Waste Oil Heater Forum - Your definitive source for burning waste oil for heat.

Been burning waste oil for 7 years using a pressure system and have never experienced this. With the CK kit it shoots a ring of oil like a wide angle hollow nozzle. The droplet size is to large to burn and just get absorbed into the combustion chamber till it catches fire. I also see very small drops hitting the back wall.

The set up
EFM furnace with vacuum formed quickie 300 chamber narrowed 3" 10.34”wide x 18.25” long x 12.00” tried burner 1/4 behind the chamber and 1/2" inside the chamber. Chimney is all fuel 10' tall with dampner.

Metering pump set up running about 70 RPM, DC powered gear reduction variable speed. Lines are all going up with no dips, flare fittings. Also tried setting up as a siphon about 6" below nozzle with no change.

Tried using a beckett FO retention head like i always used on my pressure systems set up the way beckett wants.Tried the CK retention head set up with the nozzle out of the retention head the way ohio heaters suggests and also flush to 1/8 behind the nozzle like CK wants. It runs best with the CK head set up the way he wants, no difference in dropplet size just flame now looks alot like a heating oil flame.

PID 180'F heater block temp below or higher makes no difference. Heating the oil line going into the heater does help dropplet size a bit. Just proves that the block is to short to properly heat the oil. Im not heating the oil going into the heater block at this time, temps in the 50s for air/oil.

Nozzle - tried 3 nozzles .75 and .85 no change.

Air pressure - tried eveything but between 6-9 psi is best. secondary air is taped off, it dosent want any. tried a low fire fan blocker then i need to open up secondary air. Again no real change.


Getting frustrated with the hours spent on this with no change. Its the same no matter what i do. The walls of my heat exhchanger is getting damp with raw waste oil. Probably have 30 hours in just trying to get smaller bropplet size. any ideas???

Yes it is to stop pre & post nozzle drip. It goes outside to a NO 110v soleniod wired into the fan/pump motor. For now it simply drains into a 2 1/2 gallon bucket. I did have a much more elaborate system that pumped it back into the tank being 100% sealed system and using no extra pumps. problem is it used a Protek nozzle and they cant take the heat and would fail to pass oil after about a week.

I have a pid that controls the heater and when everything kicks in. I have one of the newer burner relays that has alarm out contacts that kill the pid if it fails to fire. I have 4 260 gal totes to settle the oil over the summer, with a huge 10 micron filter outside the house that filters everything before it enters the house tank. Then i have another 10 micron filter after the house tank. I have never had a clogging issue with the pressure system. Fist year i started burning i was burning whatever i could get my hands on and it amazing what this thing would burn. I had oil with so much water it would kill a filter in 30min of running so i just ran it with no filter and the stuff looked like pure rust water. Burned nice and never had an issue after burning 270 gallons of it. Actually kind of doing the same thing now, i have 200 gallons of rusty water stuff that has no resemblance to oil and its burning right now. http://www.rossmachineracing.com/dash6.html

No pictures. I used billet fuel rail for cars and a 500watt cartridge heater inserted into a hole i drilled below the fuel hole. Tapped the one end of the fuel hole for the nozzle and made a plate the same size as a F0 air plate that holds electrodes and photo eye closer to the flame. Both my systems are in very small combustion chambers the one only being 8" round so i need to keep the pressure at 130psi or the flame gets to wide and drips of the retention head, if i try and comp with a narrower nozzle the flame gets long narrow and smokey. I will try and snap a pic this weekend.

I have been running 2 pressure systems for some time. The first is a small forced hot air furnace for the garage going 4 years now. I have been heating the house and hot water with a EFM boiler for 3 years. I run around 275'F nozzle temp at 130psi with a FO head and .65 70W nozzles. I keep the 3 car garage 70'F all winter burning probably 125 gallons and the house burns probably close to 1000 gallons a year. The house does tend to brun up a nozzle every 2 months in the winter when its working hard but who cares 5 bucks and 5 min and its back up and running. The boiler requires a cleaning once a year and the vacuum does a quick job of it. I have never cleaned the furnace.