Author Topic: Okey-dokey. Trying to burn waste oil  (Read 2154 times)

mikenash

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Okey-dokey. Trying to burn waste oil
« on: April 06, 2020, 10:01:09 AM »
I need to give kudos to a bloke called Ozzirt (I think he might be Irish) as permutations of his drip-feed, no-fan, no visible emissions, no smoke inside burners are all over the world and all over YouTube

Principle is simple, as stated.  If you have a bit of steel/iron/metal that's close to red-hot and if you drip oil onto it - then the oil will vapourise.  If you have a flame there and a just-right draft, the oil fumes will burn like bloody wildfire - and burn hot and clean by the look of things

The secret to it seems to be creating a good draft - using a long flue, basically - and using that draft to suck controlled amounts of air into the thing so that there's a good fire keeping the drip-plate-thingie hot, and a bunch of secondary-burn air-holes at strategic spots to get a raging column of burning oil fumes heating up a big metal something on their way to the flue.  The big metal something - the "stove" bit  (designs vary from a bit of heavy pipe to 100-litre compressed-air receivers - and everything in between)  radiates heat into whatever area.

Temperatures seem to be in the range of 900-1000 degrees F at the top of the burner pot area and maybe 400-700 F at various parts of the big heat-radiating "stove" bit

There are as many design schools as there are builders, and different versions of secondary air feeds abound - but there's a lot of overlap

So over the recent couple of weeks while my perk-disliking boss has been "working from home" I have come into the shop at six every morning and gotten in 90 mins work building myself one of these before anyone else turns up

The Domestic Authority isn't keen to be tripping over big bits of pipe shit in the garage  (and who can blame her) so the bits are sitting on a pallet out in the paddock in the traditional "under the Macrocapa Trees" site

Because they're out in the weather I gave them a coat of zinc primer and a coat of black enamel (which will burn off and stink/smoke like buggery hen it's fired).  I wish I had photographed it before painting - but too late now.  The black makes it hard to see detail

Anyway - pics attached

Main features are:

Body ex 250mm NB pipe with 8mm wall and 12mm top plate and 6mm wall 125mm swept elbow bend to flue cos there was one in the workdhop.  Crude baffles in the body to hopefully extract some heat before it goes up the flue

At the junction of the top of the burner tube/bottom of the body, there's an up-angled 40mm air intake with a section of 40mm pipe and a brass gate valve (the 600mm of pipe is just to keep the gate valve away from the hot stuff) so I can have a tinker with a tertiary air intake if it's good or just plug it with a 40mm BSP bung if it ain't

There's a funny stub-and-flange sticking out the other side.  That's cos I need to mount it out in the paddock miles from anything flammable and I have a post with a suitable flange for that to mate to in a suitable location.  So it'll be kinda "free-standing" so as to be easy to muck about with

Hanging below the body is a section of 100mm SC40 steel pipe with a bunch of holes (secondary burn section).  I figure I may have to drill more holes but I figured drilling extra ones later was easier (out int he paddock) than welding up surplus ones later.  On the bottom of that there's a flange where the burn chamber/pot bolts to the underside of it - just 4 X M16 bolts atm cos I don't want to do one of the many quick-release designs in the development stages in case it self-releases and sprays burning shit everywhere

On the top of that flange there are welded 3 X 15mm sockets (temporarily blocked with 3 X 15mm steel bungs so I can have one, two or three primary air holes

There's a bunch of 15mm/20mm plumbing to facilitate dripping one or two sources of oil into the pot (I don't like the copper-pipe-flapping-around look) an I have valving and plumbing etc "ready to roll"

It's a prototype.  I guess it owes me 10/15 hours and zero $$

Hopefully I'll get to do some burns with it in the next few months - firstly to validate/disprove/fine-tune the design; secondly to have a play with the heavy oil of which I have a potentially almost limitless supply

We'll see what happens.  As always, there is much to learn