Bloom Engineering has had quite a journey over the past 88 years.
The company began as a small shop in Pittsburgh’s North Side in 1934 before moving to its current site in the South Hills of Pittsburgh in 1962.
This longtime IHEA member is named after founder Fred S. Bloom, who had ties to the steel industry. Bloom began making burners because he saw an immediate need for safer, more efficient and more reliable combustion equipment that could improve production capabilities.
Although Bloom Engineering focused solely on the steel industry during its early years, the company now provides custom-engineered solutions for heating processes in many sectors. For example, its regenerative burner systems are used throughout the world for secondary aluminum melting. Bloom Engineering also provides combustion equipment for industrial boilers, forges, thermal oxidizers, waste incinerators, air heaters and iron ore processing.
Regenerative burners
Single-ended radiant-tube burners
Over time, Bloom Engineering has grown into a global company with manufacturing centers in Germany – Bloom Engineering (Europa) GmbH; China – Bloom Combustion Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.; and India – Bloom Combustion (India) Private Ltd. In addition, it also owns Hotwork Combustion Technology Ltd. (HCT) and can provide spare parts for legacy HCT products along with select HCT designs that are now offered under the Bloom name.
Although Bloom has a manufacturing network throughout the world, the Pittsburgh, Pa., office serves as the group headquarters. The company does most of its new product development and testing in the Pittsburgh research-and-development laboratory and engineering department. In addition to approximately 175 direct employees (about 100 in the United States), Bloom contracts with representatives in Mexico, Brazil, Australia and South Korea.
High-temperature, high-efficiency, ultra-low-NOx and multi-fuel applications are Bloom’s specialty. The company has many product lines that display these abilities, but four particularly stand out: 1150/1650 regenerative burners; 1610 direct-fired, ultra-low-NOx burners designed for applications with preheated air and inputs above 4MMBtu/hour; 1500-S line of direct-fired, ultra-low-NOx burners designed for capacities below 4 MMBtu/hour; and 2370 high-efficiency, ultra-low-NOx recuperative radiant-tube burners.
Bloom has not stopped innovating since its inception. The company has been granted more than 65 U.S. patents, the latest of which was published this year. Bloom also provides products with an in-credible range of capacities. From 10,000 Btu/hour pilot burners to 400 million Btu/hour process heating burners, its product line covers a wide range of heating needs.
Above all else, Bloom is an engineering company. Manufacturing burners, fuel trains, control panels and other combustion equipment is part of what the company does, but its focus is to develop proper engineering solutions to solve customers’ problems. Because Bloom custom-engineers each product it supplies, the company can help its clients achieve optimal results from their heating equipment that might not have been possible using a standard product. This approach can be summed up by the words of Fred Bloom himself. “First, understand the customer’s problem. Then define it in terms that allow a calculated, engineering solution. Apply properly designed equipment in the correct arrangement so that the furnace will produce the desired results in terms of capacity and quality. Last, but not least, go back to the installation and make sure that the furnace is living up to what the calculations indicated it should.”
Throughout its nearly nine-decade history, Bloom has seen many changes in the industries it serves. Today, another big change being considered by many is a switch from fossil fuels to fuels that contain little or no carbon, such as hydrogen. Regardless of what the future holds, Bloom has gone ahead and tested most of its critical product lines on pure hydrogen. This includes the regenerative 1150/1650 burners, 1610 series and 2370 radiant-tube burners. With minor modifications, Bloom knows that its products can be designed for use with hydrogen and continue to achieve ultra-low-NOx emissions. Bloom is now ready to help design hydrogen-capable combustion systems.
From the pipe trains delivering the hydrogen to the burners that combust it, and combustion chambers that must be designed to work optimally with hydrogen’s heat release partners, Bloom plans to help its customers solve their combustion problems for many years to come.
Visit www.bloomeng.com for more information on Bloom Engineering.
Industrial Heating Equipment Association
859-356-1575 | www.ihea.org
All images provided by IHEA.
