A tube furnace is an electric heating device used to conduct syntheses and purification of inorganic compounds and occasionally in organic synthesis.
Its design consists of a cylindrical cavity surrounded by heating coils that are embedded in a thermally insulating matrix, Temperature can be controlled by feedback from thermocouples.
Tube furnace two or more heating zones useful for transport experiments, It can be used for ramping, soaking, sintering and more options.
Tube furnace can be produced up to 1800°C, Common material for the reaction tubes include alumina, Pyrex, and fused quartz. If corrosive materials used, we could use molybdenum, and tungsten tubes can be used.
Why We need Tube Furnace:
Numerous thermal processing formats are available to researchers and manufacturers handling relatively small-volume samples or operations with low throughput. At these scales, benchtop laboratory ovens tend to excel – yet the geometry of the thermal processing chamber can be a limiting factor in certain application areas.R&D into the generation of fine ceramic filaments led to the very first cylindrical heating chambers in the early 20th Century, and the tube furnace has since become a common sight on factory floors and in materials laboratories worldwide.
Application of Tube Furnaces:
Tube furnaces are used for a broad range of thermal processes, including inorganic and organic purification; accelerated aging; annealing; coating; drying; and much more. As a result, they have proven integral in a broad range of heat treatment markets.
The primary reason to use a tube furnace is the unmatched thermal uniformity offered by cylindrical heaters. Components in a single-zone chamber are subjected to consistent heating values exceeding 1000°C (1832°F) across a full 360° axis, which ensures optimal distribution of heat across the full cross-section of the part. This makes tube furnaces ideal for sensitive thermal processing applications, such as thermocouple calibration.
Tube furnaces can also be integrated with multiple heating zones to elevate the processing capabilities of the instrument. This allows a fully controllable temperature gradient to finely-tune the heat-up and cool-down stages of thermal processing. It can also limit peak temperatures to specific areas of interest on a part – typically the central section, which leaves either end safe to handle with additional machinery. This is useful in a range of materials testing applications, enabling accurate characterizations of material mechanical properties at elevated temperatures.
