Combustion of biogas in Porous Radiant Burner: Low emission combustion

This paper presents the combustion behavior of the in house developed Porous Radiant Burner (PRB) applicable in industrial incinerators or bio-medical solid waste disposal systems. The PRB developed to operate in the range of 5-10 kW firing rate is of double layer porous media technology. These layers are composed of Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Alumina (Al2O3) porous matrices which acts as the combustion and preheat zones, respectively. Keeping the geometric parameters of the burner constant, this work investigates the performance of the newly developed PRB in terms of its emission characteristics and combustion efficiency. This is done by varying the firing rate (5-10 kW) and the equivalence ratio (ϕ) within the stable operating range of 0.75 - 0.97. To obtain a comparative analysis, the tests were also performed in a Conventional Burner (CB) using the same variables. Study suggests that because of the possibility of lean combustion in PRB, the pollutant emission from such burners are quite low as compared to its counterpart. Results shows improved combustion efficiency and a decrease of 95% and 85% CO and NOx values, respectively, from biogas combustion in the newly developed PRB.