A Method for Flame Flicker Frequency Calculation with the Empirical Mode Decomposition

The flame flicker is an important physical phenomenon associated with the characteristics of a combustion process. The flame flicker frequency is a parameter to evaluate the existence of the flame in the boiler. This paper presents a new method to calculate the flame flicker frequency with the empirical mode decomposition to the time-series of the detected flame signal. A flame monitoring system including a flame probe, signal processing circuit, data acquisition unit and PC-based signal processing software is used to get the data of the flame in the boiler. According to the empirical mode decomposition, the time-series of the flame signal is decomposed to a series of IMFs. The flicker frequency is obtained from the weighted average frequency of the instantaneous frequencies of IMFs. The result is tested in two industrial furnaces, the flame flicker frequency can be got in real-time.