Khulna University of Engineering & Technology

Assignment on Selected Combustion Application.

Submitted To Submitted By
Name: Md Harun Or Rashid Molla Name: Pallab Kumar Saha
Designation: Assistant Professor. Roll: 2105562
Department: Mechanical Engineering. Course No: ME 6131
Khulna University of Engineering & Technology. Course Title: Fuel and Combustion
Date: 25/09/2023
1.0 Introduction: Combustion, the chemical process of burning, has been a fundamental part of
human civilization for thousands of years. It involves the rapid oxidation of a fuel source,
typically with the aid of oxygen from the air, resulting in the release of energy in the form of
heat and often light. The discovery and taming of fire is thought to be one of the most
significant steps in human evolution. Fire provided the early man, homo-erectus, with a more
nutritious diet and an expanded range of capabilities which, in turn, contributed towards
accelerated brain development. Industrial technology, as we know it today, would not exist
without the early discovery of fire. In the past, the development and exploration of different
combustion technologies were mostly guided by the demand for steel and other metals.
Industrialization and war efforts required previously unseen amounts of shapeable metals, the
production of which would have been impossible without proper firing systems. It is thus no
surprise that different types of auxiliary devices, like blowers, pre heaters and heat exchangers
were developed with the metallurgical application in mind. Heavy industry also required
heavy amounts of electricity, thus the appearing power generation technologies followed the
development of smelting furnaces. Some selected applications of combustion process are
describe below.

2.0 Industrial Boilers: Boilers are fairly common heating equipment in the industry. Their
capacity ranges from domestic size (10–20 kW) to large power generation units. The largest
boilers can be characterized by their steam producing capacity of several thousand tons/hour.
Owing to its physical properties (excellent heat capacity, latent heat of vaporization), water is
very well suited for use as a heat transfer medium.
A steam boiler consists of two major parts, a firing and a heat transfer system. According to
the design, the heat transfer system can be realized as a fire-tube, or a water tube boiler. Fire-
tube boilers generate hot water or steam by a hot flue gas passing through tubes which are
surrounded by a water reservoir. Water tube boilers generate steam by a flame heating the
tubes filled with water from outside. Fire-tube boilers are limited to a pressure of about 25 bar
and a maximum capacity of 20 t/h steam by design, whereas water-tube boilers are suitable for
large capacities.
The class of water-tube boilers can further be subdivided according to the physical concepts of
natural circulation, forced circulation, and once-through boilers.
2.1 Combustion Systems for Steam Generation: According to the physical state of the
fuel, solid, liquid, or gaseous firing systems can be distinguished. There are different
combustion systems for each fuel type.
Gas, mainly natural gas, represents an ideal fuel. There are other less common types of
gaseous fuels such as city gas, blast furnace gas, refinery gas, biogas, and landfill gas.
One of the biggest advantages of gas-fired furnaces over other combustion systems is
the reduced exhaust emissions.
Liquid fuels show similar combustion behavior to gas, since they have to be vaporized
or atomized prior to ignition. The use of heavy oil requires preheating in order to lower
the viscosity of the oil for better atomization. Due to high oil prices liquid fuels have
become less important in the area of power generation over the last years.
The utilization of solid fuels is associated with a complex plant design. There are
noticeable differences in the complexity for storage, conditioning, and the feeding
systems of the fuel and oxidizing agent compared to gas-or oil-fired combustion
systems. Widespread classifications of solid firing systems are Fixed Bed Combustion,
Fluidized Bed Combustion (FBC), Bubbling Fluidized Bed Combustion (BFBC),
Circulating Fluidized Bed Combustion (CFBC), Pulverized Fuel Combustion/Dust
firing.

3.0 Industrial Technologies:

3.1 Metal Industry:
3.1.1 Shaft Furnaces: Shaft furnaces vertical cylinder-shaped smelting shaft furnaces
have been used for hundreds of years as the melting equipment in iron foundries,
though they are also used by the heat insulating fiber industry to melt slag and basalt.
It is a continuous operation furnace, but it can also be operated with daily or weekly
shutdowns. One of the most common type is the Blast furnace, the heart of
metallurgical steel plants. For larger castings the necessary amount of pig iron is
gathered by a built-in pre-collector, which is connected with a siphon that assures
continuous tapping to the hearth of the cupola furnace.
3.1.2 Aluminum Melting Furnaces: Traditionally, aluminum smelting furnaces were
built with brick regenerators. In later models the regenerator has been replaced by a
recuperate. These equipment are equipped with radioactive recuperates constructed
from chemically resistant materials in order to withstand passing flue gases. The
chambers are rectangular-shaped. A typical batch consists of 100–120 t aluminum,
which is melted in 4–6 h melting cycles. The latest trend is the utilization of
regenerative burners on furnaces having no direct heat recovery on themselves. The
regenerators are incorporated into the burner system.
3.1.3 Crucible Furnaces: Crucible furnaces are low-capacity heated vessels used in
small-scale metallurgical applications. They can be heated by firing at their refractory
lining from the outside or by using electrical wall or submerged heating elements.
Such heating elements can be used when melting low melting point non-ferrous
metals. For melting steel, inductive electrical heating can be used. Crucible furnaces
are also used to produce the molten salt bath of, for example, put furnaces. Special
crucible furnaces are also used in the glass industry. These furnaces consist of a large
primary chamber which contains many smaller crucibles.
3.1.4 Annealing and Heat Treatment Furnaces : Annealing and heat-treating furnaces
are used in the metallurgical industry in order to produce grades that meet certain
specifications. They differ from melting furnaces in that they do not produce melts,
but rather accurately heat the batch.
3.1.5 Continuous Annealing Furnaces: There are various types of continuous annealing
furnaces. These are Pusher-Type Furnaces, Walking-Beam Furnaces, Carousel
(Annular-Bottom) Furnaces, Tunnel Furnaces and Roller Hearth (Annealing)
Furnaces, Roller Hearth Furnaces, Continuous Strip-Annealing Furnaces.
3.2 Ceramic & Glass Industry: Glass melting furnaces are direct-fired furnaces with
elongated chamber geometries. The chamber is fired from the side walls, typically
with gas burners that produce long, radiating flames. Typically, these furnaces are
operated in a side switching manner, as they are equipped with brick regenerators that
pre-heat combustion air by utilizing the waste heat of flue gases. The raw materials
(quartz, lime, soda, waste glass) are introduced continuously at one end of the long
chamber and extracted at the other end. The operating temperature of the melting zone
is 1450–1550˚ C. The ductile, but solidified glass is typically pulled out by plier’s
mechanisms on the product end. Cross-fired, high-capacity float glass smelter furnaces
utilize the so-called U-jet burners built into the side walls. To increase melting
capacity, oxy-fuel burners can also be utilized, which produce higher temperature
flames. Auxiliary burners can be built into the roof as well and the vertical temperature
of the bath can be homogenized by using heating electrodes built into the chamber
floor. These electrodes are made of heat-resistant MoSi2 and they penetrate the hearth
bottom from below. The capacity of the largest glass melting float furnaces reaches
600 t/d.
 3.3 Cylindrical Rotary Kilns: Rotary kilns are used for drying, sintering and cement
clinker roasting. Their feeds are usually grainy or particulate materials, the motion of
which is provided by the rotating inclined cylinder. The length of the cylinder together
with its rotation speed and inclination angle control the residence time of the feed.
3.4 Direct Fired Kilns : Chamber furnaces are one of the most common furnace types in
the industry. These furnaces are usually not operated in a continuous mode. The batch
of the furnace stays in the same position throughout the heating process. High
temperature forging furnaces are usually of this type. They are widely used in the
industry: the chamber shaped hearth is suitable for heating metals to the temperature of
their forming and heat treatment, drying of large casting forms, burning of light-clay
products and heat treatment of glass wares.
3.5 Indirectly Fired Chamber: Furnaces Heat treating furnaces carry out both the heating
and cooling of the batch in a continuous or periodical operation schedule. Indirectly
fired chamber furnaces are used to treat products that must be protected from oxidizing
gases, for example, the flue gas. To ensure the safe separation of the product from the
oxidizing gas, protective atmospheres are also used. For specific surface treatment,
some furnaces are capable of switching between a protective and active atmosphere.
There are many different types of furnaces designed for indirect heating, differing in
geometries, capacities and loading methods. They are Bell Furnaces, Elevator kilns, Pit
Furnaces, Muffle furnaces, Radiant tubes etc.
3.6 Petroleum Industry Tube Furnaces: Tube furnaces are part of the basic equipment
of the petrochemical and petroleum industry. Their purpose is the heating of liquid.
The feed is circulated in wall tubes that run along the walls of the square-shaped or
tubular combustion chamber. The burner can be installed on the roof or on the walls.
In case of side burners, the flames are deflected to protect the wall tubes.
4.0 Internal Combustion Engines: Internal combustion engines can be characterized by the
number of strokes needed to perform one working cycle as well as by the principle which is
used to ignite the fuel–air mixture: Spark ignition engines use a spark generated by a spark
plug to ignite a compressed fuel–air mixture, whereas compression ignition engines compress
air to increase the temperature, then the fuel is added and auto ignites under further
compression.
4.1 Spark Ignition Engines: In spark ignition engines, a fuel–air mixture is ignited by a
spark drawn from, usually, a single spark plug per cylinder shortly before the piston
reaches the TC position. This mixture is prepared by a carburetor or in larger and more
modern engines by electronically controlled fuel injection systems. The principle of a
fixed jet carburetor. In front of the throttle valve, air is led though a venturi, causing
pressure in the venturi to drop. This leads to fuel being drawn into the venturi, where it
is broken up to droplets which evaporate building the air–fuel mixture. Fuel overflow
is prevented by a float valve. Further improvements are made to optimize the
equivalence ratio of the mixture, depending on the position of the throttle valve.
4.2 Compression Ignition Engines: In compression ignition engines, the fuel is directly
injected into the air-filled cylinder as one or more jets of droplets at the end of the
induction stroke. This results in a good part-load behavior because only the amount of
fuel injected is reduced for part load. At full load, the mass of fuel injected is
approximately 5% of the mass of air in the cylinder. Since heat is transferred from the
cylinder to the evaporating droplets, compression ignition engines have a minimum
cylinder volume of about 400 cm3 to keep heat loss through the surface acceptable.
The maximum speed of compression ignition engines is less than for SI engines of the
same size because combustion is slower.
 4.3 Engine Emissions: Emissions vary with engine type and load, ignition timing and
equivalence ratio. Here, there are two opposite requirements: For low carbon
monoxide (CO) and unburned hydrocarbons (HC) emissions, the engine should
operate with lean fuel mixtures, which increases emissions of nitric oxide (NO). The
formation of NO is reduced when burning rich fuel mixtures since peak temperatures
are lower. On the other hand, this increases the emission of CO and HC. This is why
catalytic converters are used to optimize the exhaust gas composition of spark ignition
engines.
5.0 Aircraft Jet Engines: Jet engines in aircraft use combustion to generate thrust. Jet fuel is
burned with air to create the high-speed exhaust necessary for propulsion.
6.0 Rocket Propulsion: Rockets use combustion to propel themselves into space. The
combustion of rocket propellants generates a high-speed exhaust that propels the rocket
forward in accordance with Newton's third law of motion.
7.0 Flares: In industrial settings, flares are used to burn off excess or unwanted gases safely. This
is common in oil refineries and chemical plants.
8.0 Waste Incineration: Waste-to-energy facilities burn solid waste to produce heat and
electricity. This not only reduces the volume of waste but also generates energy.
9.0 Fireworks: Combustion reactions are used to create the colorful explosions and displays seen
in fireworks. Different chemicals are burned to produce different colors and effects.

10.0 Cooking: In homes and restaurants, combustion is used for cooking. Gas stoves and ovens
burn natural gas or propane to provide heat for cooking food.

11.0 Conclusion: These are just a few examples of the many applications of combustion in our
daily lives, science and various industries. Combustion is a versatile and essential process with
a wide range of uses, from powering, transportation to heating our homes and enabling
industrial processes.