ME0960 : Combustion Techniques

This practical and highly-interactive course includes real-life case studies and exercises where participants will be engaged in a series of interactive small groups and class workshops.

Power generation and most processes are dependent on combustion of fuels. The effectiveness of the combustion process has a major influence on plant efficiency, reliability, safety and emissions. This course will improve your understanding of combustion and heat transfer and assist you to obtain the best out of your plant. This course focuses on recent developments in burner design for process heating applications including boilers, furnaces, refinery operations, power plant and process plant. Particular emphasis is given to combustion aerodynamics and its influence on burner design, low NOx burner design and emission reduction techniques including reburn, SNCR, SCR and NOx storage techniques. These aspects are examined in relation to large natural gas burners, refinery burners, heavy fuel oil burners, flameless combustion, waste and bio-fuel firing, oxy-fuel firing and fluidized bed combustion. Large scale testing and the role of CFD in burner design are also covered.

This course is particularly concerned with improving the energy and environmental performance and design of gas and oil-fired, high-temperature furnaces and boilers.

The main aim of the course is to provide greater understanding of the principles and practices associated with efficient design and operation of this type of plant. Lectures will be presented initially on the appropriate fundamental and practical aspects of combustion and heat transfer which are necessary to provide an understanding of the thermal behaviour of fuel-fired furnaces and boilers. Recent concerns on the harmful effects of global climate change have highlighted the need for energy conservation so that efficient burner operation is a major feature of the course. It is also necessary to minimise pollutant emissions (particularly NOx) from combustion processes so that this topic is covered in the presentations. Furnace design and control is still often based on tradition and experience despite the recent development of theoretical and experimental techniques which can assist in the prediction of furnace performance. Consequently, furnace modelling is a further major theme of the course. Further, the course will provide a comprehensive insight into understanding the safety functions involved with ensuring a safe combustion process in boilers, furnaces, heaters and other fired process units. The concepts of Safety-Instrumented Burner Management Systems (SI-BMS) will be presented as the methodology to design a BMS to be compliant with latest codes and standards including NFPA 85, NFPA 86, FM 7605, ANSI/ISA 84, and IEC 61508, API 556, API 14C & BLRBAC.