power gas burners

Robert the reason that

is often the thought concerning oil vs gas is due to the difference in ultimate CO2 for the two fuels,it is incorrect. The reasoning of CO2 has to take into consideration the fact that oil has a higher ultimate CO2(15%) than gas(11.7%). What this equates out to is in reality a 11% oil and a 9.5% gas are actually about the same.

I am not big on analyzer combustion efficiency as it is inaccurate. I determine real efficiency by meauring flue gas temperature, O2, excess air and CO. That and firing the oil equipment at its maximum firing rate to insure the best overall efficiency.

I am a real odd ball because I don't do converions the way everyone else seems to do them. We have some guys here locally who are doing two and three a day by the same crew. It is not unusual for me to take three days on a conversion. The cleaning end alone is a major factor in order to eliminate as much as possible the fly ash residuals that accumulate a year later after the gas flue gases clean the system (boiler, chimney etc.).

It has been my experience after doing many of these conversions on all kinds of equipment that the gas conversion cubic foot usage as compared to previous oil gallons usage was down at least 3% to 5%. I have actually seen when working with the gas company and they had the means to track behavior that savings as much as 30% were recorded.These were all calcualted on power oil versus power gas burners. The old atmospheric gas conversion burners could not match that as their excess air was too high. This has actually over the years caused people to say that gas conversions can not equal the oil, they were comparing the old atmospheric gas conversion burners with power oil. The atmospheric gas sometimes used as much as 40 to 50% excess air as compared to oil at 20%. There really was no comparison oil was always in that instance more efficient. In fact back then oil was more efficent than designed gas equipment. That all changes when you premix air and the fuel both with oil and with gas the excess air goes down the eff. goes up.

I have installed Carlin G3B conversions into two small 8 X 9 X 9 chambers fired at 120,000 BTU's set the O2 at 2% and seen the analyzer efficiency show 84% to 85% combustion efficiency. Company policy (GAS Company) would not allow me to leave the O2 that low (Carlin says that you can actuall fire them that low) so we had to set it to 4% which was company safety margin.Those two Utica boilers by the cards the oil company left on the job showed that with the oil the combustion efficiency was 78% on one and 80% on the other. With the 4% O2 I was still at 82% on both boilers.

I could site you hundreds of facts like this that prove my point. Testing is the real answer and then what is the consumption of fuel after the conversion. That is the real efficiency.

I actually have a chart that was printed in Fuel OIL News August (1980)Dr. Ulrich Bonne, Senior Research Fellow, Coporate Technology Center, Honeywell Inc. many years back that shows a comparison power oil to gas and the chart showed gas much higher, that was very interesting to me being printed in Fuel OIL News. It was based on cycles per hour at 50% of heating load, weather in Minneapolis MN.

If you want I will send you a copy.