In an example implementation, a method of operating a sintering furnace includes receiving information about a green object load to be sintered in a sintering furnace, determining a sintering profile based on the information, and performing a sintering process according to the sintering profile. During the sintering process, a sensor reading that indicates a degree of densification of a green object in the load is accessed from a densification sensor. The method includes initiating a cool down phase of the sintering process if the sensor reading has reached a target sensor reading.

Techniques regarding a fan friction oven are provided. For example, one or more embodiments described herein can regard an apparatus comprising a processing chamber in fluid communication with a heating blower and a circulation blower. The heating blower can heat air adjacent to the processing chamber by fan friction. Also, the circulation blower can circulate the air heated by the heating blower into the processing chamber.

Systems and methods for fabrication of ceramics from celestial materials using microwave sintering and mechanical compression for space mining applications are disclosed. In one aspect, a chamber for sintering loose mineral material into solid ceramic shapes includes a plurality of zirconia insulting plates configured to clamp the mineral material and forming a cavity in which the mineral loose material is contained, and at least one dipole array configured to generate microwave energy and apply the microwave energy to the mineral material.

A steel sheet temperature control device including: a sheet temperature measurement unit; a furnace temperature measurement unit; an influence coefficient calculation unit; a control model setting unit that sets a control model; a state variable/disturbance estimation unit that estimates values of a state variable and a temperature disturbance variable of the control model at the same time; a furnace temperature change amount calculation unit that calculates a furnace temperature change amount of each of heating zones of a heating furnace under a constraint condition such that square sum of a deviation between a target value and the actual value of the temperature of the steel sheet at the outlet side of the heating furnace becomes minimum; and a furnace temperature control unit that controls a fuel flow rate used in each of the heating zones to achieve the calculated furnace temperature change amount.

The present disclosure addresses the technical problem of prediction of a preheat refractory temperature profile of a ladle furnace. Operational temperature of the ladle furnace, stability of sensors and placement make sensors not feasible. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations require large computation time and cannot be used for runtime applications in plants. The method and system of the present disclosure uses CFD modeling to carry out parametric study to generate data which is further processed to train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model that serves as a prediction model for predicting the preheat refractory temperature profile for at least a portion of the side refractory and at least a portion of the bottom refractory layer separately for which a new set of input data is obtained. The trained prediction model of the present disclosure provides a quick runtime prediction in plants.

A heating device and a heating chamber are provided, comprising a base plate (21), at least three supporting columns (22) and a heating assembly, where the at least three supporting columns are arranged vertically on the base plate and are distributed at intervals along a circumferential direction of the base plate Top ends of the at least three supporting columns form a bearing surface for supporting a to-be-heated member (23). The heating assembly includes a heating light tube (24) and a thermal radiation shielding assembly, where the heating light tube is disposed above the base plate and below the bearing surface. A projection of an effective heating area formed by uniform distribution of the heating light tube on the base plate covers a projection of the bearing surface on the base plate. The thermal radiation shielding assembly shields heat radiated by the heating light tube towards surroundings and bottom.

An installation for thermal treatment of free-floating raw material, in particular cement raw meal and/or mineral products, may include a riser line through which hot gases can flow. The riser line has at least one fuel inlet for introducing fuel into the riser line. The riser line has at least one raw meal inlet for introducing raw meal into the riser line, which raw meal inlet is arranged upstream of the fuel inlet in a flow direction of gas inside the riser line. Further, a method for thermal treatment of free-floating raw material may involve introducing fuel via a fuel inlet into a riser line for guiding hot gases and introducing raw meal into the riser line. The raw meal is introduced into the riser line upstream of the fuel inlet in the flow direction.

A method of controlling a production process includes illuminating a portion of a workpiece undergoing a production process with a light having a selected wavelength, processing a portion of the workpiece, capturing a digital image of the light reflecting from a surface of the workpiece with a digital camera, performing, with a processor, a specular reflectance analysis of the digital image, and adjusting a production process parameter based on the specular reflectance analysis.

Systems and methods of threading a metal substrate on a rolling mill include receiving a coil of the metal substrate. The method also includes uncoiling the metal substrate from the coil while the coil and guiding the metal substrate to a work stand of the rolling mill with a threading system.

The invention concerns a dental furnace, with a furnace base and with a furnace hood, wherein the furnace hood includes a firing chamber for the accommodation of dental restorations, with a temperature sensor that records the temperature of the dental restoration and which is connected to a control device which controls the dental furnace, and the dental furnace (10) includes a drive unit (18) for the furnace hood (16) and the control device (30) controls the drive unit (18) based on the temperature recorded by the temperature sensor (20), namely opens the furnace hood.