Furnace and Heater Thermal Stability and Optimization
Stable outlet temperature, balanced heat distribution, and efficient combustion are essential to the performance and reliability of fired heaters and furnaces. Variations in process load, feed conditions, fuel heating value, or combustion conditions can affect outlet temperature, heat flux, and the operation of downstream process units.
Poorly performing control can result in:
- Outlet-temperature variability and disturbances to downstream processes when changes in process load, feed conditions, or fuel quality are not compensated quickly enough;
- Excessive fuel consumption and reduced thermal efficiency when excess air, air-to-fuel ratio, draft, or heat distribution are not maintained near their optimum conditions;
- Production below the actual limits of the heater or furnace when variability requires larger operating margins from tube-temperature, firing, draft, or heat-transfer constraints;
- Localized overheating, coking, and accelerated equipment degradation when pass flows, burner distribution, or heat flux become unbalanced, creating excessive local temperatures even when average outlet temperature remains acceptable.
Our Approach
Enero Solutions optimizes and embeds advanced regulatory control strategies directly within the control system to improve fired-heater and furnace performance. These strategies can include PID optimization, cascade control, fuel-to-feed ratio control, feedforward signals, pass-flow coordination, draft control, adaptive control, and advanced logic designed to compensate for changes in process load, fuel properties, and operating conditions. Enero also validates and improves the dynamic performance of instrumentation, control valves, combustion-air dampers, analyzers, and other final control elements to ensure they do not limit overall control performance.
Enero’s optimization approach makes it possible to:
- Increase production while respecting thermal, combustion, and operating constraints
- Improve instrumentation, control-valve, and air-damper performance to maximize control-system response
- Further automate response to changes in process load, feed conditions, and fuel properties
- Optimize air-to-fuel ratio, excess oxygen, and multi-fuel combustion through our Combustion Control solutions
- Integrate combustion control with burner protection, sequencing, and safety through our Smart BMS approach
