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Question:

How does a heat recovery boiler (HRB) work? Does it have a burner box for natural gas?

Do HRB need burner management systems (BMS)? Regular boiler burners need to have explosion safeguards in place to keep them from an explosion. What safeguards are needed in a HRB.Thanks

Answer:

For example, in a high temperature, high pressure boiler system, in order to reduce fuel, the inlet boiler feed water is preheated to a high temperature (without producing steam), in an 'Economiser' which utilises waste heat from the main boiler and has no firebox. This is the recovery of heat energy that would normally be lost to the atmosphere via the stack.
The large scale Heat Recovery Boilers used for power applications can be configured with duct firing (also called supplemental firing). They are typically referred to as Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG), make a search and you will see.
If you are talking about a waste heat boiler, which I believe you are, there is no burner box. The boiler runs off the heat from another device. As long as the waste heat is lower than the critical heat of the materials, the boiler can run dry and not be damaged. In general, a waste heat boiler has no controls. I've seen these used on large diesel engines to create steam which was then used to create electricity. Since the exhaust temperature of the diesel is lower than the melting point of the steel that the waste heat boiler was made of there was no need for any controls or other parts except for high/low water alarms, and one pump to refill the lower drum.

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