Burner Maintenance. Significant eff

Burner Maintenance. Significant effort goes into burner design and testing to
ensure that the burners can provide a uniform heat distribution. But during real life
operations, burners often see fuels that may not be in the range of the initial design. Fuel
gas could be contaminated from methane used during regeneration of catalysts, from
upset conditions (introducing ethylene, acetylene, etc.), or from waste streams being
mixed into the fuel gas drum. These contaminants often lead to burner tip plugging and
inefficient combustion, and a resulting loss of efficiency. Burner tip maintenance is one
of the most easily neglected parts of maintaining furnace efficiency. It takes diligent
effort to inspect all the burners routinely while in service and to clean them online as
required. Many plants employ a dedicated maintenance crew for this effort. The crew
makes daily burner inspections, tags dirty burners, and cleans the tips as required. The
added benefit is that clean burners help keep NOx emissions low.