Burner management system

A burner management system for an industrial gas appliance comprising a plurality of gas burners, the system comprising:

• one or more flame detectors each configured to perform flame detection of respective supervised burners among the plurality of burners, the plurality of burners comprising a first group of burners of equal capacity having at least one supervised burner and at least one non-supervised burner;
• a gas flow meter for measuring a cumulative fuel gas flow to the first group of burners;
• and
• a controller configured to:
• continuously receive an indication from the one or more flame detectors whether a flame for each of the at least one supervised burner is detected;
• receive the measured cumulative fuel gas flow from the gas flow meter;
• and
• determine a non-supervised burner status for the first group of burners based on the number of non-supervised burners with fuel gas flowing thereto,
• wherein the number of non-supervised burners with fuel gas flowing thereto is determined from the measurement of the cumulative fuel gas flowing to the first group of burners and a supervised burner status indicating the detection of the flame at the respective supervised burners, and
• wherein when the non-supervised burner status indicates an unsafe lighting condition the controller restricts the opening of a burner firing valve associated with any unlit non-supervised burner in the first group of burners, the unsafe lighting condition occurring when the number of non-supervised burners is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold number of burners while it is detected that the supervised burner is lit, the predetermined threshold number of burners is a number of burners for which an un-combusted amount of fuel gas flowing thereto corresponds to a concentration of fuel gas that is below a lower explosive limit of the concentration of fuel gas.