• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.119-125
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• 2004

Radiant tube heaters are widely used for indirect heating in heat treatment processes such as continuous annealing line(CAL) or continuous galvanizing line(CGL). Main issues for radiant tube are temperature uniformity, lifetime, thermal efficiency. To achieve higher heat release, the radiant tubes are fired at a higher fuel rate and therefore local overheating occur. A numerical simulation based on a commercial code FLUENT has been performed to investigate local overheating of radiant tube heaters. To minimize local overheating, the effects of radiating fins, flue gas recirculation(FGR), two-stage combustion were investigated. More uniform temperature distribution was achieved in the longitudinal direction within the tube with radiating fins and this contributed to increase the life of radiant tubes. Furthermore, the radiant tube with radiating fins was proven to be more efficient than the one without fins. The effects of flue gas recirculation and two stage combustion on the efficiency of the radiant tube were also considered and the results were presented.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 1998

Radiant heater tubes with an inside burner are designed to transfer the heat generated from the burner to the outside of the tube by radiation. Hence, tube metal must suffer high temperature of approximately 900-$1000^{\circ}C$. The radiant tube is usually manufactured by centrifugal casting with high Ni-Cr alloys. In this study, failure analysis results of the radiant tube are reported. Failure mechanism of the tube was investigated by visual observation of the foiled tube, metallographic study of the cracked region and chemical analysis of tube metal and oxide scales. It was argued that the main cause of the cracking is repeated oxidation of the tube metal located beneath the thick oxide scale. Oxidation was caused by abnormally high operating temperature which can be verified by aged microstructure and internal void formation.