Waste oil burner pot design

[Astrofuelhead]

Signed up a few days ago. Looking for advice and design tips for a waste oild burner pot. Having problems locating the air blower into the burner casing and not sure if the wholes are in the right place.

Jonny

Limerick

Ireland

[nothing to lose]

Are you building a oil only burner type furnace or is this along with wood?

A friend has a metal pot with a fitting in the bottom running oil through a copper tube. Has a manual brass ball valve in line to adjust the flow, the copper tube goes into the top center of the wood burner. Oil drips slowly onto the hot coals and wood.

This is working great, produces tremendous amounts of heat and is a clean burn.

Only problem is you have to shut off the valve manualy when the fire dies out or you get an oily ash mess.

I plan to do similair next year myself. Just hang the pot abit away from the heat so the oil don't get too hot, fill as needed.

[robotmaker]

Jonny,

You may want to take a look at a post I made in the rants & opinions concerning this very subject.  I also put a drawing of a stove design and burner that I am currently heating my shop with now.  It works great.  As nothing to lose has said, it depends on if you are going to supplement a wood burner, or use it to burn oil only.  Let me know if I can be of help. Be glad to share what I've done..

rj

(robotmakr@aol.com)

[Seth]

No Babington enthusiasts???

[robotmaker]

I looked into that design, but once again, in order to keep the cost and operation down, I chose to stick with the drip method.  That Babington design uses compressed air right?  Anyway, I am still of the opinion that if you are using crankcase oil, there is gonna be crud, residue and solids left over when yer done burning.

rj

[Old F]

Robotmaker

You can get a clean burn with no crud .

Its all in the fuel to air ratio you need to run lean get the temp high.

Check out some hobby foundry sites the big thing now is melting metal with waste oil

 I have used waste oil to melt brass in my foundry furnace no smoke and no unburnt crud  left over.  

The down side is it sounded  like a jet taking off.

  Old F

[Old F]

Here is a good site to start with

http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/index.html

[sibirsk]

I know this guy who heats using the Babbington method. I send him oil

with ice, and gasoline, as well as diesel fuel in the oil, oh yes and

lots of crud. He has a few filters, to filter the waste oil. It is

surprisingly quiet. Sibirsk.

[bjorn773]

I tried the drip method with my wood burning stove but could not achieve a clean burn. I drilled a hole in the side of the stove as high up in the stove as possible. I connected to a can of oil with a ball valve on it to regulate flow. I tried with the tube coiled around the stove pipe to preheat and without. Either way, it burned very hot, but dirty. I had black smoke out the chimney and a lot of soot inside the stove. The tubing was 3/8" and tended to clog after some use due to the heat. Any ideas on how to make it burn cleaner? Bjorn

[Astrofuelhead]

Hi guys

Ive been away from the pc for the last couple of days , have to say is there anything better than making free heat. Thanks to every one for responding to my burner pot design question. We finished our burner pot last Thursday night 5th of Feb. We have combined the Mother outer stove design (Water tank) with robtmakers burner assembley.Before we inserted the pot into the stove we primed the burner with waste oil up to the first row of holes (internal wall of burner assembley)and used tissue diped in kero to start the burn sequence.You all know that feeling. You spend so much time thinking about the project and you build it and you test it and its more than what you expected. The combination of broad childish smiles and the heat from the burner made it for me , our reward was warmth.

I tell you it felt like we were cave men down in our cold work shop and a fellow cave man showed us how to make fire.

So guys thanks for sharing  information that has resulted in the warmth and as we work on improving our design we will offer up every test fire to the gang of expermenters all around the world united on the net.

Any way enough of the wet eye stuff.

So our test run burned bright and red , little or no smoke . Now it has to be said that the water tank we are using is a copper tank and it is holding up well. When we fired up the burner int the tank things started to go wrong. Smoke black soot , and blocked oil supply lines.

We have figured out the fuel line issue, oils is burning in the copper pipe befor reaching burner.

Air pressure is not high enough , cos we drilled out another set of holes on the inner ring of the burner.

So we are still in R&D Research and development.

What we plan to do is reduce the size of our burner (currently 150mm wide outer cylinder , with 100mm inner cylinder sealed at base and two cylinders closed at top , height of cylinder is 400mm) air feed to side 40mm fron the bottom of the burner cylinder with 18 5 mm holes all way round.

Advise

What info do we have on pressure v's efficency

also burner design we are going to try and come up with a high preformance burner does any one want to share the work with us. And last but not least how do i send you all photos of what we have done.

Jonny

[robotmaker]

Jonny,

First, let me say I am honored you tried my burner.  This is the first feedback I've had that anyone else actually got any good from my hard work and perseverence to the clogging problem.  I must say, that your starting method surprises me tho.  Filling that thing up with that much oil must have burned extremely hot and for quite awhile.  I am still unclear on how you are piping the oil into the assembly.  What I've done is to wrap my 3/8" line 4 times around the stovepipe as in MEN, and then thru a little cutoff valve (which is really an orfice with at plug in it) then on to the top of the center of the stove, shoved thru a 3/8" hole in the top of the tank.  I did however run a 3" piece of conduit down thru the center of the stove to help keep the dripping oil on the right track into the burner.  My thoughts here were that if I was blowing air into the burner assembly, as it comes out, it would cause the dripping oil to go all over the place and not directly into the burner as it becomes much more viscous the closer it gets to the burner and the hotter the oil gets.  So, my pipe seems to help with this. From what I can tell, the flame is burning white hot, and as a matter of fact, is extremely difficult to look directly at unless i peer thru it with my welding helmet, so it must be above 2000F I recon. How I start my stove is to first throw a piece of paper towell or even newspaper in the pot.  Soak it with a little kerosene (not too much, maybe just a couple ounces) turn on the drip until I see that the oil is indeed dripping into the burner, then light the paper.  Shut the door, and turn the fan on low speed.  I now wait till the outside temperature of the stove gets up to about 100F and turn the fan on what I have is my burn speed. It is the mid setting on a 3 speed fan control for the car heater motor I used as the blower.  Adjust the oil drip now to about one turn open on the valve, and buddy, I am warm all night, and it burns as clean as could be.  I measure the temp of the chimney pipe on the outside surface at about 12" from the outlet on the stove at about 400F and try to maintain that.  

I would love to trade notes with you , or take on a task of helping with the R&D at any time.  

rj

I have some pictures if you want...

[nothing to lose]

I'll have to check out your design Rj. Sounds interesting and something I might want for a shop. Am thinking of doing oil changes soon for friends at my home shop, I should have more oil than I can use if I do that. Plus a couple extra dollars. Better than free heat, get paid to heat!!

As for that drip methode I mentioned. Not sure what went wrong for you guy.

Simplest way is to slowly drip oil onto redhot coals. Results in clean burn and lots of extra heat. If you boil engine oil it will thicken and sludge up, perhaps you were getting it way to hot. If you drip it onto unburnt cold wood, it won't burn as well.

If you first burn wood (or coal) and get some really hot coals, then just slowly drip a few drops of oil onto those coals it should burn clean and very hot! You are using both wood heat and oil at the same time. The one I mentioned did not use any preheating for the oil. Just sit a pot higher than the wood burner, run copper tubbing (with a valve to control flow rate) to the top center of the burner, drip oil onto burning wood coals slowly. If you got a oily mess, my geuss is you either driped faster than it was burning, or the coals were not hot enough to burn it. Also why you might have gotten sooty smoke.

Kinda like burning plastics. If you just light it and let it burn you get soot and trash, toss it on red hot coals you get super hot fire with no soot. I don't recomend burning plastics, just an example. I have experimented though and got clean burns and super heat from garbage bags, grocery bags and packaging, and even those foam meat type trays. Buy clean burn, I mean no visable soot or trash or nasty left overs, could easily be toxics in the fumes, so I do not recomend burning plastics for home heat!