GF-ELTI Walking Hearth Furnaces are plants added to rolling lines.
They are continuous conveyor furnaces characterised by full hearth, with GF-ELTI Regenerative Burners placed on top of the charge.
These furnaces are intended to reheat the iron and steel semi-finished products at the correct process temperature (1,100 ÷ 1,250 °C), for the next rolling operation.
The plant is built according to the logic of modular prefabrication, which enables to quicken the on-site assembly stages of the plant.
The furnace consists of:
According to the layout of the works, the furnace can be equipped with a front or side load and unload system whereas the half-finished items in the furnace are fed at a distance from each other, according to the “pilgrim step” technique.
The walking beams are able to move up and lift the whole charge through position-controlled hydraulic or electro-mechanical servocontrols, move forward by a pre-established dimension (furnace step), move down, place the charge and move backward to go back to the initial position.
Thanks to the walking beam system, this type of plant can re-heat the on-the-way charge on three sides to obtain a better temperature uniformity, but requires important foundation works for the installation of handling kinematic mechanisms.
The furnace can be automatically emptied for maintenance purposes.
The types of treated products are typically: billets, blooms, slabs, round items, ingots or else.
