A local steel mill found that the prices of scrap and production costs were pinching them in the sluggish economy. The steel mill's engineering department was asked to find ways to help the company stay competitive in their market. CAS designed a state of the art solution with the steel engineer's specifications and was awarded the project. The design is an entirely custom combustion system.
The mill had an existing cooling chamber to convert into a furnace. They wanted to maximize loads using virtually all the area in the chamber but have an exceptionally fast bring-up time. Our challenge increased exponentially when they asked that the design allow for a quick change out of independent combustion centers. They also wanted less than four of these self-contained combustion units.
Typically, a furnace is designed with many burners on each wall tied back to zones for the Burner Management through Flame Safeguards and Fuel Trains. The large amount of burners on each wall insures a consistent absorption rate reducing hot spots and cold spots of the work.
We designed and fabricated the mobile combustion units incorporating nozzle mixing Low NOx burners, 40 HP combustion air blowers, Maxon 'Block-and-Bleed' / Industrial Risk Insurers (I.R.I.) approved fuel trains, and control panels with first out annunciation.
Teaming up with their engineers and millwrights, necessary design and fabrication was studied and incorporated so that the furnace could be charged with optimal loads and eliminate flame impingement concerns. The burners fire from a staggered formation creating a cyclone effect with hot gases spinning around, over, through, and under the load in the furnace.
We shipped two weeks early and the start-up time was three days quicker than projected, aiding the customer in being nearly three weeks ahead of schedule. The specified furnace process time was exceeded by over an hour and the quality control has increased. The return on investment for our customer was two months. Once again, CAS got the job done above and beyond industry standards and expectations setting us apart from the rest. We are proud to have helped another local company stay competitive in today's economy.
Contact Mike McVicker for more information.