Brookhaven National Laboratory is the country's leading researcher for the latest developments in oil heat technology. The following report discusses some
possibilities for oil-fired burners.
Currently, almost all oil burners used for residential and commercial buildings applications have pressure atomizing-type burners. For small units, these have one, fixed firing rate. For larger commercial building applications, there may be two or three firing rates achieved through some combination of control of pump pressure and/or multiple nozzles.
On the small end of the spectrum, the minimum firing rate is practically limited to about 20.5 kW (or 0.5 gallons per hour). At firing rates lower than this, industry experience has shown that blockage of the small nozzle slots reduces reliability to an unacceptable level.