Air Products’ latest oxy-fuel burner enables glass manufacturers to maintain full production in an aging furnace and avoid downtime during regenerator repairs.
The Cleanfire® ThruPorte™ burner is a quick, cost-effective heating solution that is installed from the underside of an existing furnace port to provide heat where and when it is needed.
The patent-protected water-cooled ThruPorte burner can deliver precision mixing of primary oxygen and fuel—either natural gas or fuel oil—to produce a highly luminous oxy-fuel flame.
The unique configuration enables the introduction of staged oxygen to adjust the flame length and angle, ensuring optimal heat distribution and surface coverage.
“Aging equipment can lead to reduced pull rate and shortening of a furnace campaign, which can result in tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue per day,” said Bill Horan, glass applications engineer at Air Products.
“The ThruPorte burner has a durable design that can be easily installed while the furnace is running, offering glass manufacturers a safe and rapid solution for restoring furnaces to full production. In fact, we recently installed this unique burner solution at two float glass plants and, in both instances, not only was full production achieved, but energy efficiency increased substantially relative to baseline operations.”
In keeping with its vision of developing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) by deploying “smart” burner technology, Air Products offers the ThruPorte burner with the option of state-of-the-art on-burner diagnostic sensors and wireless communications technology.
This technology enables instantaneous viewing and tracking of key burner operating parameters. This data can be conveniently and securely streamed from the on-burner transmitters to the control room or remote computers and smart devices, providing up-to-date information and alerts.