E1. "Tune up" your infrared burners to save fuel costs.
Infrared burners become much more efficient after rebuilding
in the same way that a car’s engine does after a tune
up. Dark areas of the refectories and tailing flames are wasting
fuel.
Adjusting to the correct air/gas ratio will also maximize
your burner’s efficiency.
E2. Retrofit with the more infrared energy efficient
Apollo-Ray, MR-12 and QC-12 burners where applications permit. Many of our customers have done this already. You can pay for a retrofit very quickly with fuel savings at the ever increasing energy prices. Call us to help review the financial benefits of retrofitting in your application.
E3. Invest in a
gas flow meter as an excellent first step to understand a specific oven or
burner system’s fuel usage. The cost savings of a "tune
up" of your burners will then become clear. This is very
similar to monitoring your car’s gas mileage.
E4. Don’t over-fire your burners. Run your burners
slightly lean for improving
both fuel efficiency and burner life.
WHY? : a) The best fuel efficiency is obtained by making sure that there is enough oxygen (O2)
available to combust all the fuel. An ideal target is 10%
excess air which is equivalent to a 19.2% O2 reading of the
air/ natural gas mixture going into the burner.
b) Running rich provides much less air in the mixture. Less
cool air coming into the burner is like running your car or
truck with insufficient engine coolant. The metal parts of
the burner (and engine in the analogy) will overheat.
Unlike the overheated car or truck, the Red-Ray burners will
continue to run in the overheated condition. The overheated
metal parts will expand with time, which shortens the burner’s
life and makes these parts unsuitable for reuse.
| |
AIR |
GAS |
%O2 |
LEAN |
12 |
1 |
19.3 |
LEAN |
11 |
1 |
19.2 |
ON RATION |
10 |
1 |
19.1 |
RICH |
9 |
1 |
18.9 |
RICH |
8 |
1 |
18.6 |
