Laboratory Furnaces

Furnaces are unavoidable in many laboratory procedures

. The laboratory furnaces are intended for continuous high-temperature uses and therefore they are typically made from high temperature refractory materials. Different types of laboratory furnaces have different maximum temperature limits. Generally, these furnaces are equipped with over-temperature safety measures and a computer interface for programming and controlling furnace operations.

The laboratory furnaces come in a wide array of configurations including tube, muffle, ashing, top loading, and bottom loading. The usually used laboratory furnace atmospheres are reducing atmosphere (has very little oxygen) oxidizing atmosphere, salt bath, vacuum, and inert.

Tube furnaces: The tube furnaces are widely used in the laboratories for the nonstop heating of laboratory specimens. They are very convenient to use in a variety of laboratory activities, such as growing crystals, firing ceramics, calibration of thermocouple, transportation of chemical vapor, and doing radiation studies and superconductor researches. The tube furnaces are perfect for brazing, cleaning, annealing, sintering, melting, and temperature sensor testing. They can be powered either by gas or with the help of electricity.

The tube furnaces can be manufactured from a number of metals like Alumina, platinum, Quartz, and Zirconia. There are mainly two types of laboratory tube furnaces, split tube laboratory furnace and whole tube laboratory furnace. Custom-made laboratory tube furnaces are also available to suit different laboratory needs. A tube furnace usually consists of a work tube that is encircled by heating elements. The main advantage of tube furnaces is that they are highly prolific and at the same time do not require much maintenance.

Muffle furnaces: The laboratory muffle furnaces are useful to perform gravimetric analysis, various ignition tests and the determination of suspended and volatile solids. . They are helpful in many processes like incinerating organic and inorganic materials, extracting zinc, hardening metals, doing enamel work, cement testing, material testing, preparing red lead, drying, heat treating steel, and purifying metals like silver and gold. Both gas-powered and electric-powered muffle furnaces are available in the market.

Vacuum Furnaces: The vacuum furnaces are mainly used to heat metals in a vacuum atmosphere. They are also perfect for heat treating metals, purifying graphite, vacuum brazing, deposition of chemical vapor, and diffusion bonding by hot pressing. Generally, the vacuum furnace hot zones are cylindrical in shape and are mostly made from refractory materials.

The heating elements of most vacuum furnaces are made out of metal, graphite, or tantalum. The low-temperature vacuum furnaces usually contain heating elements made from the alloys of nickel and chromium. The vacuum furnaces that are used for high temperature operations may have graphite or molybdenum heating elements. Tantalum is considered as the best choice for manufacturing heating elements for the furnaces which are used for extreme temperature temperatures. The vacuum furnace insulation or heat shield packages are available in two types - all-metal heat-shield package and graphite-based heat-shield package. The all-metal shield package consists of molybdenum or tantalum layers supported by stainless steel sheets.

Laboratory Furnaces

By: Simon Hemmings

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