American flame research committee (AFRC) international combustion symposium

Burner retrofits in industrial boilers are an economical solution to achieving lower NOx levels with existing fired equipment. However, designing a next generation ultra-low NOx burner footprint that fits into an existing burner cutout continues to be an industry challenge in many applications. Building a burner with a flame pattern or profile that can operate properly within the existing space and back wall firing length limitations while still achieving significant NOx reductions has also proven to be a difficult task. Zeeco has developed a patented next generation ultra-low NOx free-jet burner technology with a compact mechanical footprint. The GLSF Free-Jet Burner produces a flame profile with very limited flame-to-flame interaction for multiple boiler burner installations, while also achieving shorter flame lengths. One of the other primary concerns for the end user operating company is the overall cost of ownership for next generation ultra-low NOx burners. They can have higher maintenance costs versus conventional emission boiler burners. Zeeco provides the lowest maintenance design on the market for similar NOx emissions results. We will review these design details, specific retrofit installation details and lessons learned during a retrofit of existing boiler burners at Valero's Corpus Christi Refinery in this paper, including tramp air impact, and field emission test results for several of the retrofit applications.