Babington Airtronic Burner
NSN: 7310-01-442-8340
The World's Cleanest and Most Energy-Efficient Low capacity Distillate Fuel Burner
Overview
At the heart of every Babington appliance--the Tray Ration Heater, the Disaster Relief Mobile Kitchen Trailer, the Field Sanitation Unit—is the Babington Airtronic Burner—the world’s cleanest and most energy-efficient low capacity distillate fuel burner.
The Revolutionary Atomization Principle results in no smoke, no odor, no carbon monoxide
Subject of over a dozen patents, the Airtronic Burner employs a unique fuel-atomization technique designed to achieve the highest safety standards. This revolutionary approach to spraying liquids creates a Super-fine mist of uniform fuel droplets below the 10 micron range. This leads to near-perfect and highly efficient combustion, and enables the burner to operate from startup to shutdown without smoke, odor or carbon monoxide. It is the ONLY burner that burns any distillate fuel (diesel, JP-8, Kerosene…) efficiently, reliably, cleanly and safely.
No Smoke, No Odor, No Noxious fumes aka Stoichiometric combustion
In any combustion technology, complete combustion (that is capturing all the potential energy in a given fuel) is the goal. It is the measure of performance against which all burners are judged. This is called Stoichiometric combustion – the theoretical point of 100% efficiency where 100% of the energy in a given fuel is consumed.
This is important because greater efficiency means greater efficiency, of course, but it also means fewer harmful chemicals are produced. Chemicals such as CO (Carbon Monoxide), NOx (Nitric Oxide), NOx2 (Nitrogen Dioxide), SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide, soot, smoke and ash are the byproducts of incomplete combustion. These chemicals are harmful to the environment and should be minimized.
In short, the Babington Airtronic Burner achieves the highest combustion efficiencies and thereby the lowest emissions of pollutants and other noxious fumes.
Illustrations: At the core of the Airtronic Burner is the Babington Principle – the foundation of over 112 U.S. and foreign patents.
The advantage that the Babington Airtronic Burner has over traditional high pressure burners is its unique approach to liquid atomization. The Babington Airtronic Burner simply produces smaller (sub 10 micron) size particles compared to high pressure burners that typically produce a non uniform spray with a mass median diameter (MMD) of 50 microns. This is critical because the smaller the fuel particles, the higher the combustion efficiency.
On the left illustration, you can clearly see the difference between the Super-fine mist of fuel particles produced by the Babington Airtronic and the fuel stream produced by a nozzle from a traditional high pressure burner (on the right). The average droplet of fuel from a Babington Airtronic spray contains 1,000 times less fuel than the average droplet in the spray on the right. When they ignite, the droplets on the left burn completely – no unburned hydrocarbons are produced. This is why the Babington Airtronic Burner operates without smoke, odor, carbon monoxide or other harmful pollutants.
One-size-fits-all
The operational and performance characteristics of this, “one-size-fits-all” burner, centers around its ability to burn any distillate fuel efficiently, reliably and cleanly. Distillate fuel is a broad term for any one of the wide variety of fuels with boiling points above gasoline in the distillation of petroleum. This includes diesel, kerosene, heating oil and JP-8.
This makes training easier, reduces costs, requires only one operational manual, simplifies maintenance procedures and shortens procurement cycle times. The operational simplicity of the Airtronic allows rapid deployment, enhances overall system safety and provides more free time for the cooks to concentrate on meal preparation and serving. All of these features have a positive effect on morale from top to bottom. It also provides the commander with a logistical and tactical advantage in maneuver warfare.
The Airtronic burner was designed to satisfy the highest safety standards and to operate from startup to shutdown without smoke, odor or carbon monoxide. This is an absolute requirement at the low firing rates required to satisfy military field feeding and sanitizing needs and with any distillate fuel. No other commercially available burner can meet these requirements.
The operational deficiencies of conventional burners to fire reliably at firing rates below 0.5 GPH (70,000 BTU/HR) can be traced directly to the fuel spray nozzle limitation. At firing rates below 0.5 GPH the nozzle discharge orifice becomes so small that it is highly susceptible to clogging. The Airtronic burner has no nozzle and consequently no clogging problems and no lower limit with respect to firing rate. Instead of a nozzle, the Airtronic burner utilizes the exclusive and patented Babington Atomization Principle, a revolutionary approach to the spraying of liquids.
Track record of success operating in the harshest of conditions:
For nearly twenty years, the Babington Airtronic burner has been reliably performing in some of the harshest conditions where our client – the U.S. Military – operates. From desert sandstorms in Iraq and Afghanistan to temperature extremes in the North—the Babington Airtronic has operated in the coldest (-55°F) and hottest environments (140°F) and performed reliably, safely and efficiently.
Lowest firing rate can’t be approached by conventional burners.
Features
- High combustion efficiency at all firing rates
- Reliable performance over extended periods (e.g., 5000 hours)
- Single switch on/off operation
- Operational simplicity, rapid deployment and low power consumption
- Variable firing rates with a single dial and no parts change
- Operates without smoke, odor or carbon monoxide from start-up to shutdown
- Instantaneous ignition with low energy spark
- Multi-fuel capability [ DF-1, DF-2 (diesel), DF-M, JP-5, JP-8 and Kerosene]
- Tolerance to fuel contaminated with water and dirt
- High combustion efficiency regardless of fuel viscosity
- Low power consumption
- No preheat requirements even at ambient temperatures as low as -40°F
- Lightweight and compact design
- Compatible with virtually any type of heat exchanger
- Suitable for use with off-road military combat and support vehicles
- Tolerance to tilt, shock, and vibration
- Modular design promotes simple maintenance procedures
- Designed to satisfy the highest military and commercial safety standards
- Reliable performance from -55°F to +140°F
- Field tested by the U.S. Army at 53 degrees below zero, using Winter-grade diesel fuel; Lit reliably even after 24-hour cold soak
History
The Airtronic burner was developed in the late 1970s and introduced to the home heating industry in Europe in the early 1980s enjoying success and providing fuel savings to households from the very beginning.
As early as 1969, Rocketdyne, winner of the booster engine for the Space Shuttle program, licensed the Babington burner technology for its amazing combustion capabilities. Even then, long before the OPEC Oil embargo, concerns about oil supplies and climate change, engineers saw the potential in the technology for highly efficient, clean and safe combustion.
Roughly ten years later, Electro-Oil of Sweden and a division of Saab, partnered with Babington to develop an oil burner for the home heating market in Europe. By the mid-80s, the burner was commercialized and over 10,000 homes in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway become heated by the Babington Airtronic Burner…
It was introduced to the U.S. military in 1995 and is currently serving as the heat source for various Babington cooking and heating appliances.
The Babington Airtronic burner is now being used by a wide range of customers in commercial, governmental and military applications in Europe, Africa and Asia.