Resumo:
Preheating the refractory lining of industrial equipment usually consumes large amounts of energy. This step is usually long and impacts the costs and productivity of several economic sectors. More effective, cost-effective, and sustainable heating practices should be studied and implemented. Additionally, this step is critical to the refractory and the industry that uses it because the material goes through transformations when heated up to the usual process temperatures, such as the evaporation of water, the elimination of volatile materials, or reactions in the solid-state. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure the quality of these materials by applying an appropriate heating curve. This work proposes the development of a practical tool for the quantification of the rate of energy generation per unit volume of refractory materials, necessary to increase the energy involved in the chemical and physical transformations that occur during the preheating of the lining. To this end, experiments were performed to characterize the thermal properties of the material, in addition to simulations using the finite element method to build a model that considers these amounts of energy. Based on this, the study presents the potential of the tool when used for the comparison of different coating configurations and heating conditions regarding energy consumption and time employed. The simulations for an aluminous concrete showed a maximum temperature difference at the first heating of 2 °C between the experimental value and that obtained in the simulation, showing itself to be a methodology for quantifying energy consumption during the heating of refractory ceramic materials. The fuel consumption was 1.9% more for the case that considers the calculated q. This can bring more predictability in the preheating scheduling of melt shop ladles. Both in terms of fuel consumption and in terms of scheduling the heating curve.
