CIVS Hydrogen Research Presented at ASME Summer Heat Transfer
On July 8-10, CIVS Associate Director for Operations Armin Silaen presented “Numerical Investigation of Hydrogen Fuel in Steel Reheating Furnace” at the ASME 2025 Summer Heat Transfer Conference in Westminster, CO. Co-authors of the paper include CIVS Graduate Research Assistants Abhishek Kolakotla, Xipeng Guo, Veronica Pitt-Payne, CIVS Senior Research Engineer Nick Walla, Gerdau’s Kevin Kondrat, Linde’s Joe Maiolo, Gerdau’s Joao Gonzaga, and CIVS Director Chenn Zhou.
The steel industry, reliant on reheating furnaces to heat steel slabs, faces significant environmental challenges due to high CO₂ emissions. This computational study investigates the application of hydrogen-natural gas blends and oxygen enrichment in the burners to assess their potential for enhancing combustion efficiency and reducing emissions. Eleven distinct burner configurations were simulated to explore variations in hydrogen content (0-100%) and oxygen lancing levels (0-75%). Our findings reveal that high hydrogen blends maintain stable combustion and significantly curtail CO2 emissions. Additionally, oxygen enrichment strategies enhance thermal performance by promoting more uniform temperature distributions and optimizing fuel usage. The scalability and effectiveness of these approaches were validated through simulations of scaled-down models, which consistently replicated the performance of full-scale setups. The results demonstrate that adopting hydrogen blends and oxygen lancing in industrial reheating furnaces can substantially support the steel industry’s transition towards sustainable manufacturing and align with global decarbonization objectives.
The conference brought together international researchers and engineers focusing on heat and mass transfer in a variety of applications. The program of SHTC 2025 included technical paper sessions, plenary lectures, committee meetings and social events. The objectives of the meeting were to provide a forum for presentation of state-of-the-art research and opportunities for technical interactions among participants.