Design and Simulation of Pottery Kiln

Pottery industry is one of the small-scale industries in India. Most rural potters depend upontraditional pottery kilns for burning process by firewood or coconut husk. In order to producehigh quality pottery products better burning process is needed. The purpose of the project isto thermal analysis of burning process in a traditional furnace in order to achieve uniformtemperature inside the kiln and decrease the fuel consumption through better distribution of input heat. The traditional kilns are bonfire kilns, which involve open firing inshallow pit. These kilns suffer higher fuel consumption, poor ware strength andextensive breakage. Smokes produced during firing will serious health problems topottery workers and their family. There is lack of thermal studies on bonfire kilns. Accounting the demerits of traditional one is led to development of downdraught kiln. The thermal studies in performance of downdraught kiln by varying different parameters practically expensive and almost impossible. For this reason, the downdraught kiln is modeled and simulated on the computer by using the numerical method. By changing different parameter of the kiln like change in firewall height, Chimney height and roof geometry in simulation, substantial improvement in the performance of the kiln was detected. This modification is suggesting for the new design of improved pottery kiln.