| OCR Text |
Show • After initial system shakedown involving both Alzeta and APCI, the plant will be operated for approximately 6 months by the current plant operator. • At the completion of the field test, ARCS performance will be evaluated by Alzeta and APCI personnel and compared to the performance of existing reformer heaters. SUMMARY An advanced combustion system, the ARCS, has been described that uses porous surface radiant burners and an integrated control system to improve the performance of existing pe~rochemical process heaters. In addition to uniform and controllable flux to the process tubes and low NOx emissions, the system will allow burner flux to be locally tailored to load requirements to improve process throughput, and will optimize burner stoichiometry through the use of an optical control system. Radiant section furnace modeling specific to the steam reforming application was performed to determine the required fired duties of an array of radiant burners. Required burner fired duties were determined to be consistent with test conditions used in the Phase I program. Phase I tests were conducted in the Alzeta PPH test facility at simulated reformer conditions. Test results indicate that the radiant burner can be operated at nominal operating conditions of 100 MBtu/hr-ft2 fired duty and 15 to 20 percent excess air at high load temperature conditions. Over the past. 12 months a burner development program has been conducted to improve the high temperature durability of porous surface burners. The ceramic fiber burner has been improved through the use of a surface coating that slows the degradation of the burner surface. This burner improvement is now being field tested in a lower temperature process heating application. An existing hydrogen reformer has been identified to serve as the field test unit for the ARCS concept. The reformer is a VC unit with a nominal fired duty in the range of 10 to 20 MMBtu/hr, and is owned and operated by Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Following retrofit modifications, plant operation is scheduled to begin in late 1993. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was performed for the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Industrial Technologies, under Contract Number DE-AC02-89CE40918. 17 |
