Exergy transfer analysis of an aluminum holding furnace

•A novel aluminum holding furnace is analyzed.•Exergy transfer analysis is applied to understand in depth the process.•A transient model for preheating and holding is developed and validated. This study presents the unsteady exergy transfer analysis of an aluminum holding furnace with new heating resistance scheme. This holding system consists of four multilayer refractory walls and one resistance heating system which is responsible of maintaining the appropriate aluminum temperature and composition for further casting. The purpose of this analysis is to understand and identify heat losses and irreversibilities of the holding process of an aluminum furnace by means of the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics. In this study, bi-dimensional temperature and exergy fields during heat and exergy transfer processes are presented. The exergy balance is completely computed for this system, obtaining: exergy transfer, exergy variation rate, and destroyed exergy rate.