Development of Laboratory-Scale Salt Bath Furnace

Abstract

A salt bath furnace was developed using electrical heating as source of heat which can be used in tertiary institution laboratories as well as by small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).The salt bath was designed and manufactured virtually using CAD/CAM procedures, after which the production and assembling was carried out. A Material selector software aided in the materials selection, where mild steel was selected as the material for the casing, while other materials for the construction were selected based on functions and properties of the materials, cost considerations and ease of fabrication into component parts. The performance of the furnace was evaluated and, it was observed that the salt bath furnace has relatively fast heating rate of 16.67⁰C/min when compared to conventional brands of salt bath and muffle furnaces that are available in the market. The furnace also has good heat retaining capacity and uniform heating rate.

Keywords: Salt bath furnace, Heating Rate, CAD/CAM, Small and Medium scale enterprises (SMEs)