The two-chamber reverberatory furnaceis a specialized equipment for smelting recycled aluminum alloys. Due to its advantages of low energy consumption, low burn-off rate and high metal recovery rate, it has been widely adopted in Europe and America for a long time. However, due to the technical barriers among countries, China only introduced it from abroad at the beginning of this century.

A double-chamber reverberatory furnace is a smelting furnace composed of two smelting chambers, generally referred to as the inner smelting chamber and the outer smelting chamber. There is a specially designed channel between the two chambers for the circulation of molten aluminum. The outer smelting chamber of the double-chamber reverberatory furnace mainly serves to melt scrap aluminum, while the inner smelting chamber is used for smelting. In actual operation, scrap aluminum is directly added to the molten aluminum in the outer smelting chamber and quickly submerged by the superheated molten aluminum. Since the scrap aluminum avoids direct contact with the flame, the burn loss of the scrap aluminum is very low, which can significantly increase the recovery rate of aluminum. The volume of the inner smelting chamber is larger than that of the outer smelting chamber, and its main function is to heat the molten aluminum.

The double-chamber reverberatory furnace combines the advantages of crucible melting furnaces and reverberatory furnaces. The scrap aluminum does not come into contact with the flame, resulting in low burn-off. Meanwhile, it has a large volume and high thermal efficiency. During the melting process, a large amount of aluminum dross is produced in the outer melting chamber. Due to the small volume and surface area of the outer melting chamber, it is convenient to remove the aluminum dross, reducing the operational intensity of the workers. Based on production practice, the consumption of additives in the double-chamber reverberatory furnace is only half to one-third of that in other reverberatory furnaces. The recovery rate can be increased by 2 to 5 percentage points, and energy consumption can be significantly reduced. Its advantages are more prominent when processing scattered scrap aluminum and aluminum shavings. Between the inner and outer melting chambers, ceramic circulation pumps or graphite circulation pumps are generally used. More advanced models use electromagnetic circulation pumps.
To further enhance the continuity of operations, enterprises with strong capabilities often build two holding furnaces in addition to the two-chamber furnace. The two-chamber reverberatory furnace only serves the purpose of smelting and adjusting the composition, while most of the refining processes take place in the holding furnaces. The two-chamber furnace has many advantages, but it still requires further research and optimization.