On the 22nd of November the British Flame held a one day meeting in Rotherham entitled ” COMBUSTION DIAGNOSTICS: The RouteMap to Increased Efficiency, Lower Emissions and Improved Product Quality“.

Combustion Diagnostics can cover a very wide range of activities and technologies and this was clearly demonstrated when 65 delegates attended the British Flame 1-day meeting COMBUSTION DIAGNOSTICS: The RouteMap to Increased Efficiency, Lower Emissions and Improved Product Quality. Following the welcome from Corus, the presentation session started with a keynote address by Prof. Leo Tognotti the new IFRF Director, who with Dr Mario Graziadio (ENEL) described the new research facilities at Pisa, along with the extensive combustion instrumentation. Dr Neil Haines then gave an overview of the environmental and business drivers governing how Corus and many others are developing and installing combustion diagnostics technologies.  David Amory of Land Instruments International then reviewed various practical systems for measuring temperatures and flue gas compositions in a range of industrial heating plant. Although much of the techniques are well developed, modern electronics has considerably improved accuracy and reliability.  Cameron Stathers from Casella ETi described how they were developing continuous laser-based emission monitoring technologies focusing on recent trials of a new high temperature NEO Lasergas Oxygen Monitor.  Corus has purchased a monitor for their new heat treatment furnace in Scunthorpe and following a three-month trial the instrument was shown to provide fast, reliable and accurate measurements of oxygen in a demanding heavy industrial environment. Brenda Timmerman from the Optical Engineering Group at Warwick University discussed developments in laser-based non-intrusive measurement and visualization techniques for the study of heat release. Their diagnostic techniques have been tested on a laboratory Meker flame, a single-cylinder four-stroke research engine operating at low load and an industrial-type gas-turbine combustor (Rolls Royce), all fuelled by natural gas. How Combustion Diagnostics forms an important part of the day-to-day operation of large utility boilers was then reviewed by Philip Baimbridge of E.ON. The presentation included a brief description of their GNOCIS Plus neural network combustion optimiser. Keith Smith of Perceptive Engineering then described the development and applications of Data Driven Models, particularly relating to the optimisation of energy and emissions for large steel reheating furnaces. A number of modelling techniques were discussed including cause & effect, principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS). The theme of neural networks was further discussed with the presentation work at Glamorgan University given by CK Tan on the monitoring of pulverised coal-fired burners. The use of neural networks coupled with low-cost sensors was shown to be an effective way of controlling the burner / flame performance. A new and novel method of evaluating flames using Tomography was described by Prof. Alan Williams from Leeds University. Tomography can be defined as the construction of cross- sectional images across a flame, which can then be used to create a three dimensional image. The final presentation of the day was given By David Poole from Sheffield University. The paper describes the development and initial testing of a mobile laboratory for the determination of metals in flue gases, from a wide range of industrial processes.  The instrument is a commercially available ICP-OES, but has undergone significant modification for gaseous samples.

As well as the oral presentations there was a poster session with contributions from E.ON, University of Kent and University of Glamorgan. Alongside the presentation sessions there was a small exhibition featuring Land Instruments International, Casella ETi, Perceptive Engineering, Dantec Dynamics and LaVision.

Copies of all the meeting presentations can be found on the British Flame website www.britishflame.org.uk

Presentation Session

Delegates networking during lunch