Reducing Natural Gas Consumption Of The Reheating Shell Furnace During Non-production Periods

The present work aims to describe the changes made in the operational procedure of the reheating shell furnace, of the hot-rolling of seamless tubes line at Barreiro Plant of VSB, during non-production periods, focusing on reducing natural gas consumption. According to the previous procedure, the furnace was kept at 750°C on these periods, using the main burners. With the new procedure, the furnace is naturally cooled, maintaining only the auxiliary burners with a pilot light turned on, without worrying about the conservation of temperature. Subsequently, the furnace is heated with a rate of 150 ºC/h until it reaches the setpoint temperature of production. This procedure change was successful and didn’t cause operational and security problems. The minimum stoppage time needed for the natural cooling to be economically favorable is 6 hours and 30 minutes. The new procedure reduced the natural gas consumption in 4.500 Nm³, considering 24 hours of stoppage, achieving an estimated annual economy on the thermal energy costs of R$440.000,00 in 2019.