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Melting and Holding DCE
Melting and Holding DCE
• Crucible Furnaces
• Immersion Furnaces
Dosing Furnaces
• Induction Furnaces
• Reverberatory Furnaces
• Stack Furnaces
•
Each of these furnaces has advantages and disadvan-
tages, which will be presented in the next section.
Crucible Furnaces
Crucible furnaces are small capacity furnaces used for
small melting applications or exclusively as holding
furnaces. The metal is placed or poured into a ceramic
crucible which is contained in a circular furnace that is
fired by a gas burner or heated by electric elements. Gas
fired crucible style furnaces, shown in Figure 1, offer the
advantage of a high volume melt capacity per square foot
of floor space required. They are perhaps the most flexible
of all furnace styles. Less affected by frequent cycling, they
offer faster start-ups and temperature recovery. In fact,
with the current trend of rising natural gas prices, large
capacity (1.0 to 1.5 metric ton) modern tilt/pour furnaces
have become very cost effective for melting systems. It has
become increasingly difficult to justify holding 15 metric
tons of metal when only 1.5 tons per hour are required.
Immersion Heaters
There are four ongoing projects related to improving the
capability of immersion heating for melting metals. First,
work has been done to optimize the nitride-bonded,