Automation of the burner of a pirotubular boiler to improve the efficiency in the generation of steam

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe the automation developed by means of a programmable logic controller for the burner of a fire tube boiler, in order to improve the efficiency in the process of generating steam quantified through the percentage of oxygen generated. The implementation was developed under a control strategy based on the use of servomotors that allow to gradually open or close the solenoid valves that dose the amount of air and fuel; Considering that there are multiple elements, I limited the analysis to one of its main components, called the burner. After developing this automation, it was possible to demonstrate the decrease in the variability of the oxygen percentage in relation to the optimal or desired value in the boiler. The experimentally obtained data of the oxygen percentage, were subjected to a statistical analysis of dispersion, in which the value of the Pearson's correlation coefficient was determined, whose value was equal to 0.298; This result allowed to conclude that the degree of variability of the indicator in analysis with respect to time is very low, which means that the variable maintains a constant value, equal to the desired value, after automating the fire tube boiler.