Regenerative Burner
A regenerative burner captures heat from a furnace's exhaust gases in a ceramic media bed, then uses that stored heat to preheat incoming combustion air. Working in alternating pairs, the burners recover a large share of flue-gas heat and sharply cut fuel use.
Regenerative burners operate in pairs that cycle every few seconds. While one burner fires, the other draws hot exhaust through a packed bed of ceramic media that absorbs and stores the heat. The roles then reverse: combustion air is drawn through the now-hot bed and preheated close to furnace temperature before firing. This high-recovery preheating raises combustion efficiency dramatically and is widely used in steel reheat furnaces, forging and glass melting.