Abstract: Aluminum melting furnace is a kind of the equipment with the highest energy consumption and pollutant emissions in aluminum processing. Existing research on energy saving and consumption reduction in aluminum melting furnaces has primarily focused on combustion modes, operating parameters, insulation performance and control strategy optimization. However, there are few reports on the actual operational thermal efficiency as well as the flue gas pollutant emission concentration variation during the melting cycle. In view of this, field flue gas composition and heat balance tests were carried out on a 25 t regenerative aluminum smelting furnace, and the material balance and heat balance calculations were carried out to obtain the mass flow distribution, heat flow distribution and ton of aluminum natural gas consumption in a single smelting cycle of the aluminum smelting furnace. The NO emission characteristics were obtained by analyzing the change of NO concentration in flue gas at different heating stages. Thermal efficiency with the proportion of various heat losses have been discussed, additionally, the main factors affecting the operational economy of the aluminum melting furnace were identified, and some approaches for energy saving and emission reduction have been put forward. The results showed that: The thermal efficiency of the furnace is 62.48%, and the consumption of natural gas per ton of aluminum is 72.1 m³/t. The main heat loss of the system is the heat loss of furnace body and pipeline and the heat dissipation loss, accounting for 14.24% and 11.98% of the total output heat, respectively. The proportion of physical heat from ash and slag is small, but the burning loss and impurities will reduce the output quality of liquid aluminum. The energy consumption of aluminum smelting furnace can be reduced by shortening the melting time, reducing the amount of cooling air in non-ignition time and reducing the number of furnace door opening. During the aluminum melting cycle, the furnace temperature remains above 800 ℃ for approximately 90% of the total melting time, and the NO emission concentration is consistently above 600 mg/m³ for a long period. When the furnace temperature reaches a maximum of 1 050 ℃, the NO emission concentration correspondingly rises to its peak as high as 1 197.0 mg/m³, which severely exceeds existing emission standards. The NO emission can be reduced by optimizing burner structure, operating parameters and applying novel flameless combustion technology.