Dossier No. 01

The furnace that had no drawings

A gas-turbine repair line needed vacuum heat treatment. Buying the furnace was out of reach — so we made the drawings, then the furnace.

Role: Project lead: concept, simulation, design, build supervision, commissioning
Setting: Datis Co., gas-turbine repair and maintenance, Iran
Period: 2018–2020
Fields: Thermal engineering · simulation · industrial design · commissioning

Problem

The company was establishing an in-house repair line for gas-turbine hot-section components, and the line needed vacuum heat treatment. A purchased furnace was prohibitively expensive, and the only input that existed was the operational requirement itself: component sizes, materials, thermal cycles. No drawings. No specification. No reference unit to measure. Around it all, an environment of unreliable grid power and high summer temperatures.

Journey — model

With no existing design to start from, I worked simulation-first — modelling the concept and benchmarking it against published academic work, because there was no physical furnace to reference. I designed the supporting systems to run reliably in the site's difficult conditions.

The vacuum heat-treatment furnace as built: an orange cylindrical vessel with a domed lid on a white steel platform with guardrails, inside a brick-walled workshop. — Matter — the furnace as built: vacuum vessel and cooling plant on its platform. Model — the same machine before it existed: thermal simulation of the furnace.

Thermal simulation of the same furnace: two cross-section temperature-contour views of the vessel, red-hot chamber core shading to cool blue at the shell. — Matter — the furnace as built: vacuum vessel and cooling plant on its platform. Model — the same machine before it existed: thermal simulation of the furnace.

Journey — commissioning

Commissioning threw up problems that took practical redesign and hard engineering judgement to settle before the furnace ran stably and repeatably. Where equipment behaved differently from its specification, I adapted the system rather than wait — and learned the control-system programming the project needed along the way.

The furnace installation in its workshop hall: a large yellow furnace body on an elevated platform, connected by grey ducting to auxiliary vessels, under a steel roof. — Fig. 2 — The installation in its hall: furnace, ducting and auxiliary plant.

Outcome

The furnace was built, commissioned and integrated into the intended repair workflow, and the in-house build avoided a major capital purchase. It ran as designed: vacuum heat treatment for turbine hot-section components.

Reflection

This project set the pattern I still work to: model before metal, and correlate after. The simulation gave us the confidence to build without a reference; the commissioning problems reminded us that judgement finishes what analysis starts.