ABSTRACT
As discussed in Chapter 1, there are many ways that oxygen can be used to enhance combustion processes, some of which do not involve traditional burners. For example, oxygen can be lanced into the flame with a separate injector, which does not adversely affect the existing air/fuel burner. This chapter is focused on burners specifically designed to use oxygen for combustion. The most traditional type of burner using oxygen for combustion is usually referred to as an oxy/
fuel burner, where high-purity oxygen is used as the oxidant instead of air. These burners have been around for decades, although today’s burners are significantly different from the original designs. Today’s burners are designed to minimize pollution emissions (see Chapter 13), which were not a concern many years ago. Today’s burners are usually much less intense compared to earlier generations, which often had to be water-cooled to prevent the high-intensity flames from melting the metal used to construct the burner. Today’s burners are generally not water-cooled because the flame intensity is much less than previous designs.
