Home made log burner

[marcusthehat]

I'd better phone the Special Branch and grass you up.

 

[Stock]

So another update is due, above is a graph of the most successful run we had last Saturday.We started with the pump running fro 10 seconds every 5 minutes but within a short time we found that this was too much oil entering the combustion chamber resulting in partial smothering of the flame, further thought leads us to think we do not have enough thermal mass built in to the base of the combustion can so when the cold oil entered it reduced the gasification process.
We then reduced the pump run time and increased the frequency which helped but caused a fluctuation in the flame pattern with a noticeable change after 140 seconds of the pump switching off.
We sought to keep the oil flow at 2.4 l per hour but we found that running the pump for 5 seconds every 2 min we got a very even flame with little or no black smoke after an oil charge and reasonably consistent temperatures.
The time worked flawlessly and once we worked out how to program it with the pigeon-english instructions and the lack of vital information.
Our next step is to continue testing with the small combustion can while we consider how to increase it's size as I feel it too small. I also want to consider how to increase the thermal mass to allow greater volumes of oil to be burnt. My research indicates that @ 3 l/hr the stove is generating 30kw of heat. Also the heat is instantaneous with heat emitting from the heat exchanger within 3min of fire up a process that also needs to be streamlined.........................

Ohh and if some one does call the special branch they will suffer the same fate as any other branch that came into the yard............

 

[Stock]

Short vid of it working on Friday night

 

[Stock]

Between project at the moment and junior is on mid term so we decided to make / modify the combustion can.

The new oil inlet (can is upside down)

We had to lift the heat exchanger. So tomorrow it the installation of the air distribution pipe
and connect up the oil supply finish the top and fire it up.....................

 

[Stock]

So it been an absolute crapper of a day here weather wise but the testing continued. We have the new combustion can in operation and by now have nearly 30 odd litres of waste oil burnt. We also had to rejig the fuel settings and as the day was as previously said spent some couple of hours on excel generating a table for the settings time the pump is off to volume pumped to burn rate per hour etc

LH colum is the total volume burned per hour, top line is pump run time, and the main area is the time off in seconds. So
for 4500ml/hr one can run the pump for 1 sec every 24, or for 6500ml a setting may be 3 sec pump on with 50 off.

Saturday at the stove face...........

On another note we have found some short comings, the air distributor in the combustion can is not allowing enough air in and we need to make a new top for the can.

more to follow.........................

 

[Stock]

Jeezuz better pack it up so moderators please delete the thread............................................

 

[marcusthehat]

Stock, my attempt at funny was not meant to offend, comment therefore deleted, regards
mth
the frustrated pyromanic

 

[Stock]

Stock, my attempt at funny was not meant to offend, comment therefore deleted, regards
mth
the frustrated pyromanic

Ahhhh will ya wind your neck back in, if you are going to wind some one up be prepared to have it back.......

put too much work in to have it deleted in to cyber space. Now if no one else is interested then we'll let it be harvested by the archives.................................

 

[marcusthehat]

An there I understood the Irish to have a sense of humour and enjoy a bit of banter.
I apparently got that wrong.
Regards, again,
marcus
the misunderstood.

 

[Stock]

An there I understood the Irish to have a sense of humour and enjoy a bit of banter.
I apparently got that wrong.
Regards, again,
marcus
the misunderstood.

You're grand lad...........................................

 

[milkloss]

Ahhhh will ya wind your neck back in, if you are going to wind some one up be prepared to have it back.......

put too much work in to have it deleted in to cyber space. Now if no one else is interested then we'll let it be harvested by the archives.................................

Watching with interest here

 

[Greenbeast]

love it! my kind of project for sure

love the idea of a waste oil fired forge ha ha

 

[marcusthehat]

Well seeing as I retire next Tuesday, I shall have more time to tinker,
I got me a shed already, but it needs heat, which is why I was watching this thread with genuine interest.
Since I figgered to build myself some sort of oil burner.
So keep up the good work.
mth

 

[marcusthehat]

Watching with interest here

ding ding!
"Seconds out" popcorn munching interest like?

 

[Stock]

Well we're back again, was reading some where that the more air you can get in the better. What we are hoping to achieve is a blue flame, so some additional mods were done.

This is the air distribution pipe in side the combustion can, the holes are 6 mm but we drilled them out to 8mm.

Didn't have any real effect on acquiring the elusive blue flame......................

We also fecked around with the fuel volumes no difference except to the heat out put.................
So reasoning that more air is better we borrowed the neighbour's leaf blower

This was a bad idea in hind sight....... proved difficult to light, but when we did get it going with some diesel and petrol it went in to lunatic mode....
Within 3 min it was glowing red then is settled down once the initial fuel pond burnt.................well i wasn't prepared for what happened next, as the oil was pumped in it vapourised and exploded lifting the can top, we adjusted the flow rated to try and stop it but it made it worse so after 5-6 min we shut it down.
Back to the drawing board................................

 

[Clive]

Why can I see this thread getting nominated for a Darwin Award ?

 

[marcusthehat]

Mayby I shoulda phoned da Special Branch after all!

 

[Stock]

We got blue flame.............................

 

[Stock]

So anyone ready for an update............
We had an interesting time since last here. I tasked the junior member with fashioning the control box and he made a dab job of it to give credit where it is due..........

We remade the air distribution bar and added some additional holes of a small diameter.The main reason for not having the correct flame pattern was the lack of an oil pool in the bottom of the stove.
The photo doesn't do justice but you can see the gasification .taking place.

On the downside we had some issues with water. Was given some "good" clean oil from two different sources. Both drums were contaminated with water, one was the consistency of salad cream when we got halfway down the drum. We boiled off the water and burned it. We set up the second drum having been assured it was safe and let the stove off to it own devices.
Was summoned to the leanto when a cloud of steam was emitted from the flue. Drained off the water once the unit had cooled decanted the oil and burnt it. It was maddening to say the least, so now we are going to look at making a system to prevent future occurrences
Another thing that we found was that the above chart is incorrect with regards to flow rates.
We set up the pump and cycled it for two half hour sets and it worked out at 17ml per second. so at present I'm creating a new flow chart or trying to on excel ................

so I think the equation is =(number of Seconds per Hour)divided by ( Pump Run time + pump Idle time)= (nos of cycles per hour )x 17 =flow rate.

Any Ideas?

 

[tinman]

If you pre heat the oil to about 90deg c it will flow alot more consistently. Something like a kettle element with a thermostat control.
Only need about a 2 litre pre heat tank then some auto top up method.