NOx Nox Who's There?

Cracked. Cracked who? Cracked heat exchanger. OK – not the funniest knock knock joke – especially if it is YOUR furnace. Low NOx emission inserts are causing pre-mature furnace heat exchanger failures. You can read more about this at http://ncidavid.blogspot.com/

I want to talk a bit about what NOx is, why an insert can help reduce NOX emissions, and why NOx inserts can cause trouble. NOx is a generic term for nitrogen compounds NO and NO₂ which are formed when nitrogen is present during combustion at high temperatures. These are major contributors to air pollution and acid rain. Laws requiring reduction of NOx emissions in areas of particularly high air pollution (California) have required the development of low NOx furnaces. Since the air is 78% nitrogen, any combustion process that uses air for its oxygen source has lots of nitrogen present. NOx will only form at high temperatures, but the burners in gas furnaces are definitely hot enough to form NOx. One quick and easy solution is to put something in the flame to cool it down. NOx rods and NOx inserts work by cooling the burner flame temperature, thus reducing the NOx emissions. These NOx rods or inserts are typically metal. Stick some metal in the flame, cool it down, and you have a low NOx furnace. The problem is that metal held directly in a flame eventually burns up. It does not burn quickly, but it does burn. That is why we don’t want the furnace flames actually touching the heat exchanger. The heat exchanger material cannot withstand direct flame contact, called impingement. NOx inserts stick inside a tubular heat exchanger. Unfortunately, the insert eventually degrades from being exposed to the flames. In some cases, it can twist or deform and change the flame pattern. This can cause the burner flames to touch the sides of the heat exchanger, and the heat exchanger fails prematurely. Before the heat exchanger fails, the furnace will be producing higher levels of carbon monoxide and carbon particulates because of the change in flame pattern. So you trade one type of pollution for another. If you work on furnaces with NOx inserts, be sure to check them – and watch the flames to see that they are not touching the heat exchanger. If you work in an area that does not require the NOx inserts, you can solve the problem by removing them. However, now you are increasing the amount of air pollution the furnace produces. Low NOx burner technology does exist – where NOx reduction is achieved through burner design, but I don’t know if there are any true low NOx burners for residential appliances. Keep an eye out for furnaces with low NOx inserts. It might be worth a few extra moments to wath the flame pattern and measure the CO in the flue gas. Abnormally high CO might indicate a developing problem.