Carbon based atmospheres under changing utility supply conditions

Carbon based protective and reactive atmospheres are still in use in a large number of captive and commercial heat treatment shops in continuous as well as batch type furnace lines. They are preferred mainly because they can be very well adopted to the applied processes and needs of the materials to be heat treated. Over the past few years, supply conditions of the needed substances (i.e. natural gas, propane) have changed in composition with frequently occurring variations with resulting process disturbances, which this paper is intending to address.