Roller Hearth Furnace Pipe Layout for Uniform Battery Material Heat Treatment
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional continuous roller hearth type heat treatment furnaces face challenges in maintaining uniform temperature and gas distribution within the furnace, leading to inefficiencies in the heat treatment process for secondary battery active materials.
Innovation Solution
A heat treatment apparatus with a specific arrangement of discharge and supply pipes, heaters, and saggers, where the upper discharge pipes are misaligned from the lower supply pipes, and the lower discharge pipe is positioned at the furnace bottom, ensuring efficient gas flow and reaction time, and the saggers are arranged to maintain uniform heat distribution across multiple layers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Temperature
If conventional continuous roller hearth type heat treatment furnace is used, then heat treatment process can be performed, but uniform temperature and gas distribution inside the furnace cannot be maintained
Solution Approach 1:
The furnace interior is divided into multiple zones (preheating zone, heating zone, cooling zone) with distinct functions. Each zone has optimized pipe arrangements and heater configurations to achieve uniform temperature and gas distribution within its specific region, resolving the overall uniformity problem through localized optimization.
Solution Approach 2:
The upper discharge pipes are intentionally misaligned from the lower supply pipes in the height direction, creating an asymmetric arrangement. This asymmetric configuration prevents direct short-circuiting of gas flow and ensures that supplied atmospheric gas充分 reacts with materials before discharge, improving both temperature and gas distribution uniformity.
2Device complexity
If supply pipe and discharge pipe are arranged in straight line, then structural simplicity is achieved, but atmospheric gas and material cannot sufficiently react
Solution Approach 1:
The pipe arrangement transitions from a two-dimensional planar alignment to a three-dimensional misaligned configuration. The upper discharge pipes are positioned at different height locations than the lower supply pipes, creating a spatial offset that extends the gas flow path and increases reaction time without significantly increasing structural complexity.
3Temperature
If furnace size is increased to improve temperature uniformity, then temperature distribution improves, but device complexity and space requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of uniformly increasing the entire furnace size, the invention applies localized optimizations including strategic pipe misalignment in specific zones and targeted heater arrangements. These localized measures improve temperature uniformity without requiring proportional increases in overall furnace dimensions.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This configuration enhances the uniformity of the internal atmosphere, reduces temperature and gas distribution deviations, and increases the yield of materials by providing a consistent heat source and sufficient reaction time for atmospheric gases with the materials, improving product quality.
Implementation Method 1
a heater disposed inside the furnace body, the heater being disposed at a position spaced apart from the saggers and configured to heat the materials
Implementation Method 2
a heat treatment apparatus including: a furnace body in which materials are transferred and heat treated
Implementation Method 3
supplied atmospheric gas and a material received in the sagger can sufficiently react with each other
Implementation Method 4
an internal atmosphere in which materials are heat-treated can be maintained to be uniform
Data Source
AI summary
A heat treatment apparatus includes a furnace body, a roller inside the furnace body, a heater inside the furnace body, an upper and lower discharge pipes on the furnace body, and a lower supply pipe on the lower part of the furnace body. The furnace body includes areas having the upper and lower discharge pipes, the areas including a first area to an Nth area disposed sequentially along a second direction being a transport direction of each of the materials, a length of the first area in the second direction is shorter than lengths of the second area to the Nth area in the second direction, and in each of the first area to the Nth area, the upper discharge pipe and the lower supply pipe are not arranged in a straight line in a third direction being a height direction to be misaligned from each other.