I think it will. I was reading this web page

http://www.laughingstockfarm.com/ul_certification.htm

What they say is basically there are no standards for testing a furnace for use with WVO, so no UL certificate, no insurance coverage, etc.

My guess it that these furnaces will burn WVO, but the manufacturer can't claim that it will, as there are no standards for testing.

So the problem is what do you do about the problem of insurance? How do you get coverage?

I want to install a unit in a rental property, but I am to worried about not being covered if there is a fire.

Peter

It depends on what kind of WMO furnace it is.

There are basically two different designs out there.. Pot Burners and Spray Guns. If your WMO furnace is a Pot Burner, it will burn WVO just fine. If its a Spray Gun, it wont work.

The problem is that WMO has a flash point somewhere between 140 degF and 180 degF while WVO doesnt flash until its around 400 or more. This is a huge problem for the Gun style burners as only some of the WVO will burn while the rest drips to the bottom of your combustion chamber.
I am not talking from experience here.. This information comes from the last 2 months of my research and experiments. I've been designing a WVO combustion system.. The funny thing is that a quicky thought on a great idea seems good at first.. Then you start to engineer the system and draw it on CAD and you quickly learn about all the nick nack thinks that are going to cause problems. By far, the biggest obsticals are viscosity and flash point.. After that, maintenance and cold-start problems. Each of these create head-aches and must be solved.
The reason that WVO hasnt caught on for heating homes is because of Maintenance.. No one (that I know of) has really solved all the problems. Some designs seem to solve half of them, other designs solve the other half..

Pot burners are a pain in the a$$.. do you really want to open up your heater to clean out a mucky, yucky burn pot every other day? Who wants to do that?

Gun type burners solve the daily cleaning problem but replace it with clogged nozzles and are almost impossible to start when cold. They also have filters that clog up.

I am almost done with my design... No filters to change, no pans to clean up, no chance of a nozzle to plug..
My current obstical is that I designed a burner to heat both air and water.. This is causing me a problem because my math says I have pulled so much heat out of the system that its going to condense.. Great for effeciency but a condensing boiler needs stainless steel or it will rust away..

Better question (for me, anyway):

Will a gun-type WMO furnace burn byproduct glycerine? I emailed CleanBurn about it Friday, but haven't gotten a reply yet.

Will your (Murphy's) design do it?

My observation is that no off the shelf furnace will burn WVO without extensive modification. As Murphy and others have done significant engineering to resolve the various issues there is still no one answer to how to do this successfully with a minimum of maintenance. They are very close but not there yet. Because of inconsistant fuel qualities depending on feedstock and subsequent processing issues this is unlikely to result in a 100% rock solid solution anytime soon. I think the answer to your second question is a clear No. Glycerol will be best utilized as a secondary fuel in some type of burner which has a more reliable fuel as the primary source of heat. It needs to see over 800 deg to burn well and safely. This is just my opinion. Good luck

There is no such thing as a glycerin burner and I doubt there ever will be.
While glycerin contains energy, it does not ignite very easy, it exhausts lots of particulate matter and creates dangerous toxins if burned to cool. It only contains about 60,000 btu's per gallon as opposed to 120,000+ for veg oils and even more for petro oils.

quote:

There is no such thing as a glycerin burner and I doubt there ever will be.

Oooooo...is that a challenge? (For an engineer...yes!)

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While glycerin contains energy, it does not ignite very easy, it exhausts lots of particulate matter and creates dangerous toxins if burned to cool.

Just product requirements to address...same old, same old

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It only contains about 60,000 btu's per gallon as opposed to 120,000+ for veg oils and even more for petro oils.

But its FREE BTU's, even if it is less (but I can see how this applies to a company not wanting to invest into a special burner). And you have to do SOMETHING with the byproduct anyway...so might as well make heat with it!

Well said.

The vertical babbington by mobious in the heating wvo with wvo thread shows promise but has been quie for awhile now.

A duel fuel burner might also be an answer with a seperate drip feed of preheated glycerine falling into a roaring flame from the FFA/bio mix sprayed through a conventional oil furnace burner?

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A duel fuel burner might also be an answer

Sure...turn a 120,000 BTU burner into a 180,000 BTU burner by adding the glycerine to the flame.

quote:

Originally posted by Ryan P.:

quote:

There is no such thing as a glycerin burner and I doubt there ever will be.

Oooooo...is that a challenge? (For an engineer...yes!)

I am an industrial engineer. I've experimented with burning glycerin.. Save yourself some time and quit now.

quote:

While glycerin contains energy, it does not ignite very easy, it exhausts lots of particulate matter and creates dangerous toxins if burned to cool.

quote:

Just product requirements to address...same old, same old

Its not quite that simple..

quote:

It only contains about 60,000 btu's per gallon as opposed to 120,000+ for veg oils and even more for petro oils.

quote:

But its FREE BTU's, even if it is less (but I can see how this applies to a company not wanting to invest into a special burner). And you have to do SOMETHING with the byproduct anyway...so might as well make heat with it!

Well I do agree here.. I think the best idea was to put in a secondary burn unit that would inject glycerine into a combusting oil stream. This might just work and is a great idea. However, there are still problems with the concept that would have to be solved.

It all comes down to this: Everything burns if you get it hot enough.. That doesnt mean it is a practical fuel. If you invent a glycerin burner that is of a quality design (Low or no maintenance, reliable, etc etc), you'll be a rich man fast.

I've done some trial and errors with it and I've been designing and building industrial process equipment for 20 years. You have your work cut out for ya if you try to make something that will burn it.. YES.. THIS IS A CHALLENGE!!! Good luck! If you make one, I'll be impressed and you'll have my full respect..

I am currently burning the glycerine by-product (methanol NOT recovered) that I do not use in soap making in a wood stove-come-pot stove type of arrangement.
The "pot" is a large coffe can cut down to around 4" and is hand filled at the moment and for ignition I use a few sprays of recovered methanol and a spark.
Downside is the soot residue;there's quite a bit of it once all the burning gets done.
I could see however that a continual feed via a copper line with small valve for drip control would work fairly well. Not for lengthy moments of unattendance but if it is just to get the crisp out of the air in the shop or to bring up the temp to tolerable it works.Not like we don't have plenty of it too.

I recently found a website for CompuHeat inc that describes an oil-fired incinerator, basicly a fueloil fired burner that also injects another fluid into the fire using compressed air, lots of variable tweeks for the second fuel/liquid. The web page is here.

Several other kits for do-it-yourself drip-type burners are described.

I have one of these in use and sell them in conjunction with the mahononing out door furnace. They will burn nearly anything. The #2 fuel oil acts as the ignition and the secondary fuel (waste oil) is injected through this fire.

A great system, but you may need to tweek it as you go. DGF

That vaporiser looks cool. So there is a good use for brake drums after all. I hate them as brakes PIA to get off and change the shoes. And crp as brakes as well. Disks and pads do it for me. But handy heavy burn chambers might justify thier existance after all.

quote:

recently found a website for CompuHeat inc that describes an oil-fired incinerator, basicly a fueloil fired burner that also injects another fluid into the fire using compressed air, lots of variable tweeks for the second fuel/liquid. The web page is here.

Wow...would you believe that their product sounds like exactly what I had in mind to build a glycerine burner? Once again, somebody has beat to what I thought was my own original innovation...oh-well.

Doesn't mean I still can't build one!

Give over mate I suggested it to you on 7 november A week is a new record for someone I spoke to to think it was thier idea a bit later.

I'v already got my heavy steel diesel powered forge ready to adapt with an additional glyc feed.

No,no, not the dual fuel, you said that, and that was right on perfect. I claim no ties to that!

The idea of a compressed air stream in a fluid stream in a fan-driven air stream. Central compressed air vaporizes glycerine stream and soap solids instead of a nozzle and pressure, which the solids can clog. Also, this additional air serves to produce a leaner and hotter burn, important with glycerine. This whole assembly is in the ducted air stream that feeds the stationary pilot fire. Which is about what they do, so you can burn even anti-freeze, which is cool. (pun intented...hee-hee!)

If I can scrounge enough parts, I'm gonna whip something up...sort of a glycerine torpedo heater, to blast my settling barrel to make processor filling easier in winter and pre-heat the WVO some.

Right. That is bacically a babbington with forced draft. Have you read the thread on heating WVO with WVO by mobius1? I think Murphy has already done it as well.

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Have you read the thread on heating WVO with WVO by mobius1?

I have now!

Hmmm...gonna have to revise in my mind...

The "compressed air drawing fuel" style burner gun is what is refered to as a "low pressure " gun burner assembly, most torpedo heaters and all of the commercial waste oil burners that I have researched use this principal. There is a small low pressure vane-type air pump mounted someplace, usually on the back of the fan motor, as the air supply. Modern salamander heaters and waste oil burners have replacable fuel/air syphon-style nozzles so you can select the fuel feed rate. this type burner gun is very versital as you can adjust the air pressure and also vary the fuel pressure from vac up to a few pounds. These low-pressure fuel nozzles have considerably larger internal passageways than the normal high-pressure nozzles so they clog a lot less. The fuel/air nozzle assemblies in salamanders are mounted seperatly on a flat sheetmetal plate in the back end of the burn chamber so it is easy to relocate them wherever you want by adding some longer tubing to the oil and air lines. Use 2 of these nozzles for the incinerator concept, use one as the main burn assembly and the other injects the secondary fluid along with a bit more atomizing air.

The old oil-o-matic burner that I am testing has three fuel nozzle outlet holes about 1/32 inch in diameter at it's nozzle so should handle heavy oil better than the newer style burners without clogging. The larger holes produce harder-to-vaporize larger droplets of fuel so preheating of both the fuel and atomizing air is required for best combustion and is a deffinate nescessity for reliable ignition of a cold burner.

got any links to salamander info?

I have seen designs where the fuel pipe is looped through the flame for prehating. Once they get going they turn into roaring jets of (blue?)flame.

Don't know where I saw them.

Just a focused surfing session.