New TCF® Dual-Chamber Melting Furnace

New TCF® Dual-Chamber Melting Furnace for Aluminum Scrap Recycling Replaces Two Old Plants at E-MAX Billets, Kerkrade, NL

Tenova LOI Thermprocess,one of the leading companies in supplying industrial furnace systems for the heat treatment of metals, has successfully completed the production optimization of a new Twin-Chamber Melting Furnace TCF® at E-Max Billets in Kerkrade, The Netherlands. The furnace achieved the agreed performance parameters and is now the sole melting unit for higher contaminated scrap at the plant.

Tenova LOI Thermprocess was awarded a contract for the engineering, supply, erection and commissioning of another Twin-Chamber Melting Furnace TCF® (TFC) and a Melting and Casting Furnace (MCF) for the production upgrade and modernization of the customer’s plant. 

The previously operating two-chamber melting furnaces, which were supplied and installed also by Tenova LOI Thermprocess in 1990, were successively removed from current production and are now being demolished after 32 years of operation and 1,500,000 t of molten aluminum.

The new TCF® achieves a daily output of 150 t of liquid aluminium, reduces metal loss, and specific natural gas consumption per ton of molten aluminum by more than 20 percent. 

Moreover, compared with former installations, the efficiency of the modern TCF® technology allows for the treatment of higher contaminated scraps. 

The remaining scope of work of the contract, the tiltable MCF, will also be operating starting in spring 2023. As a new technology, this MCF can melt scraps with light contaminations of organics in a single furnace chamber. Special processing ensures less metal loss and safe integrated post-combustion, thereby reducing overall emissions, granting a sustainable and economic production of liquid aluminum.