Understanding Propane Heater Behavior: Causes and Solutions

[ChemAir]

We had a thermal oxidizer on the tail end of a sulfur recovery unit have intermittent "flame failure" trips on the burner management system. This was a pretty big deal. Turning off an incinerator while full of bad stuff wasn't something you wanted to do. Management pressure to fix this *right now* was high.

After a while, we found a spider using the air cooling bleed as an entrance to the flame detection port and it could get close enough to the detector for it to fail self-check. Insect screens, redundant flame sensors, etc. were installed to address this and other issues.

I hate to think how much money that one cost. After that, I tended to refer to any arthropods/parts in incinerator, furnace, or other burner instrumentation systems as "debris", which for some reason was more politically correct than "spiders" at that facility.

 

[anorlunda]

I hate to think how much money that one cost.

You would be shocked to hear how many people have died because insects block the fuel tank air vent in small aircraft.

 

[Asymptotic]

Have you gone poking around yet to see what may be blocking the mixing tube, and other flow paths?

I was thinking about a cheap way to fashion a steel cloth screen around the mixing tube air inlet. One option is to adapt stainless steel teapot mesh strainers similar to those by uxcell sold for $5 USD through Amazon like so.

Don't know how I'd join the two pieces together, but it's that time of year when fishing comes to mind, and sewing them together with stainless steel leader would probably do the job.