Extending the life of water-cooled copper cooling fingers for furnace refractories

To extend the service life of refractory linings in high-temperature furnaces, it is becoming common to embed copper cooling devices in the lining. These devices extract enough heat from the hearth of the furnace to freeze a protective thin layer of slag onto the surface of the lining. However, the cooling devices may lose their efficiency over time. It is believed that high-temperature oxidation of copper is responsible for the loss in heat-extraction capacity. To test coolers under severe conditions, immersion tests were carried out in molten matte and slag of laboratory-scale cooling elements protected by various means. A composite cooler was developed that consists of a copper core shielded by a Cu-4 wt. % Al alloy sheet. Although the rate of heat extraction is not as high as that of the un-alloyed copper, this cooler still extracts heat at a very high rate.