The newly-designed burner head is made from steel containing chromium and other elements. The new material is resistant to corrosion. It will find its use in the petrochemical industry, during the processing of secondary raw materials.
In the chemical and petrochemical industry, a combustion burner is often used in high-temperature combusting processes. In addition to combustion burners, heating burners are also used, which are intended for heating in industrial furnaces, vessels or chemical columns. The requirements for a burner head with nozzles, and its properties more generally, are closely connected to its chemical composition.
At present, chromium-nickel steel 17255 with a defined average useful life is often used as a material in combustion burners. In the case of sharp fluctuations in material composition during combustion and due to an increased percentage of present impurities, the burner head may be damaged. If the material 17255 is not suitable – then it is not in normal operation, i.e. where the nozzle or head is cooled by the gas itself.
The biggest problem of these materials is sulphide, or vanadium corrosion. The corrosion resistance of common used steels besides presented chromium is often increased by adding of nickel. By using nickel some undesirable reactions with sulphur may occur which totally destroy the structure of the material. Under these circumstances the useful life and stability of the metal parts of a burner are much lower than usual, which means the burner head must be replaced earlier. Replacement is obviously associated with additional financial costs. Another problem is that the material of burner head must be possible to make by machining and the burner head needs to be fixed, perhaps by welding, to the burner body. This means that it is necessary to test whether the material of the burner head can be welded to the material of the burner body.
The newly proposed composition of material for the burner head is steel which contains iron, chromium, aluminium, manganese, silicon and carbon and other elements in small, but controlled amounts. The inventors of the new composition for a burner head are researchers from the Faculty of Chemistry at Brno University of Technology: Ing. Martin Zmrzlý, Ph.D. of the Institute of Material Chemistry and Prof. Ing. Jaromír Havlica, DrSc. of the Centre of Material Research. The newly developed material meets all the requirements which need to be solved in industrial production: corrosion resistance, resistance to temperature changes on the tip surface, weldability, machinability, economic availability of materials.
Use of the newly designed burner head is suitable for the combustion of secondary raw materials in the petrochemical industry. The aim in processing secondary raw materials, which are waste materials from various types of production, is to change them into gaseous form by combustion; then they can be used as feedstock for other operations in the production of new products.
The burner head is protected as utility model No. 21657.
Photo: CTT, Ludmila Navrátilová, 2014
