Topics for Theses

The depart­ment offers topics for Bachelor’s and Master’s the­ses as well as stu­dent rese­arch pro­jects. If noted in the respec­ti­ve exami­na­ti­on regu­la­ti­ons, the the­sis can be writ­ten in eit­her Ger­man or Eng­lish in agree­ment with the examiner.

Elec­tric hea­ting can be imple­men­ted into an indus­tri­al fur­nace by the use of elec­tric resis­tance hea­ters. The­re are many opti­ons regar­ding ope­ra­ting prin­ci­ple, geo­me­try and available power. A fare­ly new opti­on is the Honey­Comb hea­ting ele­ment by Sin­tex used for the hea­ting of pro­cess gases. The­se hea­ting ele­ments are based on metal pow­der extru­si­on using high-tem­pe­ra­tu­re alloys. The aim of this work is to inves­ti­ga­te the hea­ting ele­ments with regard to heat trans­fer and flu­id flow. The­r­e­fo­re, a nume­ri­cal model is to be deve­lo­ped which should pro­vi­de insights into the local and inte­gral heat trans­fer coef­fi­ci­ents, local tem­pe­ra­tu­re dis­tri­bu­ti­on of the hea­ting ele­ments and gas, and the pres­su­re drop cau­sed by the hea­ting element.

The sub­mer­ged arc fur­nace is an elec­tric mel­ting and reduc­tion unit which has been used on an indus­tri­al sca­le for deca­des, for exam­p­le for fer­ro­n­i­ckel, fer­ro­chro­me or phos­pho­rus. Due to the increased rest­ric­tions regar­ding the CO₂ foot­print of pro­ducts and the like­wi­se increased cos­ts for CO₂ emis­si­ons, alter­na­ti­ve pro­cess rou­tes to the blast fur­nace rou­te are also being sought in steel pro­duc­tion. The Sub­mer­ged Arc Fur­nace repres­ents one opti­on for smel­ting direct-redu­ced iron and is favor­ed by some lar­ge steel com­pa­nies. In this work, an exis­ting CFD model of a fer­ro­chro­me SAF will be fur­ther deve­lo­ped. Basic pro­cess under­stan­ding will be obtai­ned by visi­ting the SAF at Outo­kum­pu in Tor­nio (Fin­land) at the begin­ning of the work.