Industrial furnaces in the industrial production, the use of fuel combustion or conversion of heat energy, heating the material or workpiece thermal equipment. Broadly speaking, the boiler is also an industrial furnace, but it is not customary to include it within the scope of industrial furnaces.

The main components of industrial furnaces are: masonry industrial furnace, industrial furnace exhaust systems, industrial furnace preheater and industrial furnace combustion devices. Machinery industrial applications There are various types of industrial furnaces in the foundry workshop, smelting metal cupola, induction furnace, resistance furnace, electric arc furnace, vacuum furnace, open-hearth, a crucible furnace; the baking sand of sand drying furnace, ferroalloy Ovens and casting annealing furnace; after forging workshop, on the steel ingot or billet before forging various heating furnace, forging and stress relief heat treatment furnace; in metal heat treatment plant, to improve the mechanical properties of the workpiece various annealing , normalizing, quenching and tempering heat treatment furnace; in the welding workshop, weldments and welding preheat furnace back to the stove; sintered metal workshop in powder metallurgy furnace and so on.

Industrial furnaces are also widely used in other industries, such as metal smelting furnace metallurgical industry ore sintering furnace and coke oven; cracking furnace retort furnace and oil industry; producer gas industry; Portland cement kilns and industrial glass melting, lehr; food industry baking furnace.

Creation and development of industrial furnaces for human progress plays a very important role. China appeared in the Shang Dynasty more perfect copper furnace, furnace temperature reached 1200 ℃, the furnace inner diameter of 0.8 meters. In the Spring and Autumn Period, people melting copper furnace on the basis of further improve temperature mastered the technology to produce a cast iron.

In 1794, there has been melting cast iron straight world shaped cupola. After 1864, the British use the French Martin Siemens regenerative furnace principle, the construction of a fuel gas heated first open-hearth steelmaking. He used the regenerator for high-temperature air and gas preheating, thus ensuring the steel required above 1600 ℃ temperature. 1900, adequate power supply gradually began to use a variety of resistance furnace, electric arc furnaces and induction furnaces.

1950s, coreless induction furnace have developed rapidly. Later appeared electron beam furnace, using an electron beam to the impact of solid fuel, can strengthen the surface heating and melting refractory materials.

For forging heating furnace was first hand forge, whose work space is a concave groove, tank fill coal, combustion air is fed from the bottom of the groove, buried in the work in the coal heating. Low thermal efficiency of the oven, heating quality is not good, and only small parts of the heating, after the development of refractory bricks with a closed or semi-closed furnace chamber furnace can be coal, gas or oil as fuel can also be used as power source, the workpiece is heated on the hearth.

To facilitate the heating of large workpieces, it appeared suitable for heating large ingot and billet furnace trolley, in order to heat the elongated rod member also appeared pit furnace. Then in the 1920s there has been possible to improve furnace productivity and improve working conditions for all kinds of mechanization and automation furnace.

Industrial furnace fuels with the progress of technology development and fuel switching fuel resources, but by the use of lump coal, coke, coal and other solid fuels gradually switching to generator gas, city gas, natural gas, diesel, fuel oil and gas liquid fuel, and developed a variety of combustion devices and fuel used to adapt.