Investigating the Effect of Fuel Rate Variation in an Industrial Thermal Cracking Furnace With Alternative Arrangement of Wall Burners Using Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation

A new arrangement of side-wall burners of an industrial furnace was studied by three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. This simulation was conducted on ten calculation domain. Finite rate/eddy dissipation model was used as a combustion model. Discrete ordinate model (DOM) was considered as radiation model. Furthermore, weighted sum of gray gas model (WSGGM) was used to calculate radiative gas properties. Tube skin temperature and heat flux profiles were obtained by solving mass, momentum, and energy equations. Moreover, fuel rate variation was considered as an effective parameter. A base flow rate of fuel (⁠$m˙=0.0695kg/s$⁠) was assigned and different ratios (0.25 $m˙$⁠, 0.5 $m˙$⁠, 2 $m˙$⁠, and 4 $m˙$⁠) were assigned to investigate the heat distribution over the furnace. Resulted temperature and heat profiles were obtained in nonuniform mode using the proposed wall burner arrangement. According to the results, despite increased heat transfer coefficient of about 34% for $m˙$–4 $m˙$⁠, temperature profile for this rate is too high and is harmful for tube metallurgy. Also, the proper range for fuel rate variation was determined as 0.5–2 $m˙$⁠. In this range, heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number for $m˙$–2 $m˙$ were increased by 21% and for $m˙$–0.25 $m˙$ were decreased by about 28%.