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SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwire) -- 09/27/12 -- ClearSign Combustion Corporation (NASDAQ: CLIR), an emerging leader in combustion and emissions control technology for industrial, commercial and utility markets, reported today that it has successfully demonstrated its proprietary Electrodynamic Combustion Control™ (ECC™) technology operating in a system with a thermal output of 1,000,000 Btus per hour.

According to ClearSign CEO Rick Rutkowski, the scale-up milestone represents a major step in the path to commercializing the company's technology and comes several months ahead of schedule.

"1,000,000 Btu/hr is widely accepted as a standard for demonstrating a commercially relevant scale of industrial burner technology," Rutkowski explained. "Indeed, there are many commercial burners that operate in the range of several hundred thousand Btu/hr to 1,000,000 Btu/hr. Our original target was to demonstrate ECC technology operating at this commercially relevant scale by the end of this year. Not only have we met our goal of 1,000,000 Btu/hr, but we were able to mark this achievement earlier than expected.

"Our goal is to apply our ECC technology to enable combustion systems that deliver a mix of improved energy efficiency and/or process throughput combined with superior environmental performance," Rutkowski added. "Our earlier demonstrations have already attracted significant attention from prospective customers and from several leading combustion system OEMs and engineering and construction firms who have expressed interest in teaming with ClearSign to bring ECC technology to market. I believe this latest demonstration is going to be greeted with enthusiasm by prospective partners and customers in several market segments."

"In June of this year, we demonstrated that a flame can be stabilized and anchored at a selected location by using ClearSign's ECC technology to dramatically accelerate the rate of combustion in a system with a high momentum flame and a thermal output of 400,000 Btu/hr," said ClearSign Chief Technology Officer, Joe Colannino. "We have now successfully scaled this flame attachment effect to our demonstration scale of 1,000,000 Btu/hr.

"In August of this year we used this technique to enable a burner design that was able to reduce emissions of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) to extremely low levels of 15 parts per million. Our design approach suggests that we may be able to substantially simplify the design of both burners and burner control systems while achieving significant improvements in flame stability when compared to conventional low NOx and ultra-low NOx burners. Flame stability is commercially important because it can translate directly to meaningful savings in fuel consumption for the many industrial scale systems that utilize these burners.

"Moreover, the novel design of ClearSign's test burner requires no use of flue gas recirculation (FGR) fans and allows for operation with minimal levels of oxygen or excess air. These improvements further compound gains in energy efficiency and savings in capital and operating costs."

The Council of Industrial Boiler Owners (CIBO) 2005 survey indicates that there are approximately 163,000 package boilers in the US inventory. A large and growing percentage of these are regulated by the EPA and regional air quality management districts for emissions of NOx and make use of low NOx or ultra-low NOx burners to meet regulated emissions standards. Pending regulatory deadlines in California for newly tightened NOx standards may lead to substantially increased costs for many system operators.