{"id":207723,"date":"2025-03-03T21:15:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T03:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/new-methane-flare-tech-efficiency-plus-combustion-stability"},"modified":"2025-03-03T21:15:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T03:15:27","slug":"new-methane-flare-tech-efficiency-plus-combustion-stability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/new-methane-flare-tech-efficiency-plus-combustion-stability","title":{"rendered":"New Methane Flare Tech: Efficiency Plus Combustion Stability"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA good ratio of oxygen to methane is key to combustion,\u201d said Justin Long.<\/p>\n

\n

Can methane flare burners be advanced to produce less methane? This is what a recent study<\/a> published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research<\/em> hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Michigan (U-M) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) developed a methane flare burner with increased combustion stability and efficiency compared to traditional methane flare burners. This study has the potential to develop more environmentally friendly burners to combat human-caused climate change, specifically since methane is a far larger contributor to climate change than carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n

For the study, the researchers used a combination of machine learning and novel manufacturing methods to test several designs of a methane flare burner that incorporates crosswinds to simulate real-world environments. The burner design includes splitting the methane flow in three directions while enabling oxygen flow from crosswinds to mix with the methane, enabling a much cleaner combustion. In the end, the researchers found that their design achieves 98 percent combustion efficiency, meaning it produces 98 percent less methane than traditional burners.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good ratio of oxygen to methane is key to combustion,\u201d said Justin Long<\/a>, who is a Senior Research Engineer at SwRI. \u201cThe surrounding air needs to be captured and incorporated to mix with the methane, but too much can dilute it. U-M researchers conducted a lot of computational fluid dynamics work to find a design with an optimal air-methane balance, even when subjected to high-crosswind conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA good ratio of oxygen to methane is key to combustion,\u201d said Justin Long. Can methane flare burners be advanced to produce less methane? This is what a recent study published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Michigan (U-M) and the Southwest Research [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,493,6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-climatology","category-robotics-ai","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}