The Many Faces Of The Laboratory Furnace

The laboratory furnace industry and the industries that it caters for are some of the largest in the world. They deal with important research and development in fields such as medicine, plastics and fuel. The supply of equipment to companies involved in these areas must, therefore, be carried out with one eye on quality and reliability and another eye on safety.

Laboratory furnaces play a major part in the success of large companies involved in the electronics industry, car and aircraft production and many other high tech sectors. With laboratory furnaces being used in such a wide variety of areas it's no wonder then that they can be broken down into several different types.

Tube furnaces - A tube furnace is the heating device used for carrying out the process of conducting syntheses or purifications of compounds made up of inorganic material. It's also used in organic synthesis. This type of laboratory furnace usual conforms to a specific design. The design is made up of heating coils surrounding a cylindrical cavity. The heating coils are positioned in a thermally insulating matrix.

Typically the length of the cylindrical cavity is between 40 and 60cm with a diameter of 8cm. A thermocouple relays information about the temperature which is controlled based on that information. The temperature controllers are usually designed so that whoever is operating the furnace has control of the rate at which the device is heated and is cooled.

Basic tube furnaces have just one heating zone and this is the most common. More complicated or sophisticated laboratory furnaces of this type have two heating zones. Laboratory furnaces of this type have more uses than single heating zone furnaces and are used for transport experiments or the crystallization and purification of non-volatile solids.

Chamber furnaces - A chamber furnace is perhaps the most recognizable as a furnace to the man in the street as it resembles a stand alone oven. It has a chamber, or space, where material can be placed rather like a conventional oven. Of course it differs greatly from a conventional oven due to the high temperatures that it can produce.

Often the chamber in this type of laboratory furnace is lined with stainless steel. This is to ensure that awkward of large loads can be treated without risking damage to the equipment. Also similar to a conventional oven the heat in the chamber is circulated by a fan. This heating circulation provides uniformity in any experiments of operations that are being conducted. Without this continuous movement of super heated air the results on a work piece would become less predictable and harder to manage.

The heat source is provided via a mineral insulated sheathed element. This element is completely isolated from the stainless steel lining. This type of laboratory furnace is particularly useful for applications such as tempering, annealing, stress relieving and thermal ageing.

Ashing furnaces - An ashing furnace requires good, constant airflow through the chamber to achieve its objective of complete combustion. This type of laboratory is designed with airflow specifically in mind and typically a series of inlets are used to draw in air to the chamber. An ashing furnace also has a chimney built into the design to help with the uniformity of the airflow. This type of laboratory furnace is used in the agriculture and food sectors, the plastics industry and in the testing of materials for the petrochemical, cosmetics and rubber industries.

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