Experimental Study of an Enhanced Infra-Red Metal Fiber Burner

A natural gas/air premixed metal fiber burner has been developed and studied experimentally. This work is directly related to designing an enhanced infra-red thermal radiant burner with high radiant heat flux, low NOx and CO emissions, and which will overcome the difficulties encountered by the porous ceramic infra-red burner. Since the burner is of metallic construction, it offers greater durability than the existing ceramic fiber burner, while at the same time offering the good thermal characteristics of the ceramic infra-red burner, i.e., uniform surface temperature, intensive radiation emissivity, and high cool-down/heat-up rate, etc. In addition, the burner provided a stable radiation output over a wide range of firing rates. A radiant efficiency of as much as 55% has been achieved. The major emission pollutants, NOx and CO, are below 20 ppm at a wide range of the desired operating conditions. All of these results predict a technique breakthrough in gas firing technology. The burner will be on the market shortly.