Discover expert tips, tricks, and resources for sustainable heat treating methods Heat Treat Today’s recent series. Part 3, today’s tips, covers some combustion content. We’ve added further resources towards the end of today’s post to further enrich your combustion knowledge.
This Technical Tuesday article is compiled from tips in Heat Treat Today’s May Focus on Sustainable Heat Treat Technologies print edition. If you have any tips of your own about combustion, our editors would be interested in sharing them online at www.heattreattoday.com. Email Bethany Leone at bethany@heattreattoday.com with your own ideas!
1. Combustion Efficiency: Do You THINK or Do You KNOW?
Minimize emission with data
Source: PSNERGY
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Installing retrofittable monitoring equipment provides real time and historical combustion data.
Combustion is a chemical reaction. With the right mix of fuel and air, emissions are minimized while heat output is maximized.
The question is: “Do you think it is right or do you know it is right?” With today’s technology, knowing combustion is running efficiently by maintaining proper ratios at each burner is not only possible, it is necessary.
Minimize emissions, improve quality, and maximize heat output per BTU with data!
Source: Taylor Smith, Specialist of Technical Sales and Marketing, PSNERGY
#combustion #emissions #energy #efficiency
2. NOx and High Efficiency Burners
Nitrogen oxides, or NOx emissions, are generated in high temperature combustion systems. Nitrogen and oxygen are present in combustion air and react in the high-temperature region of the flame to produce various oxides of nitrogen. NOx is a generic term combining NO (nitric oxide) and NO2 (nitrogen dioxide).
Modern high-efficiency burners with a high pre-heat of combustion air through known means of recuperative or regenerative systems increase the temperature of the oxygen and nitrogen within the combustion air and the potential for high NOx levels. Therefore, NOx reduction methods become even more important with high pre-heat burners.
Typical reduction methods of NOx in high efficiency burner systems include:
- Recirculation of combustion products or flue gases is very effective to reduce temperature peaks and therefore reduce nitric oxide
formation. - Lowering the temperature of the flame by air staging at the point of combustion.
- Flameless oxidation (Flox) reduces NOx using the previously mentioned principles by lowering the peak flame temperature. Flameless oxidation works by injecting gas and preheated air directly into the system, and above the autoignition temperature.
- Oxygen combustion can theoretically reduce NOx formation by taking away nitrogen in the combustion process. In this case, pure oxygen is introduced instead of combustion air, but this application is typically limited by process and costs associated in producing pure oxygen.
Source: WS Thermal
#NOx #combustion #Flox
3. Burner Tuning & Calibration — It’s Not Your BBQ Grill!
Burner tuning and calibration
Source: WS Thermal
Burner adjustment to nominal gas and air ratios is a typical component of your combustion equipment maintenance. However, this process cannot be minimized in importance as any adjustment can affect operation, efficiency, exhaust emissions, and equipment life. Factors to consider and address during any burner adjustment include:
- Burner adjustment should always be done (when possible) at normal furnace operating temperature under typical production to maintain best conditions for final calibration
- Provide clean combustion air: maintain blower filter and consider source of any plant air
- An increase of gas may not increase power to system due to heat transfer or throughput issues
- A decrease in combustion air will not create a hotter flame or add power to the system as this may only create a gas-rich operation resulting in reduced power and CO in exhaust
- Verify gas and combustion supply pressures and consider creating a monthly log of incoming pressures
- While a visual inspection of flame can help to verify operation or proper combustion, burner gas/air adjustment cannot accurately be performed by simply looking at color or size of flame
- A working understanding of the burner system is important to determine and verify values to gas/air and excess O2 to specific application
Source: WS Thermal
#burnertuning #cleancombustion
4. Additional Combustion Resources
Keeping with the combustion theme, here are a few more articles to keep heat up your knowledge base:
- “Energy Efficiency Through Combustion Monitoring“
- “Heat Treat Radio #81 (Special Video Edition): Heat Treat Tomorrow – Hydrogen Combustion for Heat Treating: Reality or Smoke“
- “What Have You Learned from the Combustion Corner?” Part 1 and Part 2
