Low NOx Burner for Thermally Enhanced Oil Recovery

Crude oil pumped from California's Central Valley must be heated to reduce its viscosity. The most common production method is thermally enhanced oil recovery (TEOR). In TEOR operations, natural gas-fired steamers force high-pressure steam into production reservoirs where it heats the crude making it easier to pump. By 1996 all steamers must be retrofit with 10w-NOx burners to achieve less than 30 ppm NOx. Alzeta has developed and demonstrated a 10w-NOx burner for oilfield steamers. The burner is a semiradiant, premixed, natural gas-fired burner which uses a patented technique to form radiant and blue flame zones on a porous metal mat. This technique provides heat fluxes that are ten times greater than traditional porous radiant burners. The burner can also destroy large quantities of low-Btu gases containing hydrogen sulfide.