Burners are used in a great variety of applications for heating water, warming homes, cooking food, and in a more general manner, generating and using heat. A great variety of burners are used in everyday life, including, but not limited to, water heaters, stoves, ovens, space heaters, process heaters, deep-fat or other fryers, and so forth. One problem in common with all burners is that residue tends to build up on the surfaces of the burners and associated parts.
There is usually little build-up in the areas of the burners that become very hot, such as the combustion chamber. There are additionally many burners which themselves do not become very hot, such as a venturi which combines fuel and air into a fuel/air mixture for combustion just outside the burner. However, the surrounding parts, such as those that supply fuel and oxygen, are susceptible to build-up of undesirable deposits. The problem is described in a paper published by the American Gas Association (AGA) Labs in 1960, entitled, “Minimizing Lint Stoppage of Atmospheric Gas Burner Ports.” Proposed solutions include filtering incoming air and operating the burner at a sufficiently high temperature that the lint-accumulating side of the burner inlet port stays hot enough to incinerate incoming lint when it strikes the port. See pp. 9-10 of the AGA report.
For example, in a typical atmospheric venturi-type burner using natural gas (primarily methane), a given volume of fuel may require as much as ten volumes of air for proper combustion. This means that a great volume of unfiltered air may pass through the venturi, or other burner, and may mean that many contaminants in the air may have an opportunity to accumulate dirt, lint, or other undesirable residue.
Typical atmospheric burners, and even many forced-draft burners, do not use filtered air. Therefore, a very large volume of air will pass through the burner and may include many impurities. For example, in a home kitchen or in a restaurant, the air may include very minor amounts of lint, dust, particulates, food vapors, oil vapors, grease vapors, and the like. While the concentration of such contaminants is small, their cumulative effect over periods of time may be great. These contaminants may deposit on the outer and inner surfaces of a burner, such as the inlet plumbing, the exterior of the burner, the inside of a venturi, and the like.
Alert owners and operators will recognize the need to clean these surfaces in order to keep clear the pathways for fuel and air or oxygen. Clean burners naturally tend to operate at a higher efficiency and will be more efficient in transferring heat from the burner to the load or object(s) which is being heated. If a burner could clean itself, it would relieve owners and operators from the necessity of having to stop heating operations in order to clean the burners. It would also help to insure that the burner operates at a high state of efficiency, and would thus at least potentially save energy and energy costs.