In the week from 12th to 16th February 2024, our colleagues Elsa Busson and Johannes Losacker visited the reheating furnace at the Celsa 3 steelworks to carry out measurements as part of the TWINGHY project — Digital TWINs for Green HYdrogen transition in steel industry.
In November 2023, colleagues from the project partners Celsa, Fives, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and the Department for Industrial Furnaces and Heat Engineering (IOB) met in Castellbisbal near Barcelona in Catalonia to visit the plant and prepare for the measurement campaign (see news article). As part of the EU-funded research project, the walking beam furnace for steel billets will be equipped with new burner technology for the use of hydrogen and oxygen-enriched combustion. In addition, the furnace’s measurement technology will be expanded to feed a digital twin with data. For a comprehensive characterisation of the reference condition, IOB carried out measurements for a week to collect data beyond the permanently installed sensors.
The unusually long journey introduced additional challenges on the planning of the measurement campaign. In close coordination with Celsa, ports for the sensors were manufactured in the weeks beforehand and the necessary equipment was transported to Spain by freight forwarder. On site, the furnace was first equipped with the additional measurement technology. One of the highlights was the measuring position on the chimney of the furnace. Secured in climbing harnesses, our colleagues installed the connections for gas analysis at a height of 40 metres and were rewarded with an impressive view and uniform velocity profiles in the chimney flow.
Temperatures were then logged over several days at representative positions at the furnace walls and the flue gases were analysed in terms of temperatures, volume flows and gas compositions. The data obtained from the furnace is supplemented by an instrumented billet trial. For this purpose, a steel billet was fitted with thermocouples and a transient temperature distribution was obtained throughout the process. The generated data will be used in the further course of the project to setup energy balances and CFD simulations of the system and to develop a meaningful digital twin of the furnace.
We would like to thank Celsa for their hospitality and excellent cooperation. We look forward to make use of the results in the project and to carry out the next measurement campaign once the furnace has been retrofitted.