How TKE-HTT™ is Helping the Global Steel Industry
The steel industry is, at its core, all about heating metal for its manipulation. Whether you’re forging steel from iron, melting steel for molds, or heating metal for reshaping, reliable high temperature heating is at the core of what you do. While a lot of the peripheral technologies around this process have changed, getting more efficient with better insulating materials and gotten safer over time, the basic heating systems have barely changed since the industrial revolution. They're still just a burner system, burning a heavy, hot fuel inefficiently and relying on radiant heat transfer to get the job done.
This is why our Thermal Kinetic Energizer-Heat Transfer Technology™ (shortened to TKE-HTT™) is so important to you if you’re a decision maker in the steel industry. This is a space-age take on the heating needs of the steel industry and every other metallurgic industry! TKE-HTT™ is a revolutionary cost-saving technological leap forward in how we heat materials for processing. This system offers a paradigm-shift in heating solid materials away from wasteful conventional radiant systems and towards controlled, highly efficient kinetic heating that uses less fuel and works faster and better!
It sounds great in theory, but it’s even better in practice. Let’s take a look at the various ways in which TKE-HTT™ is actually helping the steel industry right now.
Saving You Money
While the exact savings for your application are bound to vary, savings of up to 80% on fuel usage have been recorded when converting from traditional burners in a conventional radiant heat system. Not all fuel savings will be this dramatic, however there are several more ways the system saves steel manufacturers, aluminum recyclers, and so many other processing plants a ton of money in real world applications!
TKE-HTT™ completely and perfectly burns natural gas fuel! This not only improves efficiency by reducing fuel usage, it reduces scale and carbon deposits that add time and waste to your production process.
By dramatically speeding heat transfer with high-speed emissions (fuel exits the system at 220 meters per second!), TKE-HTT™ reduces how long it takes for materials to be heated through. The kinetic aspect of the generated heat is penetrative to even dense materials like steel, unlike radiant heat. This is why heating through materials that normally require a very long radiant heating takes a fraction of the time when you use a TKE-HTT™ system.
TKE-HTT™ based systems require very little maintenance compared to heavy fuel burner systems. This is because the speed of fuel transfer in a retooled TKE-HTT™ system doesn’t allow the deposited waste and buildup that always occurs in slow traditional burner systems. Not only does this mean less resources spent on maintenance directly, it also means more uptime for manufacturing. This can be a major boon for any manufacturing process. Especially these days when so many supply chains are backordered after this stage of the production pipeline.
TKE-HTT™ based systems don’t have a warm up or cool down requirement, meaning that you aren’t losing efficiency. You also don’t need an active pilot to reignite your system, so turning the system on and off is faster and efficient even for pulse firing.
The TKE-HTT™ system is considerably less bulky than many traditional systems. The space savings can save on industrial space requirements for your foundry or production plant, or permit additional productivity in your existing space without increasing the fuel and space you need.
Energy costs constitute 15% to 20% of total costs in steel manufacturing. If this cost can be reduced, the bottom line for your manufacturing plants is considerably lower. How much would it affect your profits to reduce your manufacturing costs? Imagine what can be done to compete with other manufacturers on cost with those savings, increasing market share, and making use of the increased manufacturing capacity TKE-HTT™ systems offer.
When you start considering your real work numbers, and the actual savings being presented, it’s clear that this is an incredibly high-value upgrade for any heat-based manufacturing process that places your plant ahead of competitors who haven’t embraced this technology yet.
Other Benefits
There are quite a few other benefits to the TKE-HTT™ system in regards to safety and product quality control, beyond the savings and productivity improvements it offers. There are a number of common problems across the metallurgic production industries, and this system solves several of them.
Gas is burned at a lower temperature overall, and the system instead relies on highly efficient heat transfer. This means that your work environment can be kept cooler overall and be less dangerous and unpleasant for workers.
Thanks to highly efficient heat transfer there are no more hot and cold spots in your kiln. This, combined with complete combustion and lower temperature heating leads to little to no scaling, and minimizes oxidation, making for more efficient batch yields for a wide range of processes.
Beyond the practical business benefits, TKE-HHT™ offers steel and similar material processing industries an opportunity to become more green. When you’re saving on fuel and electricity costs, you’re also reducing your direct and indirect emissions. This isn’t just better for the environment, it helps to protect you in the face of increasing environmental regulations.
In a similar vein, because fuel is completely burned and doesn’t become a waste emission, your process will emit less hazardous material. This goes beyond mere quantity of emission reduction and actually affects the quality of your emissions.
By working with the expert engineers at FRC Global, you can be assured that the best custom solution for your manufacturing process will be found. While TKE-HTT™ is a revolutionary system and paradigm shift in heating, it’s far from the only efficiency boosting technology we have to offer your foundry or production plant. Further, with technologies that offer greater safety for workers and more consistent production processes, we aim to help you increase productivity and up time for years to come.
