Industrial Electric Furnace History-
At the request of a customer in October 2010, IFCO replaced all the natural gas-fired burners on our pilot 5 hearth MHF with silicon carbide SER-type heating elements to heat green coke to a maximum temperature of 2000 Deg F. The customer wanted to test their product in a MHF but did not want the flame impingement from the burner to make contact with their green coke product. To meet the customer’s heating specifications, we installed a quantity of (4) heating elements in each of the (5) hearths 90 degrees from each other for a total of 20 heating elements. Based on the size of our pilot test furnace, we budgeted a total of 5 watts per square inch with a little extra power to compensate for the resistance in each element as it starts to age. The total target power consumption to electrify our pilot MHF came to 90kW. With this new electrified setup, we were able to process 75 lbs. per hour at 2000 Deg F through the pilot MHF to meet the customer’s output requirements.
In all, this pilot test using heating elements instead of traditional gas-fired burners was a major departure from the standard MHF design. Our mechanical and electrical teams were able to meet this challenge head-on by delivering a fully commissioned, new electrified MHF to meet the industry's requirements.