A new approach for estimation of total heat exchange factor in reheating furnace by solving an inverse heat conduction problem

•A new approach is presented for estimation of total heat exchange factor in reheating furnace.•The new approach enables to be high efficiency, good accuracy and robustness.•The real plant measurement data by thermocouples are used to identify the total heat exchange factor.•The simulation results show the effectiveness on overcoming oscillation manner by the proposed approach.