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Topics - Harry

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Waste Motor Oil / Now I'm not struggling with it....
« on: March 01, 2010, 12:55:21 pm »
Referring you to my previous post and hoping the link works..

http://wasteoilheaterforum.com/index.php?topic=81.msg326;topicseen#new

Now that this is working....

I was thinking that a good way to help improve both the burn efficency and the efficiency of heat extraction, might be to fit an 1/8" thick steel plate somewhere near the mid height of the combustion chamber (AKA the gas bottle). A steel plate of a little smaller diameter than the internal diameter of the chamber, with an hole in the centre  to allow the air inlet tube to fit through, perhaps dished so the edges are higher than the centre.

The idea is to force the flame out to the metal of the gas bottle, form a secondary burn chamber at the top and perhaps introduce a separate supply of air to the secondary chamber. Since resolving my earlier problem, I notice it is now producing a small amount of smoke and I thought this modification might resolve this.

Comments welcome on the likelihood of it working, if you please.

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Waste Motor Oil / I'm struggling with a DIY burner
« on: February 18, 2010, 12:03:51 pm »
Hi All,

I quite new to this subject, absolutely new to the forum and trying to get an homemade burner working - based on this one - http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me11.html

Mine is a smaller version, I'm only trying to heat my home workshop and garage. I have used an old steel butane bottle,   12" diameter x 20" tall (excluding the valve). To it I have fixed a 3.5" square flue close to the perimeter of the top of the bottle, coming out at a small angle to the vertical and protruding a little way at one side into the stove (like a scoop) of 10' feet total lenth. For an air intake I fitted a 3" diameter pipe vertically at the top centre of the bottle, to this I have just added an adjustable intake damper. Down the centre of the air pipe I have an 8mm pipe dripping oil down onto the burner plate.

On one side of the bottle I cut a hinged door, soon to be fitted with a mica window. For the burner I mounted a 5.25 diam x 1.25 aluminium block with the top turned into a dish roughly as per the desciption on the above web site. For the feed pipe I used 8mm OD copper pipe as I felt the 1/4" pipe might be too narrow and let this gain some heat by placing it close to the flue.

Prior to my making the burner, I tested it with wood and it worked quite well. Then I tried it burning wood with WVO dripped down onto the wood - again it worked well and the beast ran for much longer without needing any attention. No matter what I used, I could never get the bottle upto red heat, the best I managed was about 400 deg C. There has been no smoke or much in the way of smells emitted, irrespective of what I have tried to burn.

Having got the burner completed I tried it for the first time burning only WMO. This has not been so successful, but it has burnt and keeps burning.

This last is what I am trying to solve at the moment and hopefully get the stove to produce red heat. I started with the air feed pipe about 5" above the burner dish and it burnt with a slight roar. I then lowed the end of the air pipe to about 1" above the burner and the noise increased, but the bottle temperature didn't increase very much. I could not get the oil to burn at all, unless there was some sort of wick laid on top of the burner (burnt off cardboard or paper etc.).  This seems to suggest to me that the burner dish is not getting hot enough to vaporize the oil(?).

I think an air feed blower might help, but I'm trying hard to avoid the need for any electricity to be needed to run it. The WMO I'm currently testing with is a gallon of unused (what is suggested to be) synthetic. I have only burnt a couple of pints of this so far - I have a few gallons of mixed used WMO which is as yet untried.

I have set up some photos of the project on my persoanal web site ( hope there is no objection to an external link?)

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/m1byt/stove/Picture1.jpg

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/m1byt/stove/Picture2.jpg

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/m1byt/stove/Picture3.jpg

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/m1byt/stove/Picture4.jpg

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/m1byt/stove/Picture5.jpg
Any suggestions are welcome.


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