Numerical Simulation And Research Of Electric Field Of Continuous Electric Furnace For Graphitization

Because graphite has good electrical conductivity, thermal shock resistance, chemical stability, lubricity, and abrasion resistance, graphite has been widely used. However, for the current production technology, it is difficult to meet the needs of the market. Therefore it requires the development of a new graphite technology. In this context, a new type of continuous graphite electric furnace is invented by our research group. The graphite furnace has the characteristics of the high yield, good quality and low consumption.At present, the graphite at home and abroad rely mainly on Acheson graphite furnace and heat cascading graphite furnace to produce. The two furnaces firstly aren’t able to achieve continuous production and have long the production cycle. Followed but the most important point is that the unit consumption of the two furnaces is very large, generally4000-5000KWh/t. Our group developed the new type of continuous graphite electric furnace overcome the two drawbacks of past furnace to achieve continuous production, but also significantly reduce energy consumption, about2500KWh/t.In this paper, in order to get the accurate distribution of electric field of the furnace, including the distribution of the electric potential distribution, the distribution of current density and the distribution of electric field strength, the electric field of the new continuous graphitization furnace production process is simulated by using ANSYS software. By observing the electric field distribution of the furnace, it can know the size of the graphite region and the changes temperature and distribution. In order to optimize the furnace, the papers then chose the13kinds of variable conditions of the new furnace to simulate. The13kinds of variable conditions, includes8kinds of electrode circular distribution of diameter and5kinds of electrode insertion depth. The simulation results showed that, when the electrode circle diameter is smaller, the heating rate is the higher, and the amount of material heated reduce and the temperature distribution will change. When the electrode insertion depth is deeper, and heating the amount of material will be increased, that is, increase the size of the area of graphitization. But changing the electrode insertion depth will also affect the distribution of the furnace temperature. Through the analysis of the new furnace can be appropriate to reduce the electrode circle diameter and increased electrode insertion depth, this can be achieved that the heating rate increase and production efficiency improve on the basis of heating the same materials.