Hot Air Balloon Burner-Engineering

The goal of this design project is to accurately measure the combustion efficiency and emissions from an MK-32 burner that is used for hot air balloons. The design process will focus on improving the data acquisition system already being used, the Enerac 700, and looking for other alternatives for measuring efficiencies of an open system in order to get the most accurate combustion efficiency of the MK-32 burner. Milestones we are hoping to achieve this quarter are: Understanding the Enerac 700’s basis for its combustion efficiency, developing an independent process from the Enerac 700’s built in combustion efficiency calculation for verification, and understanding/verifying, after multiple experimental testing data results, why short flame bursts are more efficient than longer flame bursts.