Modeling of Regenerative Furnace Ports

In order to increase overall efficiency, many industrial glass furnaces are regenerative; that is, the heat from the exhaust gases is used to preheat in the in-coming combustion air. The ports on these furnaces inject stream(s) of fuel into the preheated air stream and then combustion occurs inside the combustion chamber. Modeling of the exact detail of these furnace ports in addition to modeling the combustion space proper becomes computationally burdensome since many of these furnaces are extremely large. This paper presents an engineering approach using computational fluid dynamics to model both the major effects of the furnace ports in addition to calculating the detailed flow field in the combustion space. This approximation has been incorporated into a complete (combustion space/glass melt) furnace simulation. This engineering approach significantly reduces run time while still maintaining results that represent the conditions seen in the furnace. This paper will present this approach as well as some preliminary comparisons with actual furnace data/observations.