Chemistry and Technology of Fuels and Oils, Vol. 36, No.

5, 2000

CONTROL OF FURNACE AND FLARE OPERATION. FLAME FAILURE ALARM

A. I. Lugovskoi, S. A. Loginov, G. D. Parshin, and E. Ya. Chernyak UDC 665.63.041.454

Of the many fire and explosion hazards in refineries, the reheating furnaces occupy a special positin.
Explosions in furnaces have serious consequences. The most frequent cause is flameout due to unstable
burning or feeding of fuel to a furnace where ignition has not taken place. This usually happens in
starting up and stopping a furnace or in operating on small loads.

The causes of 156 explosions in furnaces and boiler burners in 44 boilers were analyzed in the USA. Of these
explosions, 60% occurred in ignition and 32% occurred in operating on small loads. Of the equipment examined,
39% operated on gas, 16% on residual fuel oil, and 45% operated on coal. When liquid fuel was used, all of the
explosions took place as it was being fed into the hot furnace, which could explain the identity of the properties of
the fuel hydrocarbon vapors and natural gas.
In Germany, the causes of 85 explosions (backfires) were analyzed, and over half occurred in switching on the
burners, including 25% due to incorrect ignition, 15% due to incorrect preliminary blowing, and approximately 15%
were due to failures of fuel equipment. Nonignition of fuel after flameout was the cause of almost all of the other
backfires.
There were 200 explosions on low-power boilers in Japan over 5 years, and 60% occurred during ignition.
The causes of emergencies in oil refineries and petrochemical plants in Russia were similar.
The region of controllable parameters on reheating furnaces is relatively obvious based on the results of a
statistical analysis and experience in direct use; for this reason, a competent engineering approach alone is required
for an exhaustive solution of the problem and correct maintenance of safety and control equipment. Of this equipment,
flame failure alarms (FFA), which check for the presence of a flame, signal its extinction, and control automatic fuel
equipment, are most widely used.
In world practice, FFA of different designs and operating principles are used for protecting furnaces and
boilers. Photoelectric FFA, which record intensity and fluctuations in the long-wave portion of the burner flame
emission spectrum in the 0.6 0.8 m range are widely used in Russia.
Susceptibility to parasitic emission from the walls and process fittings of furnaces and boilers is a fundamental
drawback in devices of this type which reduce their operational reliability. In the indicated emission range, reliable
operation of the devices is not really attained.
Two types of FFA are used abroad for protecting fuel-burning equipment: photoelectronic and ionization.
Photoelectronic FFA are universally equipped with ultraviolet (UV) sensors for the flame emission
range: 0.2 0.3 m. These sensors reliably record the presence of a local burner flame due to effective absorption
of UV radiation by the environment. The reflected flame emissions of other burners do not affect their operation.
This is the main advantage of devices of this type.
However, the UV sensors also have drawbacks caused by their basic advantage. Very high requirements are
imposed on the transparency and cleanness of the entire optical path from the source of emission to the detector,
due to the high UV radiation absorption coefficient in different media. In servicing and operating these furnaces,
these requirements are difficult to satisfy, which leads to frequent false alarms. This causes them to be distrusted
and a corresponding decrease in the responsibility of servicing personnel.

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Ryazan Oil Refinery Open Joint-Stock Company. Translated from Khimiya i Tekhnologiya Topliv i Masel, No. 5,
pp. 50 52, September October, 2000.

362 0009-3092/00/36050362$25.002000 Plenum Publishing Corporation

 FFA of the ionization type have recently been used relatively rarely because the fundamental electrode that
senses the ion current of the flame rapidly corrodes in the aggressive medium of the flame and fails. The development
of complex safety devices ensuring reliable control of flare burning, measurement of flame temperature, and control
of the degree of rarefaction in the boiler volume furnace is promising.
The problem of reliably recording the burner flame is basically solved in the FFA 1.001 device (developer and
manufacture: Shibbolet Limited Liability Company and Rutenii LLC, Ryazan). A double-beam flame-emission
recording system is used in this device, and this allows not only reliably determining the existence of a flame (from
any type of fuel) after excluding the effect of the heat parts of the furnace fittings and walls but also measuring its
temperature.
The temperature measurement is based on the Ornshtein method [1], which essentially consists of determin-
ing the ratio r of the integral intensities I 1 and I 2 of two spectral lines belonging to the same emitting body, which
is important for increasing the efficiency of burner operation, and the corresponding wavelengths 1 and 2 :

I1 A1 g1 1 E E2
r= = exp 1
I 2 A2 g 2 2 kT

where A 1 , A 2, g 1 , g 2 , E 1 , E 2 are the probabilities of transitions, statistical weights of the initial levels and excitation
energy corresponding to the spectral lines; k is the Boltzmann constant; T is the flame temperature.
In contrast to the absolute intensity method used in conditions sufficient for saturation of the emitting atom
concentration lines, the relative intensity method can only be used in conditions of low concentrations. This
restriction is due to the difference in the absolute intensities of different spectral lines and consequently degrees
of their proximity to the state of saturation.
If we take the logarithm of the ratio of the signal intensities for two spectral lines, it is possible to determine
the temperature and presence of a flame in the aperture visual field with sufficient accuracy with hardware.
The FFA parameters are selected from a calculation of the so-called safety margin, defined as the maximum
acceptable time for stopping fuel feed into a furnace in the absence of a flame [2]. When the burner is turned on, the
safety margin begins when fuel is fed into the burner and during its operation, from the time the flare is extinguished
after closing of the cutoff valve.
The burner power, furnace volume, and system of forming the fuel mixture (with or without a blower) are taken
into consideration in calculating the safety margin. The safety margin varies from 1 to 40 sec as a function of the
factors listed.
In addition to indicating the presence of a burner flame, the given FFA can also measure its temperature,
which can be effectively used for optimizing the burner operating regime. This possibility is due to the extremal
character of the dependence of the flame temperature on excess air coefficient .
The maximum temperature is attained for 1, which ensures independent adjustment of the burners for the
optimum operating regime. This is important, since measurement of in furnaces with a large number of burners
based on the oxygen content in the stack gases does not allow individually setting and monitoring the operation of
the different burners.
The reliability of operation of the device is ensured by continuous self-diagnosis with indication of the
character of a malfunction (rupture of lines, reduction in the optical channel transmission coefficient, malfunction
of an electrical circuit, etc.), which allows its timely elimination.
In large petrochemical plants, the reheating furnaces usually have a large number (from 20 to 100) of burners.
Equipping all of the burners with FFA devices is naturally not rational, since extinction of one of the burners during
stable operation of the furnace cannot cause an emergency.
In igniting a furnace when drying or going into normal operation, two to three burners are usually operating.
Backfire is most probable in ignition of the furnace, where its drying or going into normal conditions take palce.
Due to regulation of the order of igniting the furnace and installing FFA only on burners from which ignition begins,
the explosion hazard decreases significantly, and is even eliminated in the overwhelming majority of cases.
At Ryazan Oil Refinery, 40 FFA 1.001 devices have been installed on furnaces of different types. They have
reliably monitored operation of burners in burning of different fuels, including hydrogen sulfide, for 4.5 years.

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 Pilot burners is another direction for ensuring safe operation of furnaces. As the studies in [2] indicated,
these burners actively affect the combustion process and operational characteristics of the furnace as a whole. The
range of stable operation of the basic burners can be significantly expanded with pilot burners [3].
The flame diffusion of these burners gives them high stability for variable values of the excess air coefficient
in the combustion chamber. However, in stable operation of the main burner, the pilot burner increases the
concentration of nitrogen oxides in the gases leaving the combustion chamber by increasing the temperature level
in the combustion nucleus, decreases the economy of the burner, and reduces its lifetime due to the increase in the
temperature in the nozzle part.
Relatively complicated cutoff fittings and additional devices for monitoring operation of the pilot burner
itself are required for reliable and efficient operation of pilot burners. All of this makes the equipment much more
expensive, reduces the reliability, and increases the operating costs [4].
The flare is a significant source of danger in oil refineries. A flare facility usually does not have a single flare
for burning gases emitted from process units for different reasons. Gas flow in the flare line changes from the
minimum acceptable, which is determined by the necessity of reliable flare combustion, to the maximum for accidental
emissions.
Flame failure in nonoperating or extinguished pilot burners thus causes the formation of a dangerously
explosive gas cloud. It is obvious that flare burning must be reliably monitored.
Television cameras with output of the image to operational devices or photoreceivers of the recording type
are used for monitoring burning of flares. A common drawback of these devices is the use of the visible part of the
flame emission range for monitoring combustion. For this reason, unfavorable weather factors rain, snow, fog,
and even bright sunlight cause false responses or blind the monitoring devices or even cause them to fail.
Flare operation at Ryazan Oil Refinery has been monitored since 1994 by type SPF 1.001 flame failure alarms.
The sensors are positioned ~200 m from the flares and are in places convenient for positioning the devices. The
optical path of the device provides for recording the infrared emission of the flare in a selected atmosphere
transparency range. Unfavorable weather conditions (rain, fog, snow, etc.) do not affect the reliability of recording
the presence of the flame.
The possibility of blinding the deice when the detector is illuminated by sunlight is eliminated by separating
the vibrational component of flare emission whose frequency spectrum was investigated previously alone. The
character of the vibrational spectrum of the flare is a function of the discharge volume, cap and steam feed design,
which was taken into consideration in developing the recording circuits for the SPF 1.001 [5].
To eliminate formation of smoke in burning of heavy hydrocarbons, steam, whose flow is constantly adjusted
as a function of the composition and volume of gas burned, is fed into the flare cap. Since steam consumption is
relatively high, the operator adjusts it based on his experience and the results of a preliminary estimation. Flameout
and flame failure are possible with an excess of steam. The devices are being completed in a direction which would
ensure quantitative estimation of the flare smoke level and automatic adjustment of the steam flow velocity.
Due to the use of modern advances in physics and electronics, it is possible to guarantee safe operation of
plants with important fire and explosion hazards and increase their process stability. As a result, the incidence of
accidents and injuries in potentially dangerous industrial processes decreases significantly.

REFERENCES
1. Handbook of Temperature Measurements [in Russian], Naukova Dumka, Kiev (1989).
2. G. P. Gladyshev, A. A. Dorozhkov, V. V. Lebedev, et al., Safe Operation of Steam and Hot-Water Boilers [in
Russian], Energoatomizdat, Moscow (1995).
3. V. A. Khristich and Yu. N. Bashkatov, in: Theory and Practice of Burning Gas [in Russian], Nedra, Leningrad
(1964), pp. 510 516.
4. R. B. Akhmetov, O. N. Bryukhanov, A. S. Isserlin, et al., Rational Use of Gas in Power Plants. A Reference
Manual [in Russian], Nedra, Leningrad (1990).
5. G. G. Ishanin, E. D. Pankov, A. L. Andreev, et al., Radiation Sources and Detectors [in Russian], Politekhnika,
St. Petersburg (1991).

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