Offices: The Netherlands Leeghwaterstraat 21 2628 CA Delft Tel.: +31 15 278 2907 Germany Weenermoorer Str. 193 26826 Weener Tel.: +49 4953 922 969 Consultancy for Heat Transfer and Fluid Dynamics CFD makes fluid dynamics visible. We solve every Flow problem. The TOTAL group is a global player in the petrochemical industry.  This group has been borned out of two successful  mergers with  the Belgium oil company Petrofina and ELF Aquitaine.   In various plants in Antwerp (Belgium) vast amounts of water  vapour are produced by oil fired burners. These burners are fed  with air through a large network of air supply channels, in which  the flowrate of the air for the different burners is manipulated and  controlled by different types of valves and louvers. However some  burners shut down, when the system setup is changed. In  particular this happens during the start-up phase of the plant.   FlowMotion has therefore been asked to look for the reasons for  this costly malfunction. To get a deeper insight in the fluid  dynamical effects within the system velocity and static pressure  measurements have been performed during the preliminary phase  of the project. The measurement points have been set at fluid  dynamical critical positions  the channels.   With the help of the measurement data flow  separation regions and vortices could have been  found, which are disadvantageous for the homo-  geneity of the air supply for the burners. To  maximize the accuracy of the investigation of the  hidden flow in the air supply network the  experimental data have been validated  with  analytical relations and simplified flow simulations  (CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics).    Only by this combination of analytical, experi-  mental and numerical methods sufficient know-  ledge could have been obtained to predict the  behaviour of the entire system for various working  situations, which led to a modification of the  control routines for the valves and louvers. Since  then the number of malfunctions in the water  vapour production has been decreased signi-  ficantly. Breathless Oil-Burners Fluctuations in the air supply of oil burners TOTAL / FINA www.total.com experimental research in the pipeline system