In this study, numerical modeling on the gas flow and off-gases in the low temperature carbonization furnace for carbon fiber was analyzed. The furnace was designed for testing carbonization process of carbon fibers made from various precursors. Nitrogen gas was used as a working gas and it was treated as an incompressible ideal gas. Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics for steady state turbulent flow was used to analyze flow pattern and temperature field in the furnace. The off-gas mass fraction and cumulative emission gas of species were incorporated into the CFD analyses by using the user defined function(UDF). As a results, during the carbonization process, the emission of CO2 was the dominant among the off-gases, and tow moving made the flow in the furnace be uniform.

In this study, gas flow pattern and temperature distribution in a laboratory scale low temperature furnace for carbonization were numerically analyzed. The furnace was designed for testing carbonization process of carbon fibers made from polyimide(PI) precursor. Nitrogen gas was used as a working gas and it was treated as an ideal gas. Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics analysis for steady state turbulent flow was used to analyze flow pattern and temperature field in the furnace. The results showed that more uniform velocity profile and axisymmetric temperature distribution could be obtained by varying mass flow rate at the inlets.