Industrial Burners and Safety Systems - Part One

Fireye Burner Safety Systems

Burners are simple devices that convert fossil fuels into heat energy. In order to achieve safe and reliable operation, each burner must be equipped with a monitoring and control system. The complexity of a safe and reliable system is relative to the complexity of the process at hand. This system can be as simple as a single burner using a single fuel, to a complex multi-burner environment where many burners fire into a common combustion chamber where multiple fuels are burned simultaneously. Conditions affecting the complexity of control systems is not necessarily dependent upon large burner input, but IS dependent upon the following conditions:

• Type of process. 
• Type of burner. 
• Multi- or single burner environment. 
• Multi or single fuel operation. 
• Safety hazard of fuel burner. 
• Local codes and standards. 
• Redundancy and reliability factors. 
• Continuous or intermittent burner operation. 

Recent technological advances require knowledge of applications and systems and should be applied only by qualified technicians. Standards are set by local authorities and must be understood and properly operated in order to assure that safety requirements are met.

Burners

The primary functions of burner systems are as follows:

• Controlled fuel delivery. 
• Controlled combustion-air delivery. 
• Controlled fuel and air mixing. 
• Controlled and reliable ignition. 
• Evacuation of combustion products. 
• Controlled emissions. 

Regardless of fuels fired, the burner system must reliably perform all functions listed above. Choice of fuels burned and type of burner affects the ease of achieving optimal results.

Gaseous Fuel Fired

• Natural draft burners.
• Balanced draft burners. 
• Induced draft burners. 
• Forced draft burners.

Liquid fuel fired: (forced or balanced draft)

• Mechanically atomized.
• Air atomized.
• Steam atomized.

Solid Fuel Fired

• Grate Burners.
• Fluidized bed burners.
• Powdered coal burners.

Final fuel delivery and combustion-air and fuel mixing varies, depending on the burner types listed below:

• Gun type.
• Cane (spud) type.
• Ring type.
• Rotary cup type.
• Bucket (coal).

To be continued in Part Two.

This blog post is excerpted from the paper titled "Flame Safeguard Controls in Multi-Burner Environments" by Willy Vandermeer and courtesy of Fireye. The entire document may be downloaded here.