Superadiabatic Radiant Burner (SRB)

Background:

With the ever-growing issues of energy security and climate change, the porous burner is a solution to these problems, because of its high-efficiency and low-emission combustion. Porous burners are an upcoming technology using internal heat recirculation which allows for the usage of alternative and renewable fuels. With the popularization of porous burners because of their low pollutant emissions and fuel flexibility, researchers at the University of Nevada Reno have taken this idea a step further with the creation of a superadiabatic radiant burner.

Description:

Our invention is a radiant burner fabricated from a metallic substance that uses air preheating to create a low-temperature superadiabatic region in the burner and radiate heat at high thermal efficiencies. This technology can be used in heating and industrial processes such as drying or farm-related systems and can apply to a variety of other heating and energy conversion applications. The superadiabatic radiant burner will benefit Industry significantly since it is an environmentally-friendly, low emission device and more efficient than conventional burners due to synchronized internal heat recirculation and preheating (external heat recirculation).

Advantages:

• The SRB can operate at ultra fuel-lean conditions (equivalence ratio of as low as 0.2) because of the internal heat recirculation and preheating.
• The SRB can significantly reduce CO and NOx emissions compared with the conventional burners.
• The SRB radiating surface temperature is higher than the exiting flue gas (temperature reversal).
• The SRB is very energy-efficient and its thermal efficiency is as high as 50 percent. The thermal efficiency of the conventional burners is 25 percent and lower.

Publications:

• 3-D Numerical Simulation of SRB
• Record Radiation SRB Efficiency
• SRB with Preheater and Radiation Corridors
• Experiment on SRB with Augmented Preheating.

Patent:

• 9,976,740

UNR12-020