Furnace Burner Control Safeguard

[TimWilborne 108]

I am looking for something to replace one of our current burner controls with. Before I start I'll tell you I'm not too keen on messing with furnaces in general. I would rather build a 500 ton press than a gas grill. Too many worries about burns and explosions. But anyway here are the basics THIS is the basic unit. Ours is a dual burner system. Both burners use a common main valve output and ignition output. There are two flame rods for monitoring the flame. One off of each pilot. Pretty much when the controls get the signal to fire, it turns on the ignition output which opens the pilot valves and fires the igniters. At this point is must see a flame signal from both flame rods within around a second. If it does it opens the main burner. If it doesn't it just shuts off. Now here is my problem. With a two minute purge time and a window of 1 second window to see what is wrong when it lights, troubleshooting becomes quite a pain. For the last year it would take a notion just not to light. Ask the operator what's wrong and he say "Well sometimes you have to try it a few times to get it to light, it has to warm up a little " Sure enough before you could troubleshoot the problem it would light . After a year it final quit lighting and we found out one of the sensors just needed adjusted a little bit. Does anyone know of a system that instead of just shutting down would have set some type of fault to lead us in the right direction? It could be flashing LEDs, a communications port of some type, or would it be possible to parallel a PLC to the wires of the burner controls just to read there states if no one makes such a system. I just think there would have to be something better. I know Honeywell makes good combustion products but I'm having a time navigating their site.

[CNTRLFRK 0]

Fireye makes some good flame monitoring systems. Most will give you codes for a display for reason of failure and readings of 'flame signal strenth' so you can tell if the 'fireye' is beginning to fail, is dirty or aimed improperly. http://www.fireye.com

[Camel 1]

We use fireye too. Don't have many problems at all.

[TimWilborne 108]

Thanks. I am browsing their site now but I can't seem to find their product directory. Do they have one or do I have to call?

[Gerry 13]

I don't know if your problem has the bean counters anxious enough to spend the $$ for a "burner management system", but that is what I think you're looking for. Allen-Bradley make (or used to) a packaged PLC-based system. The AB system has FM approval, but the design is not that difficult - I built one from scratch ~25 years ago for a dual-fuel boiler - based on a 2/15. In my few encounters with burners and flame safety, the consensus has always been that flame rods are far more troublesome than UV "purple peepers". Edited 5 Jun 2006 by Gerry

[TimWilborne 108]

I'm not seeing one at AB, only their temperature controllers. Anyone know a link

[Gerry 13]

Go to the literature library solutions tab Look under Combustion Control

[TimWilborne 108]

This was one of the options I was thinking about, using a PLC to monitor the conditions, but I'm thinking that this may be a little more than what it would need. If I go this route I think I would just need the flame sensor amplifiers they are using. After that I could probably do the rest. I popped the cover off of what I'm using, not even a circuit board in it. Completely hardwired

[BobLfoot 302]

Not to put a bucket of water on your plans to use a PLC, but we just went thru two years of arguments and discussions where I now work. About a year and a half ago one controls engineer converted the boiler room with three boilers to PLC Control. He still used a honeywell burner control for flame detection and safety circuits but integrated the boiler synchronization with PLC. Now last month another Controls Engineer and a vendor retooled the controls yet again to please the nsurance people and supposedly meet ansi / osha guidelines. I'd move slowly and carefully before I cahnged much of anything.

[TimWilborne 108]

I don't want to use the PLC to control the burner, only to monitor the hardwired relays to determine what goes wrong when something does

[TimWilborne 108]

Did they put any monitoring when they reverted back? You got a link for your honeywell burner control?

[Mickey 71]

http://www.powerandheatsystems.com/honeywell.html http://www.boiler-burners.com/honeywell.htm

[Camel 1]

Take a crack at THIS link. You have to click on their "Markets Served" link to get a listing of their products.

[TimWilborne 108]

Thanks for the links. I'm going to call Fireye for a few clarifications I think I have seen that Honeywell unit in one of our furnaces. I'm going to do a little more looking this morning. The fact that I'm not sure if it is one of my panels or not tells me it hasn't given too much trouble. That might be enough to sell me Thanks TW

[TimWilborne 108]

Ok looks like I have several Honeywell 7800 Series RM7890A. Never head a lick of trouble out of one of them. From what I understand Honeywell only makes single burner controls and you must wire two of them together to make a dual burner control. Anyone have experience doing this?

[TimWilborne 108]

Going back to the Fireye has anyone used the MB series shown HERE

[geniusintraining 2]

I have both and have had good luck with both (Fire eye and Honeywell), the thing that I don't like is all of the different modules, you would think that they could come up with one that was configurable, not like a lego set that you snap 20 pieces together and one more you can check terminal points with it running, its hard to put jumpers on it with the lugs covered Ray burner is the manufacture of my systems you may want to check with them..

[TimWilborne 108]

Thanks for the info Genius

[mfkuss 0]

The company that I work for primarily makes thermal and catalytic oxidizers. I work with burner controls all the time. We always use AB PLC's to control our machines, but use a Flame Safety Programmer for all of the burner safety controls. In the past we always used either the Honeywell or the Fireye with no problems. But in the last year we have had about 8 to 10 bad Fireyes. Fireye has looked at these FSP's and said there is nothing wrong with them, but we continue to have unexplained "Flame Failures". When replaced with a Honeywell FSP, the problem disappeared. The only problem is, Honeywell can be a little pricier. We have started using Eclipse Combustion's Veriflame FSP for our programmers and really like them. Simple control, easy to wire up, etc... Hope this helps some.... MK