Thermal Synergy builds calibration software and adaptive control systems that optimize industrial combustion equipment around its actual fuel chemistry and atmospheric operating envelope — not the broad factory compromise it shipped with.
Discuss Your Application See the ScienceTypical absolute electrical-efficiency gain available from site-specific calibration on raw well gas
Reduction in fuel energy consumed per generated kWh
Potential recovery on highly variable or diluted gas streams currently forcing conservative derating
Continuous-duty assets where every fraction of a point compounds over thousands of operating hours
Combustion optimization is governed by measurable physics: the chemistry of the fuel, the density of the air it burns in, and the thermal limits of the machine burning it. We characterize all three — then write the control code that exploits them.
Pure methane burns at roughly 17.2:1 by mass — but no two produced-gas streams are alike. Ethane, propane, CO₂, N₂ and H₂S content shift the stoichiometric point, the equivalence ratio, and the entire fuel curve. We calculate it for the gas you actually have.
The Wobbe Index describes fuel interchangeability through a fixed fuel system — but identical Wobbe numbers can still burn differently. We calibrate on full gas composition: LHV, HHV, molecular weight, flame speed and adiabatic flame temperature.
Inlet temperature, absolute barometric pressure and humidity set the mass of air available for combustion. A prairie winter and a summer heat wave are different machines. Our calibrations track the real atmospheric envelope instead of a fixed correction.
Exhaust oxygen and emissions data close the loop. The controller continuously trims fuel mass flow against measured combustion temperature, exhaust temperature and emissions — holding the optimum as conditions drift.
Optimization means operating close to — never past — real limits: combustion and exhaust temperature, shaft speed, compressor surge margin, combustor stability, heat-exchanger temperature, NOx and CO. Known limits, fully used.
The target is never simply maximum power. It is minimum fuel energy consumed per useful output — electrical kWh, steam, or process heat — while maintaining acceptable emissions, reliability and component life.
Modern fuel-flexible equipment is engineered to safely accept an enormous range of gases and environments — heating values spanning 7:1, high CO₂, sour gas, altitude, temperature extremes. That flexibility is exactly what makes a universal factory calibration a compromise at every single site.
This is a software and controls discipline built on combustion science — not a parts business. We deliver calibration code, control strategy and documented, measurable results.
Gas composition analysis, LHV/HHV, Wobbe Index, stoichiometric AFR, molecular weight, plus the site's real inlet-temperature, pressure and humidity envelope.
Fuel curves, equivalence-ratio targets, expected flame temperature and mass-flow requirements computed for the actual gas — across the full seasonal atmosphere.
Fuel-flow, combustion-temperature and load strategies written and tuned against every hard limit: temperature, speed, surge margin, stability, emissions, capacity.
Controlled testing against baseline. Exhaust O₂ and emissions feedback hold the calibration on target, with full data logging and a documented efficiency delta.
fuel composition × Wobbe / LHV × inlet temp × baro pressure × humidity × requested load → optimum fuel mass flow → equivalence ratio → combustion temp → output
Anywhere a gaseous fuel is burned for power or heat, the same stoichiometric and thermodynamic principles decide how much of that fuel becomes useful output.
Wellhead, associated-gas and flare-gas generation is the clearest case for site-specific calibration: permanently installed machines burning highly variable raw gas that a factory calibration can only survive, never exploit. Per-well characterization of gas chemistry and atmosphere lets fuel, temperature and load strategies be optimized around the actual installation — more electricity from a finite gas stream, less flaring, and generation capability that extends as well production declines.
Combined heat and power plants live or die on heat rate. Calibrating combustion to the delivered gas and local atmosphere raises total-cycle efficiency on both the electrical and thermal side.
Excess-air optimization against real fuel chemistry and stack O₂ feedback cuts fuel consumption in steam plants, refineries and process heating without touching the burner hardware.
Low and variable heating values, high CO₂ dilution, shifting composition — the hardest fuels benefit most. Adaptive calibration keeps engines and turbines stable and efficient as the gas moves.
Pipeline compression runs continuously on the very gas being transported. Site calibration of the drivers reduces fuel gas consumed per unit of throughput, hour after hour.
Cement, lime, metals and industrial drying operations burn enormous volumes of gas at fixed sites — precisely the condition under which site-specific stoichiometric calibration pays.
Gas that would otherwise be flared carries near-zero fuel cost — but every efficiency point converts more of a finite, declining stream into revenue-generating power instead of waste heat.
A single percentage point — 32% to 33% electrical efficiency — looks small on paper. It is approximately a 3% reduction in fuel energy consumed for every kWh generated.
On continuous-duty equipment running thousands of hours per year, that difference compounds into a substantial fuel, emissions and output number. And where the fuel is a finite well or flare stream, higher efficiency means more sellable energy extracted from every cubic foot before the resource declines.
Thermal Synergy was built on more than a decade of professional combustion-calibration work: characterizing fuels, mapping fuel and ignition curves, dialing equivalence ratios, and refining closed-loop control strategies across thousands of individual calibrations on high-precision engine-management platforms.
That discipline — measure the fuel, measure the air, model the burn, write the code, verify with data — transfers directly to industrial combustion. The machines are larger and the fuels are rawer, but the physics is identical: stoichiometry, air density, flame temperature, and thermal limits decide efficiency.
We are a software and controls firm. We don't sell burners, turbines or engines — we make the ones you already own burn their fuel properly.
Whether it's a wellhead generator on raw gas, a CHP plant chasing heat rate, or a process line burning more than it should — send us the gas analysis and the site, and we'll tell you what's on the table.
info@thermalsynergy.com