Optimal design and inverse analysis of industrial combustion devices

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Rising fuel costs and the impact of fossil fuel combustion on the environment is driving research into new types of burners, boilers, and process furnaces. These devices are traditionally designed by trial-and-error, where the engineer first guesses a design (usually based on an existing device) and then manually adjusts it using his or her experience and intuition until process-specific requirements are satisfied. While the outcome may be satisfactory it is rarely optimal, however, since the complexity of combustion makes an intuitive "feel" for how the design parameters affect the system's performance illusive to the designer. Moreover, since this process relies exclusively on existing devices and the engineer's prior experience, this process suppresses any possibility of identifying novel solutions to these design problems.