Investigation on improving the life of immersion burner tubes in industrial furnaces

Immersion burners are commonly used in industrial processes where there is a necessity to heat large quantities of liquids like molten zinc in galvanizing process. Despite being expensive, the immersion arrangement is preferred to common burners due to their capacity to maintain accurate air/gas ratio, very high thermal efficiency etc. One perennial issue that normally affects all industrial heating arrangements is the premature failure of the immersion burner tubes inside the molten metal baths. Literature review reveals that till date, no study has been done on industrial scale to increase the life of the immersion tubes. In the present study, we have developed a methodology based on the flue gas temperatures to identify the reasons for premature failure of immersion tubes This method has helped us to increase the life of tubes by almost two times.