Hydrogen-Fired Crucible Furnace for Aluminum Recycling

Aluminum recycling is one of the most energy-efficient industrial processes. This work provides design and numerical simulation of zero-CO2 aluminium remelting furnace, supporting circular economy goals and pollution reduction. The furnace to designed is a lab-scale hydrogen-fired crucible furnace for melting post-consumed aluminium cans of 1 kg batch. Thermal energy demand of a hydrogen fired crucible furnace was set to 1 MJ/kg, and the combustion system is sized for stoichiometric H2-air combustion, yielding a required H2 flow of 8.3 g/h. CFD simulations was carried using Fluent, non-premixed combustion model to predict a maximum temperature of 2150 K and a flame length of ~20 cm. The flame was fully contained within a 50 cm length in the furnace.