Typical absolute electrical-efficiency gain from site-specific calibration on raw well gas
Reduction in fuel energy consumed per generated kWh
Documented fuel savings from excess-air optimization on industrial boilers
Continuous-duty assets where every fraction of a point compounds over thousands of operating hours
Every gas-fired machine ships with a calibration written for a fleet — conservative everywhere, optimal nowhere. Ours is a simple business: we find the performance that compromise left behind, and we hand it back with the data to prove it.
Large-frame turbines are sold out into 2031 and new capacity runs ~$3,000/kW. Power demand is setting records. There is no fast way to buy megawatts — only fast ways to recover them.
Fleet-average calibrations, stale ambient corrections, static derates for worst-case fuel, unmanaged degradation — each one quietly converts capability you paid for into margin nobody uses.
We characterize your fuel and site, recalibrate against the machine's real limits, and validate against baseline with full data logs. The same discipline cuts trips, hot-section wear and inspection frequency — efficiency and repair avoidance from one program.
The first step is a free fuel-data review: send a gas analysis and a month of operating data, and we'll tell you what's recoverable — with the reasoning shown. The findings are yours either way.
Strip the jargon away and the entire discipline is one sentence: measure the fuel and the air the machine is actually getting, and control the burn for those conditions — not the average conditions it was shipped for. Everything below is just the instrumentation, the math and the code that make that sentence true.
Every fuel needs an exact quantity of air to burn completely. Too little and you waste fuel out the exhaust; too much and you heat air for nothing. Pure methane wants about 17.2:1 by mass — but ethane, propane, CO₂ and H₂S in real gas all move that number. Lambda (λ) is simply "how far from perfect" the mixture is, and it defines the safe window between misfire on the lean side and knock or NOx on the rich side. We compute it for the gas you actually burn.
Two different gases flowing through the same orifice can deliver different amounts of energy. The Wobbe Index predicts exactly how much — which means when the gas supply drifts, the machine silently re-tunes itself without anyone touching a control. A Wobbe swing from 48 to 54 MJ/m³ pushes a lean-burn engine from λ 2.0 to 1.78: hotter, dirtier, closer to knock. We correct for it before the flame notices.
Methane number tells you how hard you can push a fuel before it fights back. It works like octane: methane scores 100, hydrogen 0, and heavier hydrocarbons drag the score down. High-compression engines want MN ≥ 80; real field gas often can't deliver it. Below the design number the machine must knock, retard timing, or derate — unless the calibration was built for the actual fuel from the start.
Cold air simply contains more oxygen than hot air. Altitude thins it, humidity displaces it. The machine can only burn the air the atmosphere actually delivers — so a −30 °C prairie morning and a +30 °C afternoon are two different machines, tens of kilowatts apart. We calibrate to the measured seasonal envelope, not a one-size correction curve.
Whatever the intent was, the exhaust reports what actually happened. Stack O₂ says how much excess air went through. CO says where the flame went too lean or ran out of time. NOx says where it ran too hot. Feed-forward from gas data sets the operating point; feedback from the exhaust holds it there while fuel, load and weather drift.
Every machine has real limits — temperature, speed, surge, knock, emissions — and factory calibrations park a long way from all of them, everywhere, forever. Site calibration measures where the limits actually are for your fuel and your climate, and operates confidently close to them. Inside that space, one objective: minimum fuel per unit of useful output.
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, methane number, stoichiometric AFR, molecular weight, plus the site's real inlet-temperature, pressure and humidity envelope.
Fuel curves, equivalence-ratio targets, expected adiabatic 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, knock 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
Free introductory call → fixed-fee exploration → milestone-based calibration program → ongoing retainer. Every deliverable is yours at every gate. The engagement process →
HOW WE CONNECTGE Mark VIe, Woodward, Ovation, Ignition, AVEVA PI and the rest of your control room — read-only first, versioned deployments with rollback always. Systems & integration →
WHAT WE CALIBRATEMicroturbines to utility frames, wellhead recips to medium-speed engines — searchable by manufacturer, model, fuel and duty. The full equipment list →
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. Each industry page below goes deep on the specific combustion problems and what site calibration recovers.
Turbine calibration is the center of our practice — and the timing has never mattered more. Manufacturer backlogs exceed 100 GW, large-frame lead times run 4–7 years, and new capacity costs ~$3,000/kW. When you cannot buy a turbine, efficiency recovered from installed machines is the cheapest capacity on earth. And because firing temperature, combustion dynamics and trips drive the maintenance clock, the same calibration preserves hot-section life and pushes out inspections — repair avoidance in a market where parts and outage slots are as backlogged as the machines. We calibrate simple-cycle, combined-cycle, aeroderivative and wellhead-class turbines around their actual fuel, site atmosphere and duty cycle.
Turbine calibration practice → The Turbine Supercycle market brief →
Wellhead, associated and flare-gas generation on raw produced gas — methane number, Wobbe drift, sour gas, and the derate a factory calibration forces on every difficult fuel.
Read the engineering brief → Power & HeatHeat rate, spark spread and total fuel utilization — lean-premix combustion, the CO/NOx tradeoff, lean blowout margin and part-load turndown on the loads you actually run.
Read the engineering brief → Process IndustriesExcess air, stack loss and O₂ trim — why most boilers drift 40–80 points of excess air across the firing range, and the 2–5% of fuel that disciplined combustion control recovers.
Read the engineering brief → RenewablesCO₂-diluted, contaminant-laden, composition-drifting fuel — the hardest gas there is, and the clearest case for adaptive, composition-aware combustion calibration.
Read the engineering brief → MidstreamCompressor stations burn the product they move. Brake-specific fuel consumption at the real torque/speed operating island — fuel gas per unit of throughput, hour after hour.
Read the engineering brief → Other ApplicationsCement, lime, metals, industrial drying and flare-gas recovery all run on the same stoichiometric physics. Burning gas at a fixed site? The science applies. Talk to us.
Start a conversation →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.
Meet the principal — two decades of calibration, verified to −44 °C →
Send a gas analysis and a month of operating data — wellhead generator, turbine fleet, CHP plant or process line. We'll tell you what's recoverable, show the reasoning, and put a number on it. The findings are yours either way; no black boxes, no obligation.
info@thermalsynergy.com