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Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 5134 5139

The 8th International Conference on Applied Energy ICAE2016

Two dimensional CFD simulations of a flue-wall in the anode

baking furnace for aluminum production
Abdul Raouf Tajika, Tariq Shamima,*, Rashid K. Abu Al-Ruba, Mouna Zaidania.
a
Institute Center for Energy (iENERGY), Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Masdar City, PO Box 54224, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.

Abstract

The quality of carbon anode used in aluminum industry depends strongly on the baking process. Impact
of operational parameters and geometry on the performance of baking furnace by using plant tests are
generally expensive and may disrupt the baking process. Numerical modelling is an imperative tool to
study the effect of different operational parameters on the baked anode quality, and furnace performance.
In the present work, a two-dimensional (2-D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is developed
that simulates heat transfer and flow characteristics of gas in the baking furnace flue-wall. Effect of
several operational parameters on gas temperature distribution is investigated. During anode baking
process, the main challenge is to obtain a uniform flow field and consequently a homogenous anode
temperature distribution. In the present study, flow and temperature uniformity indices based on mass and
area weighted averages are introduced as a quantitative indication of the flow and temperature
homogeneity. Effect of variation in flue-wall design for two different geometries on flow field are studied
and it is observed that closing the top side of the first baffle results in more uniform flow distribution and
less energy consumption.
2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAE
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 8th International Conference on Applied Energy.

Keywords: Fluewall;carbon anode;CFD;volatiles combustion; conjugate heat transfer;

1. Introduction
Anode baking is a very expensive and very important step in manufacturing carbon anodes to be used
in aluminum production. Anode baking furnace is a circular kiln with pits, analogous to a closed chain.
As shown in Figure 1, a fire group usually consists of three preheating sections, three firing sections, six
cooling sections, one unloading section, one or two sections for the loading of green anodes and one or

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +971-2-810-9158; fax: +971-2-810-9901.

E-mail address: tshamim@masdar.ac.ae.

1876-6102 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 8th International Conference on Applied Energy.
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2017.03.1042
 Abdul Raouf Tajik et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 5134 5139 5135

two back up sections for the maintenance. After each fire cycle time (typically 24-32 hours), the fire
group equipment is displaced one section forward in the direction of the fire advance. The working
principle of anode baking furnace is similar to that of a counter flow heat exchanger with the stationary
green anodes on one side and the flow of the hot gases on the other side. A baking furnace comprises of
two fire groups where the sections are arranged in two rows side by side, joined at the two ends by the
crossover. The fire advance direction is the same as the flow direction of combustion air and flue gases.

Fire direction
Fig. 1. Longitudinal view of all the sections in a fire group [1]

In the present work, a two-dimensional (2-D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is developed that
simulates heat transfer and flow characteristics of gas in flue-wall of the furnace. This 2-D model takes
significantly less computational time in comparison with the reported 3D CFD models in the literature [2-
5] without compromising on accuracy. During the anode baking process, the main challenge is to obtain
very uniform temperature and flow fields. In the present study, flow and temperature uniformity indices
are introduced as quantitative indications of the flow and temperature homogeneity.
2. Model Specifications and Numerical Procedure
Figure 2 shows the selected 2D domain of a flue-wall which is selected from the actual 3D furnace
geometry. The combustion air is pushed inside the flue-wall cavity and is preheated by gaining the heat
from the high temperature refractory walls in the cooling zone (see Figure 1).

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. (a) Three dimensional view of anode baking furnace [6] (b) Schematic of the two dimensional domain of the flue wall

During the firing and preheating zones, the heat generated by the combustion of fuel and volatiles
gases is transferred to the refractory walls first and then to the packing coke and the anodes by
conduction. In the preheating and firing sections, the flue wall is kept under certain negative pressure to
retain and pull out the combustion products.
5136 Abdul Raouf Tajik et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 5134 5139

The computational model and the grid are generated in Gambit software (Gambit 2.4.6). Developing a
high quality mesh for finite volume analysis (FVA) is of great importance. In a view to develop a
structured tetrahedral grid, computational domain is subdivided into hundreds of smaller rectangular
elements. The orthogonal quality and ortho-skew are found to be one and zero, respectively, which
correspond to the highest possible mesh quality.

2.1. Governing equations

For the combustion turbulence interaction k  H - EDM frame work is adopted. Following are the main
governing equations that are solved. The detailed explanation about these equations can be found in the
Ansys Fluent users guide [7].

Continuity:
.( UV ) 0 (1)
Momentum:
(V .V ) p  .( Peff V )  FB (2)
Turbulent Kinetic Energy:
P
U V .  k . P  t k  p  UH (3)
Vk
Turbulent Dissipation Rate:
P H H2
U V .  H . P  t H  CH 1 pk  CH 2 U (4)
V H k k
Energy:
N
(V( U E  p )) keff T  h j J j  Sh (5)
j 1
Transport equation for the species:
( UVYi ) J i  Ri (6)

The rate of reaction (EDM):

H Y Y
Ri , j U min AY fu , A ox , A B pr (7)
k s (1  s)

The steady-state numerical simulations are performed using a CFD software (Fluent 16.2) which is
based on the finite volume discretization. The Second-Order Upwind Scheme is adopted for the spatial
discretization. The Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure Linked Equations (SIMPLE) algorithm is selected
for pressure interpolation, and coupling of pressure and velocity. Since the model is 2-D planar and not an
axi-symmetric, the solver assumes a virtual third dimension as one-meter-long to do the calculations
which is not the case for the actual furnace. In order to nullify the effect of different inlet cross sectional
area, mass flux in (kg/m2 s) is given for both air and fuel inlets. Grid independence tests are carried out,
and difference in area-weighted average gas temperature after increasing the cell size from 45, 000 to
250,000 is found to be less than 1%.

2.2. Temperature and flow uniformity indices

The main purpose of arranging the baffles and tie-bricks in the flue-wall cavity is to obtain a uniform
flow distribution which results in a more homogenous gas temperature. A quantitative parameter named
flow uniformity index, usually represented by J , is widely used to evaluate the flow uniformity. Using
 Abdul Raouf Tajik et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 5134 5139 5137

area-weighted or mass-weighted averages to remove the effect of non-uniform mesh while computing
mean values, the flow uniformity index can be expressed as [8]:

1
v i  vavr Ai
i 1
J flow 1  (8)
2 Avavr

1
T T i avr Ai
i 1
JT 1 (9)
2 ATavr

Where,
vi , Ti is the local velocity and temperature respectively; Ai is the local area; and A is the flue-wall
cavity area where J is evaluated. The average velocity and temperature is computed as:
1 n
vavr vi Ai
Ai1
(10)

1 n
Tavr Ti Ai
Ai1
(11)

Moreover, it is observed that standard deviations of the velocity and static temperature in the
computational domain can also be used as an alternative quantitative indication of velocity and
temperature heterogeneity in the computational domain.
3. Results and Discussions
The CFD results obtained in the present study is verified by another validated numerical model that is
developed by the same group (Figure 3). It can be observed that the compared results are in good
agreement with each other.

Fig. 3. Model's Verification [9]

Effect of several operational parameters on gas velocity and temperature distributions are investigated.
Figure 4 illustrates the contours of velocity and static temperature for varying fuel mass-flux. It can be
seen that a high fuel-mass flux results in high gas velocity and temperature values.
5138 Abdul Raouf Tajik et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 5134 5139

(I) (a) (II) (I) (b ) (II)

Fire direction
Fig. 4. Contours of a) velocity (m/s) b) static temperature (C) for I) m f =30 (kg/m2s) II) m f =40 (kg/m2s)

Figures 5-a and 5-b show that the increase in fuel mass-flux and air inlet temperature increases the gas
temperature. Since the result shows the simulation of a firing section, the increase in air mass-flux causes
the gas temperature to reduce (see Figure 5-c).

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 5. Effect of varying a) Fuel mass-flux b) Air inlet temperature c) Air mass-flux on average gas temperature

(I) (a) (II) (I) (b) (II)

Fire direction
Fig. 6. Contours of a) velocity (m/s) b) static temperature (C) for different geometries

Figure 6 illustrates the effect of varying geometry on velocity and temperature distributions. The
results show that closing the top opening of the first baffle (case-II in Figure 6) results in a more uniform
flow filed. As shown in Table 1, the flow uniformity index increases for the case-II, which indicates a
more uniform flow field.
 Abdul Raouf Tajik et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 5134 5139 5139

Table 1. Velocity and temperature standard deviations and uniformity indices

Case Mean Standard Deviation Uniformity Index Uniformity Index
Temperature (C) (Area-weighted (Mass-weighted
average) average)
Velocity Temperature Flow Temperature Flow Temperature
(m/s) (C)
I 1256 2.6 271.7 0.774 0.932 0.806 0.929
II 1313 2.56 289.8 0.795 0.925 0.821 0.924

4. Conclusions
In the present work, a 2-D CFD model is developed that simulates heat transfer and flow
characteristics of the flue-gases in a flue-wall of anode baking furnace. Effect of various operational
parameters on gas average temperature are investigated. Flow and temperature uniformity indices are
introduced as quantitative indication of the flow and temperature homogeneity. Effect of flue-wall design
modification on the flow field are studied and it is observed that closing the top side of the first baffle
results in more uniform flow distribution and less energy consumption. The developed CFD model can be
utilized to optimize the anode baking process and to redesign the flue-wall.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Emirates Global Aluminium and the Government of Abu Dhabi to
help fulfil the vision of the late President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan for sustainable
development and empowerment of the UAE and humankind.
References
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[4] Grgoire F, Gosselin L, Alamdari H. Combustion in anode baking furnaces: Comparison of two modeling approaches to
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[5] Keller F, Mannweiler U, Severo D. Computational modeling in anode baking. Light Metals. 2006 Aug:1-2.
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Biography
The first author is a Ph.D. candidate at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, UAE.
His main area of research is applied thermal engineering, and numerical investigations of
various heat transfer, fluid flow and combustion processes.