Motivation
Intensive industries are continuously facing new challenges in order to increase the efficiency, reliability and flexibility of their processes. In particular, due to being one of the most energy intensive processes, industrial furnaces have been the focus of multiple researches in order to address radical improvements in the competitiveness and energy, environmental and cost performance at system level. For that purpose, the development of improved designs based on new materials, alternative feedstocks, equipment and the integration of permanent monitoring and control systems into new and existing furnaces seem to be essential instrument to meet those demands.
In that sense, the overall objective of VULKANO project will contribute not only to update the mainly old-aged European furnaces but also to create a path to follow in order to ensure a successful design in case of new furnaces. This path includes deployment of options comprising
Incremental improvements to existing technology, and
The application of significant process changes using technologies that are technically reliable and have the potential to become commercially ready in the medium term.