Kennesaw, GA (October 14, 2008) – A major international manufacturer of power generation and rail transport equipment has contracted with Consolidated Engineering Company (CEC) to design and manufacture a side-loaded high/low temperature furnace for their manufacturing facility in China. The project requirements called for equipment that could handle a very narrow range of acceptable thermal uniformity, a rapid heat up of the empty chamber from ambient to 1200°F within six hours, heat-up of 10 Tons of steel tubes within thirty minutes and the processing of multiple different lengths of steel tubes with varying time frames.

CEC proposed the side-loaded high/low temperature furnace with loader to meet these needs and additionally included regenerative burners that use 50% less natural gas to heat the loads, thereby saving substantially on energy costs. This new furnace will be able to heat treat the steel tubes in 30 minutes, a significant productivity increase from the predecessor unit. The design incorporates three doors along one side. Each door is approximately 7.5 m long. The doors can be opened as one 7.5 M door for a single shorter load, as two doors at 15 m for longer loads, or as all three doors at 23.5 M long for loads up to 23 m long.

The steel tubes are loaded through the side opening door(s) by an automated mechanism that is segmented and integrated with the three doors. The unloading is accomplished similarly. Loads are supported on rugged refractory piers. The unique regenerative burners fire over and under the loads to create a very uniform heated chamber. CEC performed Computational fluid Dynamics (CFD) studies on the various loads at various temperatures. The combination of regenerative burner firing, burner location, and pressure control ensures the exceptionally uniform and rapid heating characteristics of the furnace. CEC won this contract over international competition because of CEC technology, worldwide business model and effective operations throughput China. CEC maintains a Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise (WOFE) status in Shanghai, China.