High-pressure air heater for a leading producer

CASE 

Our customer had developed a new production process to improve the quality of its products where hot air was required under high pressure. However, this still required a suitable burner and so the company approached Xeamos to supply this.

A good question!

The question that Xeamos was asked was: can you produce a burner that generates hot air up to 550 degrees Celsius, that can start at a back pressure of at least 2 bar, and that will still run when the back pressure is 5.5 bar? Well, we had to think about this one for a while. In addition, a control ratio of at least 10:1 had to be realised.

Design, develop and calculate

Once we established the specifications, we started on the design and develop process. Next, we tested the design based on the specific legislation and regulations that apply to these types of processes (EN 746-2). For example, we performed the required Safety Integrity Level (SIL) calculations to verify whether our designs met the defined safety requirements.

The pressure vessel that is a part of the system has been designed in accordance with Category IV of the Pressure Equipment Directive (PED) and has been produced under Module G.

Operational system

Our calculations and designs finally provided an operational system that we commissioned ourselves at the test facilities of the end user with our sales & service partner in Germany. The system consists of a heater with a burner and pressure vessel, a gas and air valve train, and a programmable logic controller (PLC).

Waiting for the initial results

Our customer’s test engineers commissioned the system in the autumn of 2015 to investigate the new production process under actual production conditions. The system was found to work well and the gas burner (with a power of 300 kilowatts) operates in accordance with the requested specifications.