Development and Demonstration of a Fuel-Flexible Burner for Fired Heaters

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Title Development and Demonstration of a Fuel-Flexible Burner for Fired Heaters
Creator Jamaluddin, J.
Contributor Benson, C.; Pellizzari, R.; Marty, S.; Young, T.; Isaacs, R.; Renk, J.
Date 2014-09-10
Spatial Coverage Houston, Texas
Subject 2014 AFRC Industrial Combustion Symposium
Description Paper from the AFRC 2014 conference titled Development and Demonstration of a Fuel-Flexible Burner for Fired Heaters by J. Jamaluddin.
Abstract The US Department of Energy and the project team members are co-funding the development of a fuel-flexible combustion system for refineries and chemical plants. This technology will enable operation of fired heaters on fuels ranging from conventional gases to bio-gases and synthetic gases. The burner's unique flame stabilization mechanism will allow operations to continue safely if and when the heating value of the fuel goes through wide and rapid swings. A previous presentation (1) reported that the fuel-flexible burner was initially developed by modifying Zeeco's Freejet-style, ultra-low-NOx burner. Since then, a new tile (hereafter referred to as the "Trapped Vortex", or TV, tile) has been developed based on Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling. Testing of this burner in a test furnace at Zeeco demonstrated superior performance, both in terms of fuel-flexibility and flame stability. This paper will present data on the performance of the fuel-flexible burner employing the TV tile, along with a demonstration of flame stability as the heating value of the fuel is rapidly switched from high to low and back to high. Fuel blends corresponding to natural gas, refinery fuel gas, and a variety of bio- and waste-gases were tested. The heating value (LHV) of the fuels ranged from about 1100 Btu/scf to 88 Btu/scf. To accommodate this broad range of fuel characteristics, the burner was equipped with multiple fuel manifolds. Late last year, a set of the fuel-flexible burners were installed in one of the fired heaters in a Shell manufacturing plant. These burners have one fuel manifold, and are meant to combust fuels with heating values in the range of 440 Btu/scf to 1100 Btu/scf. The burners are operating well. Based on extensive tests performed in both horizontally and vertically fired test furnaces at Zeeco Test Facility, we are confident that stable flames will be maintained even when the heating value fluctuates rapidly and unexpectedly. No commercially-available burner can respond to such changes as effectively; and as such, the fuel-flexible burner should find wide acceptance by the refining and chemical community once its effectiveness is demonstrated at the Shell operating site over the next few months.
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Format application/pdf
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ARK ark:/87278/s68m078p
Setname uu_afrc
ID 14419
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s68m078p
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