Alternative fuels > Waste Motor Oil
waste oil burner "ozzirt" type. Works well
mikenash:
Hi guys
I talked about this a wee while ago when I was building/assembling bit
My objective is/was to understand the process so that I could build something that works well & burns cleanly. So this contraption isn't attractive - it's just a "proof of concept". Some of the bits, such as the burner bowl, are just tacked in place for convenience, and the whole thing is put together with flanges & 16mm bolts so I could assemble it safely in the paddock by my shed
In the end I only gave it two ten or fifteen minute burns - enough to get an initial handle on the "tuning" so that I can build a "Mark 11"
Objectives: A controllable process. A drip-feed (or possibly a cheap peristalitic pump). No blower (off-grid-friendly). Clean burn
All I did was watch about 50 videos to get a handle on what worked and then built one with easy options for controlling primary air, a guess at secondary air and a big 40mm tube with a gate valve on the end for adjustable tertiary air
The big hot chamber bit above the heater tube has baffles so the "burn" has to flow around a few things to shed some heat
Specs:
Burn pot is just a bit of 200mm diameter steel tube about 60mm deep with a bottom welded in. All the random plumbing shit in the front is just me playing with a temp oil feed. There are two 15mm primary air holes - plus whatever leaks in around the drip feed and where the bowl is just tacked to its mount. Once it's up and burning I cut the primary air feed back to a single 8mm orifice
Tube and secondary air is just a 400mm-odd length of 100mm pipe with sixteen X 16mm holes in it. Just a guess. Seems about right.
Tertiary air feed at the top of the burn tube/bottom of the hot chamber is a 40mm BSP socket welded in. I attached about 500mm of threaded pipe with a gate valve on the end just so it was well away from hot bits while adjusting
I have attached a couple pics and links to three very short youtube vids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImcuhlNG9sU
See very short burn video
https://studio.youtube.com/video/5TO1d7GITzk/edit
and very very short flue - clean heat haze video
https://studio.youtube.com/video/H9qSTerqfEk/edit
And very quick look down into fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImcuhlNG9sU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImcuhlNG9sU
Performance: I have hard data lol
I put 1.8 litres of cold water (13 degrees) into the copper kettle which has a flat 150mm diameter bottom, and put it onto the flat 12mm plate top of the burn chamber before lighting the burner from dead cold. Ambient air temp probably same as the water at 13 degrees?
The little temp oil tank takes 1.17 litres of oil. In this case waste AWS 32/46 hydraulic oil
It used 900ml of oil to raise the water to a rolling boil that was lifting the lid off the kettle and when I lifted it off the thermometer says 84 degrees
So: 900ml of oil burnt from stone cold to raise 1.8 litres of water 71 degrees. Took about 5/ten mins? I'd guess it'd take a third of that if you put the kettle on when the top plate was hot?
My cheap point-and-squirt thermometer only goes to 380 degrees centigrade and, after about 5 mins burning, everything was just maxing it out. I guess the red heater tube is about 450+ celcius?
There's good stuff to learn here
Conclusion? It looks do-able to have a smoke-free, clean-exhaust burn
veggie:
mikenash,
That's quite interesting.
Did you take any pictures of the internal burn pot arrangement.?
Is there a smaller pot inside which contains the oil while it burns? or does the oil drip onto the floor off the main lower housing.
Consider a tangential inlet for the air in order to make a swirl in the combustion area.
Looking forward to following the development of the " MARK ll" (thumbs up !)
veggie
mikenash:
G'day Veggie
I reckon the little bowl at the bottom is a bit neither here-nor-there. You see so many designs and if the air flow is good - they seem to work OK-ish
That said I'd like to use a stainless bowl for the next one for a variety of reasons: should glow red, might knock burnt residue out easily? . . .
With my current one, beneath where the oil drips in there's about 100mm of 20X20 angle, Vee downwards, like a little trough, and sloping slightly down, directing the oil flow to the centre. I have no way of knowing if it makes a difference. It certainly works OK lol
The reason I think the burn bowl doesn't matter much is that the fire is tune-able, so I figure the initial burn is OK. Depending on how much air is going into the bottom pot, you can have the smoke from a busy, rolling, "coaling" black to almost clear - then with the addition of tertiary air it will burn dead clear (see the wee vid with the gum tress?)
And it only has about 1400mm of flue. Would probably respond better with a long flue? So I reckon the basics are good
Cheers
mikenash:
Veggie - I should have said, too: the reason the whole thing is built as it is - is that it's all stuff lying around the workshop. Total cost to me was $0.00. It was just a proof-of-concept
Mk11 will have design requirements I guess. But I'll try to keep costs low lol
mikenash:
OK Veggie
See rough schematic attached?
I have most of the bits for Mk11 lying around the workshop and hope to go up to site this weekend with the angle grinder & cutting discs to take re-useable bits off of Mk1 and consign the rest to scrap
I guess I’ll build/assemble Mk11 out in the paddock in the same place so I can burn/tinker/tune . . .
An ideal outcome would be something that started up cleanly & fast and didn’t smoke at all apart from up the chimney. If I can achieve that, and get it to burn OK on the “clean” waste oil of which I have potentially several tonnes – then I’d put one in my shed
It’s not the sort of thing you would leave burning un-attended. Initially, at least, (I would think) you would want the major safety feature to be an oil reservoir that was quite a bit smaller than the burn bowl so that if something went wrong in the valving area . . .
Basic features of Mk11 might be:
A main body ex a 550mm length of 400mm diameter heavy-wall pipe (selected because I have it here in the yard), with a vertical baffle in the middle and a removable top “element” that would allow you to tinker with the baffle, or to make steel bits to hang down and pick up extra heat or whatever . . .
(In the past, in other applications, I have made removable top-plates like that from good-quality flat cast-iron because it doesn’t buckle or warp. I have a bit or two here somewhere)
It would be nice if I could achieve a vaguely “oval” top plate, dead-flat, and around maybe 650mm X 400mm. If that had, perhaps a “hot” centre and possibly a couple of cooler extremities – that would be great for sitting the frying-pan or kettle or whatever on
At the moment my thinking is to re-use the burn pot and burner/air tube off Mk1 initially. I don’t know if a design like this will work OK with a bend at the top of its burn tube or not – I guess we’ll see
I’d hope to get onto building bits as I have time over the next couple of months – workshop availability permitting
Cheers
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