SBT-1: Firing Test

We finally fired it up! 🔥

It’s been a year since we said, ‘You know what? Let’s make our own burner.’ It’s been an incredible journey, from pen and paper to modeling, CFD, production, and finally to flame… and what a flame! On natural gas, it reached a smooth thermal field with just 35 PPM of NOx without recirculation, and a smoke point at 1.5% O₂. And on superheated petrol (yes, you read that right) to simulate our client’s setup for burning a highly volatile light oil, it achieved a Bacharach number of 1, with a textbook flame shape.

In both cases, the CO was zero. This wasn’t initially designed to be an emissions-focused burner but rather a robust, highly stable, and reliable 50MW workhorse. And yet, it exceeded our expectations, proving in the field that it could be all of these things.

✍️ Written by Domenico Carucci