Training Program Hits All The Right (Hot) Spots

This year marked the 33rd edition of Nutec Bickley’s popular HOTSPOT Combustion Seminar, considered by many thermal equipment users as a vital component in the training of their staff, as well as being an important reference point for getting updated on all the latest regulations.

“We were pleased to gather a group numbering around 85, in Monterrey, Mexico,” commented Alberto Cantú, Vice President of the Combustion, Control and Services business unit. “It’s always a great atmosphere and a dynamic three days with plenty to cover. People often see combustion as a complicated topic and because of this avoid trying to understand it. It is nice to see that once they understand the basic principles everything falls together in place.”

Over the years, Nutec Bickley has refined the entire seminar – including the tour of the company’s manufacturing facilities – and has built a reputation for the effective education and training of engineers, technicians and personnel responsible for the operation, maintenance, installation and design of furnaces and combustion systems.

The company lined up speakers with decades of experience not only in industrial furnace manufacture but also all kinds of combustion projects, undertaken for numerous companies throughout the world.

With this level of expertise, the seminar leaders are able not only to pass on a deeper knowledge of all the issues involved in optimizing combustion processes but are also eager to demonstrate how relatively simple some of the best practice procedures actually are. These things all affect the bottom line as well, of course. “In all heating applications, fuel is one of the things that can easily be wasted. This can be the result of either poor maintenance or failure to make the correct burner adjustments,” says Alberto. “Fixing it is normally neither expensive nor complicated. Based on this, I think a fuller understanding of furnace fuel consumption is something that will always be of interest to those in the casting industry.”

All the most relevant combustion topics are covered in this annual seminar. During the first two days of the event – which this year was held at the Camino Real Hotel in San Pedro Garza García, there was a comprehensive program of workshops and talks, with question and answer sections carried at the end of each session. On the third day, a tour of the Monterrey facilities was provided to look more closely at combustion systems, laboratory furnaces/ovens, and gas train station/testing.

Delegates were also able to appreciate how advanced techniques have come into play in terms of new, improved combustion systems. One such is the full exploitation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. “CFD is a powerful tool to simulate ‘what if’ scenarios,” explains Alberto. “New product and process design would greatly benefit from this tool. Processes that were once defined based on heuristics can now have a more sound foundation based on engineering and physics.” As with all such tools, including the whole suite of possibilities open up by Industry 4.0, Nutec Bickley has fully embraced CFD simulation.

The final word on the HOTSPOT Combustion Seminar is its emphasis on the fact that in any situation, attention to safety is imperative. Throughout the seminar days there is a sustained emphasis on the safety aspect. In particular, Nutec Bickley addresses many parts of the NFPA 86 safety standard as it applies to industrial furnaces.

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