With reference to our conversation this afternoon regarding the situation in the market-place regarding burner equipment, I give below a synopses of the situation, although this might sound a bit biased I apologise, but it is an accepted market place viewpoint.

Being with weishaupt now for some 25 years, over this period they have been acknowledged in the marketplace as the "Bench Mark" of burners,  looked upon to be envied and emulated by the competition.

This standard has been driven further into excellence by the new range of Digital Burners with Electronic Compound Regulation and Multiflam technology on our oil and gas burners, giving them a level of efficiency and emissions that arguably cannot be bettered by our competition. Add to this the fact that never have the Weishaupt range of burners been so competitively priced, any differences in costs should quickly be recovered by fuel savings due to the efficiency of our equipment.

If one lines up all the  burners on the market and fire them at high fire, there is nothing much to choose between them on combustion efficiency perhaps 0.5 to 1% CO₂ but as one starts to turn the burners down to low fire you separate the burners on their performance. In this situation when approaching a 2:1 turndown you have burners  having to add unacceptable amounts of excess air to stabilise their flame resulting in residual O₂ levels of 5 to 10% showing a decrease in CO₂ of some 3 to 5% and as they turndown further this O₂ figure becomes larger with the burner flame being totally unstable.

Why all the fuss about this CO₂ and O₂ level ?  The point to strive for is to keep the CO₂ as high as possible and the residual O₂ level as low as possible, by achieving this the combustion is as close to Stoichiometric as one can leave the burner,  the next point is to hold this combustion condition as near as possible through the turndown range of the burner.

Having achieved these conditions, this is the basis on which Weishaupt operate, one passes the burners combustion gases through the boiler as slowly as possible allowing the maximum time for the flue gases to transfer heat to the water in the boiler, resulting in maximum efficiencies by lowering the flue temperature instead of heating the Starlings flying over your chimney.

So far I’ve only made reference to the burners as I believe this is where a large proportion of the savings can be made,  add to this the use of variable speed drives for the burner fans and O₂ Trim to maximise combustion efficiency and have in the package a proper control system, result of which has shown saving on fuel bills of up to 20%  and in certain cases higher, in certain cases the savings have been in the region of 27%.

Up to my previous paragraph I’ve been harping on purely on burners as I believe with most of the conventional boilers on the market to-day which are built to DIN, EN and BS standards there is little to choose in performance, there may be an argument on weight of steel used or water volumes with regard to heat-up rates, reliability etc., but this point is not under discussion at present. Having said all this, if one looks at the condensing boiler market, here we have an easier point of decision. As with the stainless steel versions with high turndown burners can show efficiencies of 98/99% Net, against a mild steel boiler with an economiser attached to the back showing efficiencies in the region of 94/95%  Net

With our burners fitted to a good boiler having a DIN standard combustion chamber, we would expect to achieve at high fire 10.5% CO₂ @ 2.5% O₂ and at low fire ( possibly 4:1 turndown this is dependent on boiler back end temperature ) something in the region of  9.5 to 10% CO₂ @ 3 to 4% O₂. With O₂ Trim these O₂ figures would drop to 1.2% at high fire and 2% at low fire. When we look at these figures with some of our closest competition at high fire they would show 9.5 to 10% CO₂ and 3 to 3.5% O₂,when looking at low fire many can only turn down to 2:1 showing CO2 figures in the region of 7% and O2 figures in excess of 5% transferring heat out of the boiler to the flue due to extravagant amounts of excess air being used to stabilise the flame.

When comparing the burners in the market I have only discussed the combustion efficiency. But the factor of reliability must come into the equation also, for example we have Weishaupt burners fitted and running which are 30 plus years old and one amazing burner fitted on a grain dryer in Aberdeen Scotland which is 37years old, still with its original motor and many more that were installed since I joined Weishaupt. In Ireland North and South there are many burners operating in a variety of applications being serviced by a team of experienced service engineers. This is why I believe we are the only burner company which will offer a rolling warranty over the life of our burners. 

We are entering a new exciting era where price will no longer be the criterion for purchase. The market will be directed toward efficiency, reliability and the use of multi fuel burners, due to the complex nature of fuel pricing. The UK Government has already introduced a move in this direction even though it can be argued misdirected with the Carbon Trust, Climate Change Levy and Enhanced Capital Allowance. The result of all this legislation and the cost of fuel will demand the use and implementation of higher levels of design for equipment and installation.

We have been preaching for a long time that the expensive component in a boilerhouse is the fuel not the equipment installed and over the last 4/5 years we have had the best turnover ever as people have started doing something about the problem of rising fuel costs. This increase in turnover has seen us involved in retrofit work, where in one projects we removed burners which were only four years old, our customers are showing payback periods of 9 to 12 months to pay back the cost of retrofitting our burners. In another Hospital project which had 2 x 1200kW boilers, operating with ON/OFF control cycling every 8mins. We replaced these burners with our new Digital models with modulating control now cycling 2/3 times in a 24hr operating period. The result of this retrofit saved the Hospital  33% in their fuel bill, paying the retrofit cost back in some 11 months.

There is a challenge a-foot to save carbon and in turn save our clients on their fuel bills and we are here ready and operating the challenge.

Sorry for the long windedness of this communication but trust I have conveyed some food for thought.

Henry M Kerr

General Manager Scotland & Ireland                                                             10^th April 2013