Role of Hydrolyzed Fuel in reducing www.

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Waste Heat, NOx and Mill-scale in Steel Reheating Furnaces

In any normal combustion process involving atmospheric Air, Oxygen is reduced along
with the Fuel to create Heat and Light producing the following gasses:

C02+H20 + N2+NOx.

The first two gasses are beneficial for spreading heat as the thermal conductivity and
radiance of CO2 and H2O(water in the form of steam) are much higher than that of air
because they are 3-atomic gases with ability to take part in heat transfer by radiation.
However, the latter two gasses namely Nitrogen and Nitrogen Oxides are detrimental for
the heating process as they are actually cooling gasses that don’t give up thermal energy
easily.

Air contains only 21% oxygen; the remaining 79% is practically Nitrogen. A gas with no
any positive role in combustion, but just heats up, consuming extra fuel and ultimately
vents off a large quantity of thermal energy through the stack as Nitrogen Ballast and
NOx, creating unnecessary waste heat, energy losses and pollutants.

Thus, in order to optimize the combustion process and improve the heat distribution and
thermal transfer from flame to load, it is necessary to curtail the role of Nitrogen as much
as possible to reduce waste heat creation and at the same time curtail NOx formation,
which is a notorious greenhouse gas.

How Hydrolyzed Fuel helps reduce the role of Nitrogen

Hydrolyzed Fuel consists of anywhere between 5-20% water embedded in 5-20 micron
sized droplets inside the Fuel. In a process known as secondary Atomization, once the
Hydrolyzed Fuel is sprayed inside the furnace by the burner the extreme heat of the flame
and furnace instantly vaporizes the water, expanding their volume by 17000 times, which
rips apart the host Fuel droplet into hundreds of smaller droplets with thousands of times
more surface area. This results in the complete combustion of the fuel and the water gets
converted into superheated H20 or steam. This increased volume of superheated steam,
released inside the Furnace acts as a thermal storage battery which first soaks in the
surrounding heat, equalizes it, eliminating hot-spots and then discharges by radiation
quickly within the furnace area.
Moreover, it displaces the traditional role of Nitrogen as Thermal Ballast and at the same
time due to the controlled peak temperatures reduces the formation of NOx gasses which
are usually formed at flame temperatures above 1300 degrees Celsius.

How Hydrolyzed Fuel helps reduce Mill-Scale in Steel Reheating Furnaces

Mill scale is a waste product of the steel industry consisting of various Ferric Oxides
namely FeO and Fe2O3, generated during Ingot or Billet re-heating or when these are
rolled into different profiles. These mills-scales comprise the upper coating of metal,
which fall off in layers ranging from a few centimeters to a few millimeters in length and
thickness. In an average steel re-heating and rolling operation the quantum of mill-scale
generated is on average about 3% though it can go even as high as 7%.
There are again two kinds of mill-scale, i.e, the primary scales and secondary scales. The
Primary mill-scales are formed inside the re-heating furnaces due the prolonged exposure
of the Steel Ingots to high temperatures and Oxygen. The secondary ones are those
scales which fall off during the rolling process.
Usage of Hydrolyzed Fuel in the steel reheating process drastically reduces primary mills-
scale generation. This is because the mill-scale formation takes place in more or less the
same conditions that generate NOx, i.e., due to prolonged exposure to Oxygen and
temperatures of 1300 degrees and higher.
The complete combustion of Fuel droplets of Hydrolyzed Fuel reduces most of the Oxygen
in the air due to complete combustion leaving very little for the purpose of oxidizing
either Nitrogen or the Metal.
Secondly , the super heated steam released by the Hydrolyzed Fuel Combustion first
ensure the flame’s peak temperatures don’t exceed 1300 degrees. And thirdly, the large
volume of superheated steam also acts like a flux insulating the heated metal from direct
contact with the oxygen. Hence, in place of 30-40 cm long peels of 1-2 mm thickness
falling off from Ingots during the reheating process, after converting to Hydrolyzed Fuel ,
the negligible amount of mill-scale generated gets physical properties of tiny flakes with
thickness not exceeding .06 mm. During a trial at a 100 Ton per day rebar mill, it was
seen that after converting to Hydrolyzed Fuel, the total amount of burning loss and mill-
scale fell from 3.5 % to 1.6 %.

 2008-09 Celeste Tech, Goa, India

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