Burner Operating

Characteristics*
Department Editor: Scott Jenkins

B
urners are critical for the successful op-
eration of industrial furnaces. Presented
here is a set of equations that can be
used to calculate characteristics of burner
operation, including flame length, flame di-
ameter, ignitability and flameout conditions.
Equations are based on pre-mix burners
operating at atmospheric pressure and fir-
ing natural gas only. Premix burners create
short and compact flames compared to raw
gas burners, and are designed to function
with fuel-gas mixtures that have consistent
specific gravity and composition.
Burner requirements
For direct-fired heaters to function correctly,
burners must be capable of providing suf-
ficient heat liberation from the fuel to meet
heater processing requirements — based on
the lower heating value (LHV) of the fuel. A
fuel’s LHV can be defined as the amount of
heat produced by combusting a specified vol-
ume, and returning the combustion products
to 150°C. For the heater to operate at the
design process flowrate, the burners need to
provide the heat necessary to maintain pro-
cess fluid temperature and meet vaporization
requirements at the heating coil outlet.
• The number, size and placement of
burners must allow each coil to operate
at the same design outlet temperature
• Design tube-metal temperature cannot
be exceeded at any point on the coils
• Burner size must allow an outlet veloc-
ity that does not result in malfunction
over the range of flow conditions
• Burner flame length should be less than
firebox height (for vertical cylindrical
heaters) or less than firebox length (for
end-wall-fired heaters)
• Excessive flame height and diameter
should be avoided to prevent flame
impingement on tubes
• Burner spacing should be sufficient
to allow burner-to-burner, as well as
burner-to-tube clearance
The following equations can help establish
optimal burner diameter:
Burner clearance
Establishing burner-to-burner clear-
ance and burner spacing should be
based on maximum burner flame
diameter. Further, burner flame
diameter should be evaluated at
maximum burner-flame length.
Sufficient burner-to-burner, outside
diameter clearance should take into
account the placement of structural
elements between burners.
Sufficient burner-to-burner clear-
ance prevents interference between
the flame bodies and unburned
fuel cores generated by adjacent
burners, which results in the absence
of unburned fuel within the burner
flame when maximum flame length
is reached. Burner center-to-center
spacing should be at least one fully
combusted flame diameter.
Clearance between the burner-
flame (at maximum diameter) and
the outside diameter of tubular
heating surfaces should be set
such that burner-to-tube flame
impingement is avoided. Doing so
will prevent tube damage due to
overheating and will make best use
of heating surfaces.
Flameout
At high burner velocities, flame
loss can occur if the heat gain due
to burner ignition is less than the
heat loss from the burner flame.
Burner velocities may be pushed
well above that used in normal
heater operation in an effort to
achieve higher heater capacity. Aside from
flame loss while the heater is in operation,
flameout can also be characterized by dif-
ficulty maintaining a stable flame at startup,
or an inability to ignite the burner. The
following equations can help predict the
circumstances under which flamout condi-
tions might occur:
NOMENCLATURE
Qlib heater = Heater liberation, Btu/h
Nb = Number of burners
Db = Burner diameter, ft
Vb = Burner exit velocity, ft/s
Cfuel = Fuel, ft3
LHV = Lower heating value of fuel, Btu/lb
Cair+fuel = Volume of air and fuel mixture, ft3
SVfuel = Specific volume of fuel, ft3/lb
Df max = Maximum flame diameter, ft
Lf = Flame length, ft
SVflame = Specific volume of flame, ft3/lb
Vf = Flame propagation velocity, ft/s
Qgain = Burner heat gain, Btu/h
Qloss = Burner heat loss, Btu/h
As = Flame front area, ft2
(HTC)c (HTC)f, (HTC)r = Natural convective, forced-
convective, and radiative heat transfer
coefficients, respectively, Btu/h-ft2-°F
Tflame = Flame temperature, R
Tsurr = Surrounding temperature, R
Eg = Flame emissivity
Cp = Gas specific heat, Btu/lb-°F
A = Frequency factor in the Arrhenius equation
H = Heat of activation, Btu/lb-mol R
R = Gas constant, 1.987 Btu/lb-mol R
T = Gas Temperature, R
dCm/dt = Fuel concentration change, mol per ft3/s
K = Reaction velocity constant, s–1
Wf = Fuel, lb/h
Flame velocity
The heat generated by combustion is de-
pendent on the flame propagation velocity.
In a situation with 0% excess air, the ratio
of fuel-to-fuel+air is about 0.1. In that case,
evaluation of the flame propagation velocity
is straightforward. However, at fuel-to-
fuel+air ratios higher or lower than 0.1, it is
more difficult. The following equations can
help predict flame propagation velocity in
(5) those cases:

(10)
(6)
(1) (11)
(7)

(12)
(2) (8)

(3) References
(9) 1. Cross, A., Fired-Heater Burner Performance,
Chem. Eng., April 2008, pp. 44–47.

(4) *The text was adapted from the article “Fired-Heater Burner Performance,” by Alan Cross. It appeared in
the April 2008 issue of Chemical Engineering.