Alternative fuels > Waste Vegetable Oil

New waste oil Burner.

(1/5) > >>

guest22972:
I have built a LOT of oil burners over the years ( although not too many recently)  but they have all been in the multi Hundred KW range.  My " small" ones do 200 Kw and the biggest to date puts out over 1100 Kw.  Built one a few weeks ago I haven't fired yet that I'm aiming for a Minimum of 2000Kw and hopefully if I can get enough air into the thing ( fuel won't be a problem, I Might get 3000 Kw or above.

I fired up an old burner the other day for the first time since I have been here. Used a jumping castle blower and a car fuel pump to push the fuel in fast enough. The thing howls like a jet engine afterburner and is starting to get near supersonic.You can hear the thing just shredding the air.  I did that once before with another setup and got a Mach Diamond which was pretty unexpected but got the Vid showing it.
Neighbours Really got a new insight to the nutter living next door as if all the solar wasn't enough. I wish I could get hold of a Blower that did a couple of PSI. Could really do some damage with that!

For this latest application I need something completely opposite and as small as I can imagine working properly. I am wanting to make something to heat the house using waste veg oil to heat a gas water heater and want something to do about 10Kwh.  500Kw burner is easy, I was thinking about a 5Kw burner but gave up on that idea as just too hard. 1L an hour is about the best I think I'll get without too much trouble. I want to use the burner to heat a ( previously) gas fired water heater I have removed the burner from. On gas it does a bit over 5 Kwh input but I think there may be a bit of margin on that but hard to say what the limitations are.

Normally all my burners are forced air and I was thinking to use a small 12V bilge blower for the little burner but that still seemed a bit over kill. I was going through all the variations in my head and pulled out a note book I write my hair brained ideas in and re discovered my "L " Burner design.
This would be a draft type burner and I could pull the heat through the gas water heater as they have a flue/ HE right up the middle  which I could add to for more draft if needed.

I have trouble getting things small in my mind so I got a bit of 75mm Sq Tube, cut a wedge out with the plasma cutter to bend it to a Right angle L shape and MIG'ed it back together closing off the open end on the horizontal Burner section.
There is a primary air hole in the top of the horizontal leg and cut some holes with the plasma in the upright section for secondary air.  Couple of wide legs for stability and a bit of 4" pipe about 1.5M long for a flue for testing purposes.   Very simple.

Put in a bit of oil and some diesel soaked paper towel, lit it and off it went no trouble. First thing is in this config it puts out a LOT more heat than 10 Kw.Over shot there by a wide margin but It seems I can pull the thing down to somewhere in the ball park.  Maybe something 30-40mm tube would do 10 Kw but that would be tiny and hard to imagine working at all. Concept would be the same so spose it would.

I can take the 3/4" Primary air hole down to about 1/2" which seems to be the sweet spot as it's set up now.  Running the thing flat out it roars, smokes a bit from lack of secondary air and glows red the first 45Cm up the flue. The heat radiated is very good for an outdoor heater. Could also be used with a variety OF HE's for water and Ducted air heating.

I brought it down on the back verandah last night and set it up after the first burn and the thing throws good heat  for that application.  Mrs came out and had a look and then brought out the stew she made for dinner and we sat on the verandah and ate dinner by the fire.  Amazing how nice the most simple of pleasures can be.
This does roar a little but nothing like a force fed burner even on low heat. If the chimney was fully ducted above the roof line, it would be very much quieter.

I'm feeding the thing with a Pulse pump because although everyone wants simple with gravity feed, it's more of a pain in the arse and inconsistent for long burns than what it is worth. Oil tank warms up and oil changes viscosity, level in tank drops, oil layers out....  You have to adjust the things constantly. Pulse pump, same volume every time and you can set the timing and it will do the same output all day.... or night. I'll put this on a simple timer or an arduino to pulse the pump for say a second every 15 or whatever seconds to get the output to as close to it as I want.

The output will change once I put the water heater on the thing as it has a smaller diameter through the middle and I expect cooling the output will also diminish the draft.  Might be good this is a bit over built as I expect inefficiency of course.

I haven't measured the KW output on this but it can easily do 10kw and I suspect maybe 40-50. Definitely could do more with some extra secondary air holes and maybe a larger primary air inlet. If this was in a garage it would certainly put out good heat especial with a fan blowing on the back  to pull more heat from it by creating a greater temp Differential with the surrounding air.  The addition of something like an old 9 Kg gas Cylinder on top of the burner itself which I will look at for the verandah heater, would also increase surface area and more energy could be bled from it. I'll do a reverse internal flue for that so the heat is made to move around not just go straight up and out.

I have some larger tube up the back and the mrs now wants me to build one of these for the Verandah. I'm thinking I can up size the thing a bit to 100mm tube and put it in a 44 gallon drum as a back reflector and blow the bilge fan from the back to push more warm air forward. With a bigger tube the thing would also give a useful area as a heating surface and could have a kettle sitting on it or even cook on the thing.

I'm in about 17 Minds as to how I might do this home oil burning heater but this is a first idea I want to explore. This one is pretty much a more constant burn with a water reserve to store energy for the Night and morning without letting the burner run all the time.
I could also do a more powerful conventional burner and get a couple of 400L electric water heaters as storage and heat them in batch mode and use the stored heat.
I can also make up a Tube in tube HE and use that with the draft burner and just blow air through that and duct it into the house.  Easier and simpler but no storage of heat unless I run a wet back as well and all the plumbing which means I may as well stick with the water system.

I have also got a spa recently and the heater in that takes all day literally to heat the 2000L of water that holds so I'll be doing a Veg oil heater for that anyway of at least 100Kw to get the thing warm in a reasonable time.   Might be easier to heat that in batch mode and use the heat from that for the house as well. Even just a 40o temp difference ( Don't think I can go too hot without damaging the shell in the spa) will give about 90Kwh although I don't think the insulation on the spa is great on the bottom even if it does have a thick cover.  Then again, Free fuel, efficiency is not particularly Critical.

I have done a draft burner before years ago using an old cooking pot and a lid which worked well but this one I am particularly impressed with. Was simple and quick to build and has Miles of potential in various applications.  The other thing I thought of was  "J"  Burner.  Bit of ( round) tube bent  to form a J shape and put oil in the bottom and let the draft work on that.  Could be done in 3" exhaust pipe and bent up by a muffler shop in one piece.  Drill some secondary holes and that's it. Might have to do a YT vid on that for all the non hands on people. :0)

I'll put up some pics when my website host comes back up. Thought it was just my site but the host seems down as well.
Hope it hasn't been taken off line in the US riots.

mikenash:
Glort, is the oil dripping onto anything in there? Or just onto the "floor" of that bit of 75X75 SHS?

Do you reckon the length of the bottom leg is proportional in any way to the amount of "draft"?  I would guess the length of flue would be - but perhaps the same is true of the intake?

Cheers

dax021:
I was thinking pretty much the same thoughts.  Also what do you think about using a 75mm pipe instead, with a gate valve on the horizontal end to regulate air flow?

veggie:
I believe the standard design is to drip the oi into a burn pot.
Like the bottom cut off a soup can (but heavier gauge metal).

Glort, I will be watching your project intently. I was also thinking of building a mini oil burner for greenhouse heating.
In my case a 2kw (6830 btu) version would be perfect.

Carry on my friend !  :D

veggie:

You say that a Bilge Blower might work for smaller units.
I have a 12vdc blower that might work for mine.
Is this what you had in mind?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page