Combustion Application Experience with Highly Vitiated Air Burners

Paper from the AFRC 2013 conference titled Combustion Application Experience with Highly Vitiated Air Burners by David Schalles.

For those experienced in the art of industrial combustion, the concept of Flameless Combustion has forced us to revise our thinking about burners and furnaces. The primary benefits of minimized emissions and improved temperature uniformity are highly desirable. However, the combustion engineer must place a greater emphasis on the interactions of fluid flow, heating chamber geometry and product/load placement. Various techniques for achieving ‘highly vitiated' comburent streams which lead toward the ‘Flameless Combustion' operating regime have been developed. This paper will be limited to the general method of in-furnace self-induced recirculation of combustion products into the oxidizer and fuel streams. Several case-study industrial metals heating applications will be discussed to illustrate the importance of understanding and addressing the burner/furnace interactions.