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(11) | EP 0 428 373 A3 |
| (12) | EUROPEAN PATENT APPLICATION |
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| (54) | Acoustical burner control system and method |
| (57) An acoustically operated burner control system [1] for optimally controlling a flow
of air and fuel into a flame producing combustion burner [3] throughout a range of
firing rates is disclosed. The system includes separate valve assemblies for modulating
the flow of air and fuel into a burner, [3] a microphone [103] for generating an electrical
signal indicative of the intensity of all sounds generated by the combustion flame
having a frequency in excess of about 10 kHz, and a controller [43] including a programmable
microprocessor electrically connected to both the air and fuel valve assemblies [45,58]
and the microphone [103]. The system further includes a wave guide [105] for remotely
acoustically coupling the microphone [103] to the combustion flame [15] in order to
isolate the microphone from both heat and corrosive combustion products. Prior to
the operation of the system, empirically-derived sound intensities associated with
optimum stoichiometric combustion and minimum pollution are entered into the memory
of the microprocessor. During operation, the microprocessor equates the sound intensity
sensed by the microphone with the optimum sound intensity in its memory by regulating
the position of the air and fuel valve assemblies [45,58]. |