (3) · ISSUE 3 · 2005 139

 R EPORTS
Fig. 2: Diagram in principle of the prototype
for a FLOX® nozzle-field module
the nozzle field make it possible to rea-
lize the desired effective heat transfer in
a small confined space.
On a first test facility, where the burners
were firing from one side only, the heat
flux density was determined by means of
a stationary water cooled plate and preli-
minary tests with real strip specimen
were carried out (Fig. 1).
Furthermore it was to be tested which
length was required with this nozzle field
and if negative effects could be expec-
ted on the product quality. The following
results were obtained:
• the heat flux density was 250 kW/m2
with NOx emission 25 ppm
• the CO emission with flue gases at
about 315 °C is negligible
• the combustion chamber temperature
was 1040 °C
• the heat flux density can be varied in
the range 150-300 kW/m2
The strip specimen in this test section
(steel with silicon contents up to 3.2 %)
had the size 200 x 2000 mm with thick-
ness 0.5 mm. With the speed selected, a
temperature of about 350 °C could be
reached; the uniformity along the strip
width was about ± 10 °C. On the speci-
Fig. 3: Burner head in the FLOX® nozzle field
140 HEAT PROCESSING · (3) · ISSUE 3 · 2005
men, surface oxidation, magnetic pro-
perties, grain size etc were determined
without noticing any significant alterati-
ons.
Based on the above results concerning
temperature and speed, it could be
ascertained what steel throughput could
be preheated up to 300 °C by means of
a bilateral nozzle field system with a
length of 1.5 m. In order to verify the
results obtained so far a prototype of the
FLOX® nozzle field was built and instal- Fig. 5: Original arrangement of the nozzle
led upstream of an annealing furnace jets
using protective atmosphere (N2/H2),
with the purpose of testing the combi-
ned effect of the heating processes. FLOX® process are indeed very high and
With the nominal speed, 6 modular units the question is to choose the best arran-
would be necessary in order to preheat gement of the burner nozzles. The latter
the strip up to circa 300 °C. This would are reproduced in Fig. 3 and each burner
imply no enlargement of the line. In has in fact four round nozzles (Fig. 4).
order to achieve representative results, The above arrangement causes a club-
the tests were carried out with reduced bed propagation of the impinging jet
line speed. which encourages a uniform heating of
the material (Fig. 5).
Tests with the prototype
With the first tests with the prototype,
temperatures between 350 and 600 °C
were measured for strip speed between
40 and 25 m/min. The desired uniform
heating of the materials was not satis-
factory and superficial coloured stripes
could be noticed in the gap between
burner lines. These stripes were not just
an optical nuisance, but also bore an
Fig. 4: Burner arrangement in the FLOX® influence on oxide layers, on surface
nozzle field uniformity and even the magnetic pro-
perties, if compared with standard. As a
first measure, the distance nozzle to
The prototype
strip was increased so that the pattern
The FLOX® nozzle field was realized with resulted as in Fig. 6 (with respect to
7 (band width) x 5 (band length) recuper- Fig. 5).
ative burners, so that 35 burners are
Nevertheless the heat distribution was
installed on each strip side. Fig. 2 shows
not yet very good and therefore the
a schematic arrangement of the strip
whole nozzle field was turned by 6° with
flowing through the “nozzle field”.
respect to the strip (Fig. 7).
As combustion in FLOX® conditions is
only allowed above a threshold tempera-
ture of 850 °C, the facility is equipped
with two conventional start-up burners.
These can be operated when the plant is
in standby position and after reaching
850 °C, the facility is automatically swit-
ched to FLOX® mode and the prototype
can be operated in the working.
It is well known from literature that the
highest heat transfer can be obtained
with impinging jets. For this purpose
however, it is important to arrange the
nozzle field and the nozzle size in such a
way that as many uniformly distributed
with high impact velocity jets impact on Fig. 6: Arrangement of nozzle jets with
the surface. The jet velocities typical of enlarged spacing

With the latter arrangement, a very uni-
form heating is obtained and both theory
and practice confirm that no stripe, no
preferential oxidation or magnetic pro-
perty occurs.
After settling this, tests with identical
material (steel with silicon contents up to
3.2 %) were carried out with and without
insertion of the FLOX® nozzle field. Then
probes were analyzed and compared in
the laboratory. Depending on the
preheating temperature, no differences
could be detected for Si contents up to
1.8 %.
Conclusions
It can be stated that the FLOX® nozzle
field has completely fulfilled the require-
ments set by the present project. The
Visit us at: Härterei-Kolloquium, Wiesbaden, Hall 9A, Stand 940
Fig. 7: Arrangement of the nozzle jets rotated
by 6°
equipment has been able to heat the
strip in the shortest space, with the best
efficiency and the lowest emissions. The
quality properties of the material for
preheat temperatures up to 300 °C are
R EPORTS
by no means harmed. By means of the
new FLOX® nozzle field the length requi-
red for preheating can be reduced by a
factor 4 with respect to radiant tubes.
The investment for a desired increase of
capacity is significantly lower, both in
initial investment and maintenance
costs, with respect to a traditional fur-
nace.
Literatur
[1] Roth W., Telger K., Betriebserfahrung
beim Einsatz von Brennern mit flammlo-
ser Oxidation, GasWärme International,
Band 44, 1995, Seiten - 332-337
[2] Wünning J.A., Wünning J.G., Brenner für
die flammlose Oxidation mit geringer NO-
Bildung auch bei höchster Luftvorwär-
mung, GasWärme - International, Band
41, 1992, Heft 10, Seiten 438-444
HEAT PROCESSING · (3) · ISSUE 3 · 2005 141