INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENERGY RESEARCH Int. J. Energy Res.

, 22, 209220 (1998)

A STUDY ON THE DESIGN OF RECUPERATIVE BURNER

BYUNG-SIK PARK*, DAE-HUN CHUNG, WON-BAE KIM AND YOO KIM
 Korea Institute of Energy Research, 71-2, Jang-Dong, Yusong-Ku, Taejon 305-343, South Korea  Chungnam National University, 220, Kung-Dong, Yusong-Ku, Taejon 305-764, South Korea

SUMMARY
Waste heat recovery from the exhaust gas of industrial furnaces and kilns that are high energy-consuming equipment is one of the eective energy conservation methods because of its high sensible heat contents. The recuperative burner integrated with a recuperator and burner is one of the combustion equipments with many advantages of simple installation, compactness and easy control which can be applied to various elds of industry. A recuperative burner with the capacity of 400 kW was designed using the design data from experimental results. Performance tests on this burner were made. The exhaust gas analysis, including NO , the measurement of the ame temperature, velocity, heat ux and V heat ux analysis on the recuperative burner were the main topics of hot combustion tests. Design data from the experimental results are gas velocity, air velocity, air velocity, the tip-location of gas nozzle, the dimension of furnace suitable to burner capacity, the dimension of recuperator and the role of cross-shaped steel plate for increasing the energy eciency in the recuperator. For uniform temperature distribution and good thermal eciency, it is appropriate to maintain the furnace pressure at 23 mm Aq. 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS recuperative burner; nozzle design; industrial furnace; heat exchanger

1. INTRODUCTION In general, the chamber temperature inside the industrial furnaces is maintained to be high, and in many cases over half of the total heat input disappears in the atmosphere as a sensible heat of ue gas. For this reason, the thermal eciency of the cumbustion furnaces is as low as 1040% and it is highly required to have countermeasures for energy conservation. Even though there are many methods for the energy savings of combustion furnaces such as improvement of combustion eciency, heat transfer facilities and the recovery of waste heat, the method of waste heat recovery is the most commonly applied countermeasure for any kind of furnace. However, the conventional heat recovery system constituent with burner and heat exchanger separately has many spatial and economical disadvantages which originates from the construction of air supply system and the necessity of insulation of hot air piping. To overcome these weak points the recuperative burner emerged as a compact combustion equipment which is assembled in one body with burner, heat exchanger and stack. This recuperative burner is easy to install. The recuperative burner was applied to the combustion furnaces of the industrial eld from the mid 1970s which is already developed in 1960s. Until present, the study on the recuperative burner has been carried out in Germany, England and Japan. Schmidt and Laiquiddin (1966) studied mainly the shape of heat transfer part of the recuperative burner and many Japanese studies had focused on the NO reduction, air preheat V temperature and recuperation rate, Tabata et al. (1983, 1985, 1986).

* Correspondence to: B.-S. Park, Korea Institute of Energy Research, 71-2, Jang-Dong, Yusong-Ku, Taejon 305-343, South Korea

CCC 0363907X/98/03020912$17.50 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 14 January 1997 Revised 16 April 1997

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As described above, the topics on the heat exchanger or recuperation rate of recuperative burner has been studied variously, but there seldom exist studies on the design of nozzle or nozzle performance. So in this study it is aimed to nd the appropriate design method on the nozzle and nozzle location in the burner tile for the design of a recuperative burner of 400 kW. Besides, the change in characteristics of velocity and temperature elds according to the variation of furnace pressure is studied. Some methods to enhance the eciency of the radiation-type heat exchanger in which supplementary heat transfer area such as a crossshaped steel plate and an exhaust gas distributor assembled to the recuperator has been investigated by both experiment and numerical analysis.

2. DESIGN OF BURNER NOZZLE AND EXPERIMENTAL METHOD Figure 1 is an assembly diagram of the burner used in the experiment. The part of gas nozzle was manufactured with heat-resistant steel alloy and the burner tile for ame stabilization was made with high-temperature castable and other parts including the main body are made with mild steel. The design of the gas-nozzle is emphasized in the aspects of gas/air mixing and stability. The nozzle consists of gas nozzle and ame stabilizer, which are one body and a gas ejection ring was attached to the nozzle body by the tting method of heat setting. The fuel gas is ejected out through the circumferential holes in the radial direction. The air ows in the axial direction and mixed with fuel gas by means of ow recirculation due to the ame stabilizer. In Figure 2 the size and mixing process is shown for the conceptually designed nozzle. Air bulk velocity of nozzle exit is designed to be 1520 m s\ at the preheated temperature of 300C and fuel gas velocity of nozzle holes to be 2025 m s\. In the case of recuperative burner, the axial momentum of the mixed gas should be large enough for the exhaust gas to reach the end wall. As a result, the full path of exhaust gas in the furnace can be longer length so as to achieve the higher convection heat transfer between the exhaust gas and furnace wall. Some portion of fuel gas ejected in the nozzle holes is premixed with air and makes a ame just after the nozzle exit and another portion of fuel gas ows with air far down the furnace as diusion ame type. The burner tile made with castable is designed to have exhaust gas path holes which are inclined 30 to the axial direction of the gas nozzle.

Figure 1. Schematic of recuperative burner

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Figure 2. Test gas nozzle

Figure 3. Experimental furnace

To test the performance of the designed recuperative burner, an experimental furnace of Figure 3 was designed and manufactured for various parameter studies. Fuel gas was town gas which was composed of LPG and air having lower heating value of 15 000 kcal (Nm)\. Temperature was measured with suction pyrometer of Land Combustion Co. Ltd, England and the velocity eld inside the furnace was measured with water-cooling ve-hole pitot tube. Among the contents of exhaust gas, oxygen and carbon monoxide was detected with a paramagnetic-type gas analyser of Servomex, England and NO was measured with the V chemiluminescent-type gas analyser of Thermotechnik, U.S.A.
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Table 1. Heat exchanger design data Combustion air Flow rate (kg h\) Exit temp (C) Pressure drop (mmAq) Flow rate (kg h\) Entrance temp (C) Pressure drop (mmAq) Heat ux (kcal h\) Fuel used 480 500 Below 300 528 850 Below 5 48000 City gas

Exhaust gas

3. HEAT EXCHANGER DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL METHOD The heat exchanger applied to the recuperative burner is based on the design specications of Table 1. The shape and size of the heat exchanger for the design specications is shown in Figure 1. Heat transfer area of the designed heat exchanger is 2)0 m for the air side and 1)8 m for the exhaust gas side. From the viewpoint of heat transfer supplementary heat transfer area of about 2)8 m for the air side has to be added and for the exhaust gas side the supplementary heat transfer area of about 0)7 m has to be added for the cross-shaped steel plate and a distribution for uniform exhaust. The pressure drop of air can be maintained under 300 mmH O for the case of 1)5 times the normal operation, by accurate design of air ow passages. In the  heat exchanger design of this type it is focused on the heat transfer area maximization through the supplementary heat transfer area along with the ow passage optimization to meet the limitation of air-side pressure drop. For the verication of the designed recuperative burner, the heating test to simulate the real industrial heating process, an experimental furnace which is made with 10 sectional parts and joined with anges is utilized to measure the heat ux for each zone. The owrate of cooling water is measured with oat-type owmeter outside the furnace in two ways, that is, some of which ows in and out the bottom wall and the other of which ows in and out the top and two side walls. T-type thermocouples were also installed in the inlet and outlet of the cooling water. Thus, the water-cooling furnace equipped with the above can be utilized as a calorimeter for heat transfer analysis.

4. PERFORMANCE TEST AND ANALYSIS The gas ejection velocity of the recuperative burner was determined as 2025 m s\. In case the combustion gas ows in the furnace chamber as the ejection velocity of some 80100 m s\ and an axial momentum can be reached in the favourable state for the combustion gas to reach the rear part of the furnace. If the gas ejection velocity becomes over 25 m s\, ame lift and instability can occur. And if the gas ejection velocity becomes low under 25 m s\, the axial momentum is also small and the combustion gas cannot reach the rear part, causing the unfavorable heat transfer. To understand the ame structure, combustion gas velocity and temperature in the furnace chamber were measured. Figure 4 shows the velocity and temperature distribution of the combustion gas. The measured maximum temperature was 1650C, which is located at x"120 mm in the direction of the furnace length. Combustion gas velocity was measured simultaneously at the three location of x"285, 700, 1115 mm and the maximum velocity of 5055 m s\ occurred at x"285 mm. Figure 5 shows the furnace chamber temperature in the axial direction. In the gure, the wall temperature is measured simultaneously at x"665, 1850, 3450 mm. The wall temperature shows evenly 11001300C in the relatively wide range up to x"2500 mm, which may be attributed to the high convection velocity. Especially in the rear part of the furnace there exists a stagnation zone of convection. This can be explained
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Figure 4. Temperature eld in furnace

Figure 5. Temperature variation with axial distance

from the fact that the furnace length is too long compared to the sectional area for the combustion gas to reach the rear region. The temperature of the rear stagnation region is maintained at 800900C, which may be result of solid wall radiation. The temperature dierence between the wall and the chamber space 50 mm apart from the wall shows almost the same 80C along the furnace length. In the result of temperature distribution, there exists fairly homogeneous temperature from the burner tile section to furnace length of 2500 mm, but after the length of 2500 mm the temperature descends slowly. So the appropriate furnace length with the sectional area of 800;800 mm is evaluated as 2500 mm for the designed recuperative burner of 400 kW. Figure 6 shows the comparison of temperature in the conventional and recuperative burners. The exit temperature of exhaust gas in the recuperative burner is kept almost 1000C and the temperature distribution near the wall is fairly homogeneous. But the conventional burner shows rapid temperature decrease in the stack direction and results to be 800900C. From this gure it is seen that the recuperative burner has
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Figure 6. Comparison of temperature eld between recuperative burner and conventional gas burner

more merit than the conventional burner in maintaining the furnace chamber temperature high and homogeneous. To distinguish the relation between the ame ejection diameter (d) (cf. Figure 1 R d"150 mm) and the distance (l) from burner (Figure 1 R wall to gas nozzle (Figure 1 Q is experimented on the ame characteristics of Figure 7 by changing the ratio of l/d. In the case of l/d"0)7, the combustion little in the burner tile and the reaction was not complete. In addition, the velocity distribution was not so good in symmetry and ame instability occurred. In the case of l/d'1, radial direction component of the jet ejected from nozzle collided with the burner tile wall and converted to the axial direction component. But in the case of l/d"1)3, the combustion is made to occur fully in the burner tile region and the ow-eld moves toward the burner entrance. As a result, the combustion proceeds fast, like in the case of premixed ame and the combustion gas after reaction cannot penetrate into the rear part of the furnace and the residence time of combustion gas in the furnace chamber becomes short and the phenomena of shot path is apt to occur, which is harmful for good thermal eciency. Thus, it is evaluated to be favorable that l/d is designed to be 1)0 in order to have both combustion in the burner tile region and diusion combustion after the burner tile exit. Figure 8 shows the ame characteristics when the furnace pressure is changed. In the negative furnace pressure, the ame temperature and velocity shows little decreasing tendency relative to the case of the positive furnace pressure. This means that the ow pattern is distributed by the air inow and the O in the  exhaust gas is increased. In this case, the temperature distribution is aected by the air inow and homogeneous heating of product can be injured. In the case of positive furnace pressure, the hot combustion gas goes out through the furnace wall holes or cracks and results in a great heat loss. Therefore it is appropriate that the furnace pressure is kept at 23 mmH O.  Figure 9 shows the NO increasing trend according to the increase of air preheat temperature and burner V capacity. Among the exhaust gases NO content reaches a favorable level of about 100 ppm (based on 11% V O ) at air preheat temperature of 500C. This is the reason why the combustion proceeds in the partly  premixed ame with high fuel/air mixing and the temperature distribution shows smooth tendency due to the burner tile eect and results to avoid the locally high-temperature region. Figure 10 shows the measured heat ux distribution. Inside the experimental furnace walls were installed with a 80 mm castable for the top and two side walls and 80 mm ceramic bre for the bottom wall. Outside the furnace wall 20 water-cooled jackets were installed in similar two ways like the above. As is seen in Figure 10(a), the heat ux distribution by the recuperative burner is relatively smooth in the begining of heating process, which means that the furnace is not heated enough to show stabilized heat transfer without any more thermal storage process in the furnace construction materials such as castable,
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Figure 7. The variations of temperature and velocity eld with furnace pressure

ceramic bre and steel. In Figure 10(a) it is noted that the heat ux to the bottom wall is higher than that to the upper walls. This is the reason why upper walls installed with castable has much more heat resistance than the bottom wall installed with ceramic bre. But Figures 10(b) and 10(c) show inverse phenomena compared with the case of Figure 10(a). This can be explained from the dierence of thermal diusivity
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Figure 8. The variations of temperature and velocity eld with l/d

Figure 9. NO variation with preheated air temperature V

between the two materials. If the heating time exceeds 1 h, the thermal storage for the low thermal conductivity material is thought to be almost complete to balance the heat transfer between each uid boundaries, i.e., the so-called steady-state condition is thought to be almost reached.
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Figure 10. Heat ux distributions according to the heating time

The phenomena is distinct with the time elapse and the heat ux dierence between the bottom zone and upper zones is made greatly. This dierence can be explained from the dierent material emissivities, dierent thermal diusivities and temperature dierences between exhaust gas and dierent furnace inner walls. With
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Figure 11. Heat ux distributions according to the heat input

the time elapsed, the zones near the right- and left-end sides of the furnace axial direction have more heat ux rather than the other zones. This phenomena may be dierent from the conventional furnace operation, especially at the right-side phenomena. The phenomena can be analyzed from the axial conduction in ux from the fully stored heat of bulky thermal storage material and the solid wall radiation eect.
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Figure 12. Temperature variation with time

Figure 13. The characteristics of pressure drop in heat exchanger

Figure 11 shows the result of dierent power operation of the same recuperative burner. In the gure the heat ux distribution shows the same trend and it can commonly be seen as high heat ux in the rear part of the furnace. This can be explained by the existence of end-wall eect, that is, from the end wall there emitted much solid radiation heat and there exists direct heat conduction from the much heat-stored end wall. As a whole, the heat-ux distribution can be regarded relatively homogeneous like a stirred reactor although the ratio of furnace length to width is quite long, compared to the ratio of conventional furnace length to width. Figure 12 shows the preheat temperature result according to the types of heat exchangers. The 3 cases show the eect by the distributor and/or cross-shaped steel plate. Case A shows the eect when the two supplementary equipment is used. Case B shows the eect for the cross-shaped steel plate only and case C, for the distributor only. The material is used as high heat resistant alloy. As is seen in the gure, the eect of cross-shaped steel plate is much more than that of distributor. Air-side pressure drop is presented in Figure 13. As the gure shows, the pressure drop across the total air ow passage in the heat exchanger is designed relatively small compared to the conventional commercial
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great exchangers. This is possible by adopting the simulation technique of ow-passage optimization. Curve (A) is the result of pressure drop when the furnace is operated with the peeping holes opened. And in the case most of the operating air can be leaked through the peeping holes, but curve (B) is obtained with the peeping holes tightly closed. For the case of (A) the pressure in the furnace chamber shows almost the same as the atmosphere pressure. But for the case of (B), the furnace pressure shows curve (C) in the gure. In detail, at an air ow rate of 516 Nm h\ the furnace pressure can be kept at 5 mmH O and the exhaust gas cannot be  extracted to the atmosphere by the natural draft system, but by the forced draft system like an eductor system. With the high ow rate, the phenomena becomes more severe, and at the ow rate of 1140 Nm h\ the furnace pressure reaches 28 mmH O. The operating range of the recuperative burner is 300500 Nm h\  based on the total exhaust pressure drop reaches only 1)55)0 mmH O. Thus, the recuperative burner can be  regarded to be designed enough to meet the pressure drop conditions.

5. CONCLUSION For the recuperative burner of 400 kW, it is recommended to design the gas ejection velocity to be 2025 m s\ in the radial direction and the air velocity to be 1520 m s\ in the axial direction. This is considered to be favourable for the ame to be maintained partly in the premixed type and mainly in the diusion type. The maximum air preheat temperature reaches 500C and NO content shows 100 ppm (based on 11% V O ) in this case. The furnace size adapted for the recuperative burner of 400 kW was evaluated as  800;800;2500 mm and the burner tile holes diameter for exhaust gas extraction should be appropriately determined for the exhaust gas velocity to be maintained as 80100 m s\. The gas nozzle should be located in the same distance as the ejection diameter just after the burner tile. The furnace pressure of 23 mmH O is appropriate in the point of homogeneous temperature distribution in the  furnace and thermal eciency. Heat exchange performance with the combustion air and the exhaust gas can be enhanced with the aid of the cross-shaped steel plate and distributor. In the design it is favorable for the sectional area of the recuperator to be determined as the same area of the total extraction holes area of the burner tile and the recuperator height can be selected as 35 times the diameter considering the heat exchange amount and installing space.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to express their thanks for the nancial support to this research by MOST of Korea.
REFERENCES Schmidt, Th. and Laiquddin, S.S. (1966). Burner with high momentum ow of the combustion products, Gaswarme Nr. 8, pp. 271279. Tabata, A., Hosoi, K. and Tanaka, H. (1983). Development of self-recuperative burner(X), echnical Report No. 27, Tokyo Gas Co., pp. 183190. Tabata, A., Hosoi, K. and Tanaka, H. (1985). Development of self-recuperative burner(XIII), echnical Report No. 29, Tokyo Gas Co., pp. 133140. Tabata, A., Hosoi, K. and Tanaka, H. (1986). Development of self-recuperative burner(IX), echnical Report No. 30, Tokyo Gas Co., pp. 7179.

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1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.