Fuel Oil Burner Development for High Temperature Melting Applications

Liquid fuel or fuel oil burner development has acquired renewed interest due to the worldwide acceptance of oxy-fuel firing and specifically oxygen-fuel oil combustion for improving fuel efficiency, productivity and meeting stringent environmental regulations for glass, steel and other high temperature industries. This paper addresses two major issues concerning liquid fuel burners: the appropriateness of atomizer design to obtain required flame characteristics and novel means to verify that the required atomization quality is maintained. The first issue while providing a fuel oil burner for a particular heating application is to match the atomizer design with the flame characteristics required by the process. In the first part of the paper, one demonstrates how Air Liquide R&D answers ambitious industrial expectations (flat flame, low NOx, low pressure 02 atomization, etc.) with appropriate atomizers development. The second issue while providing a fuel oil burner for a particular application is to monitor that good atomization quality (therefore, the required flame characteristics) is maintained. While using heavy fuel oils (#6 or bunker-c) or using alternative fuels (waste oils, refinery wastes, sewage sludge), periodic maintenance on the fuel oil burner is necessary due to carbon build-up in the nozzle or plugging due to process particulate matter. Here a simple approach is presented to monitor the atomization quality. This is particularly important while melting "value added" products such as TV glass, fiberglass, specialty glass, specialty steel and other nonferrous products. The feasibility of this concept is demonstrated on a 2 MW pilot furnace fired with a ALCLASS FC™ burner, the furnace being located at Air Liquide, CRCD, France.