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ISA provides helpful guidance as Technical Report TR 84.00.05 is under review.
Industrial fi red heaters are known to be the oldest and most common industrial process devices. Many manufacturing processes (if not all of them) involve heat exchange in some way or another, and the use of fi red heaters is a way to provide such energy exchange. Industrial applications that use such fuel-fi red heating equipment include industrial steam boilers, temperature-sensitive fl uid heating, process air heating, gas turbines, furnaces and incinerators. (Similar systems are used for commercial cooking, commercial hot water boilers, and commercial fi re tube, among others.) All sorts of industries - from food and beverage to gasoline refi neries in the petrochemical sector - use fi red heaters. What is more, hundreds (if not thousands) of different fi red heater designs populate the industrial world.
When referring to burners used in industrial heaters, the variation is even greater. Burners are designed according to the fuel used:
* Stoichiometry of the reaction (liquids, gases, fuels, LPG, etc.).
* The way energy is transferred (direct, indirect, etc.).
* The energy provided (BTU/hr).
* Operating temperatures.
* Firing (pilot, etc.).
* Draft (natural, forced, induced).
* Nitrogen oxide emissions (conventional, low, extra low).
In some processes, other considerations specifi c to the application may come into play.
In general, heaters manufacturers defi ne the type of burner needed in their design. Designers work together with the burner manufacturers on the type to use (direct-fired, regenerative, radiant tube, high thermal release, self-recuperative, low temperature regeneration, etc.). There are thousands of different designs, and the definition of each of the terms governing the type and use is at the burner manufacturer or designer s discretion.
The safe operation of these burners is mostly supervised by a burner-management system, or BMS. These systems also are known as burner safety systems, burner control systems, combustion safeguards, flame-safeguard systems, safety shutdown systems, furnace safeguard systems and boiler safety systems.
I say mostly because in special circumstances, a safe condition is not immediately reached by a safety interlock. Instead, it requires a specific manual action of a skilled operator. One example of the latter situation is a high pressure scenario in specific multiple-burner furnaces. The shutting down...