New Factors of Reliability of Electric Furnaces for Vermiculite Firing with Mobile Base Plates

The article reviews measures to increase the reliable operation of electric furnaces for vermiculite concentrates firing over the entire period of their existence since 2003. A significant step forward in this research was the find that the implementation of suspended heating systems in the electric modules of furnaces, both types such as modular-triggering furnaces and in furnaces with mobile base plates, where the swelling process of the raw material is carried out during the process of its vibrotransportation in the thermal field of the heating system. The imbalance of inertial loads is an additional factor for reducing of operation reliability in furnaces with mobile base plates. The methods of their balancing, discussed in this research, provide the dynamic balance of all moving parts of these furnace units. A study of analytical models of temperature distribution, carried out in previous researchers of the authors, showed that uniform heating can only be achieved in systems with a variable interval for the placement of heaters. The research results carried out in this work at the accepted values of the minimum and maximum intervals show that, compared to the old systems located on the refractory base of the firing modules, the difference temperature decreases significantly, which proves the effectiveness of this approach.