NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF HEAT TRANSFER WATER-COOLED ROOF IN AN ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE

One of the major problems in electric arc furnace is the high temperature which results in thermal stresses and cracks within the material of the furnace surrounding walls. An effective cooling technique is needed to avoid such problems. For this purpose, a novel roof configuration of an electric arc furnace is used to provide efficient cooling to reduce the temperature in the roof material. The roof consists of two solid materials, namely, copper and alumina brick. The roof cooling is achieved by a water circulation within the roof. A numerical model using finite element method was implemented to solve the heat conduction equation with the complicated boundary conditions to find out the effects of using brick material with geometrical size variations for different values of thermal conductivity on the temperature distribution within the roof. The results showed that the decrease in brick material thermal conductivity resulted in a significant decrease in the top surface temperature of the furnace roof. The results showed that rectangular brick material is the best option in the roof to keep it at low temperature.