Process furnace

Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for Large Combustion Plants, Published by the European Union in 2017 defines process furnaces or heaters as:

• ‘combustion plants whose flue-gases are used for the thermal treatment of objects or feed material through a direct contact heating mechanism (e.g. cement and lime kiln, glass furnace, asphalt kiln, drying process, reactor used in the (petro-)chemical industry), or
• ‘combustion plants whose radiant and/or conductive heat is transferred to objects or feed material through a solid wall without using an intermediary heat transfer fluid (e.g. coke battery furnace, cowper, furnace or reactor heating a process stream used in the (petro-)chemical industry such as a steam cracker furnace, process heater used for the regasification of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in LNG terminals).

‘As a consequence of the application of good energy recovery practices, process heaters/furnaces may have an associated steam/electricity generation system.
This is considered to be an integral design feature of the process heater/furnace
that cannot be considered in isolation.’

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