Tomsk Scientific Center of SB RAS has manufactured unique infrared gas burners for the National Central University (Taiwan)

Scientists at the Tomsk Scientific Center of SB RAS have developed highly efficient infrared gas burners that are superior to well-known world analogues. The efficiency of generating infrared emission is twice as high as that of other similar burners. The burners developed by Tomsk researchers can be used in the manufacture of advanced heat engineering equipment, such as gas hot water and steam boilers, as well as efficient flow water heaters. Foreign partners from Asia have shown interest in the infrared gas burners developed at TSC SB RAS. The burners were ordered and shipped to the leading university of Taiwan, National Central University, which is actively developing a number of programs to work with business partners to implement innovative technologies.

“NiAl-based intermetallic compounds have proven to be first-class high-temperature materials, but previously they were widely used only in aviation and rocketry”, says Anatoly Maznoy, Senior Researcher at the TSC SB RAS, one of the burner developers. “We applied these alloys for an important civilian purpose by developing a new type of infrared cylindrical burners. The key element of the new burners, the porous emitter, is obtained using self-propagating high-temperature synthesis. The key point of this technology is that the product of the desired shape with the necessary chemical composition and pore structure is formed during combustion of a powder compact.

Many other promising technologies, such as 3D printing, are not suitable for this due to various reasons. The use of the new material made it possible to provide the quasi-steady burning of gas fuel in the internal combustion mode, previously not used in practice, which improved the heat exchange of combustion products with the porous emitter of the burner and greatly increased the efficiency of IR flux generation. At the same time, the emission of harmful substances such as nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide meet the strict international environmental standards.

Taiwanese partners showed interest in the burners developed at the Tomsk Scientific Center of SB RAS back in 2019, when Lead Researcher Alexander Kirdyashkin and Anatoly Maznoy presented it at the largest international forum in the field of combustion (12th Asia-Pacific Conference on Combustion, Fukuoka, Japan). Steven Shi, professor at the National Central University, talks about it:

“I read all the articles that were published by the Tomsk scientists in high-ranking journals, because this burner has good prospects for implementation. In our country, a lot of attention is now paid to energy-saving technologies. The Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan) oversees a special national program, including the development of new high-efficiency heat engineering equipment and reduction of harmful emissions. A group of scientists from my university is working on a project to obtain water heaters, in which we plan to use the burners developed by our colleagues from the Tomsk Scientific Center of SB RAS”.

The scientists from the two countries plan to continue cooperating on joint projects and find an industrial partner for mass production of new generation water heaters using the burners developed at the Tomsk Scientific Center of SB RAS.