quote:

Originally posted by scaldy1:

They sell a kit that will cover 200 square feet for $335. Maybe you can go this route.

To expensive..

quote:

Originally posted by Ant:
Murph you asked about cascading boiler ignition transformers to get a higher voltage. Here is how it is done

http://www.kronjaeger.com/hv/hv/src/obit/index.html

The diagram at the bottom shows how to get three times the voltage of one transformer using five identicalish transformers of the grounded midpoint type. This is supposedly typical of oil boiler ignition transformers or OBITs as he calls them.

If you look around his site, he records many other ways to get high voltages. You would apparantly be hopeing for 20kv to 30Kv as OBITs are normally 10kv to 15Kv I believe.

5 transformers? Oh My!

And when I sell it, I tell the new owner:
"Just be sure not to come within 10 inches of that line there attached to the ceramic insulator.. It has 4 trillion volts and will turn you and your dog into crispy burnt cookies."

If you notice any time dilation or space-time warping affects dont worry.. its just high voltage..

LOL

Or just use one 60kv ignition transformer from a car or truck with a driver circuit.

regards a house fie sucking in air unlike a camp fire...

That is the point of a closed burner with a correctly sized air tube.

It sucks air in despite being what you call 'natural draft' and if the tube is right it gets enough air for a complete burn.

quote:

Originally posted by Ant:
That is the point of a closed burner with a correctly sized air tube.

It sucks air in despite being what you call 'natural draft' and if the tube is right it gets enough air for a complete burn.

I dont understand the complete burn in negative pressure part.. If you have negative pressure, how can the combustable get enough oxygen to have a complete burn?

I'm certainly no expert but I always thought positive pressure was required..

Enough air -- I think it takes more than just additional air, the air needs to be combined with the fuel in a more efficient manner than simply blowing it at an existing flame. I have tried simply blowing more air at a vaporizing oil flame by using a variable speed blower, the flame never shifted from yellow to blue color and was eventually blown out by too much air velocity.
I suspect The fuel needs to be more finely dispursed with the air but there has to be even more than this to it as gun-type oil burners do exactly that and they still produce only yellow flame. The color is deturmined by the flame temp, yellow is cooler than blue, those claming blue flame from oil all seem to be using some type of oil vaporizing chamber that EXCLUDES ANY air until the oil has been converted from a liquid into a vapor, then the air is introduced to get a blue-flame burn, the amount of air used is small and of a natural draft type (think propane burner). Liquid does not burn, it has to be converted to a vapor first, I suspect it is this phaze change step that keeps oil burning cooler with a yellow flame as it takes a LOT of energy to convert a liquid into a vaporous gas, the energy sucked up in this conversion step likely keeps even tiny oil droplets from reaching a blue flame temp.

Interestingly, I have seen pure blue flames from my vaporizing bowl burner, just not in a usable manner. If I use a propane torch to heat a pool of oil (no diesel) just warm enough to light but the stove lid is open so there is no draft being produced, the flame over the surface of the oil is almost totaly a small flickering pure blue flame with NO smoke visable, just not producing much heat, once the air draft is added the flame is MUCH larger and producing heat but it is a yellow flame and produces just a bit of smoke.

Catalitic -- Diesel trucks now have catalitic converters, these are designed to burn the oily soot, may be able to use there ceramic innerds somehow ?

Secondary burn chamber -- You mentioned that you are passing the burner combustion gasses back through the flame, is this simply done by placing the flue outlet lower in the combustion chamber than the top of the flame or do you have some sort of actual chamber?
I am considering a true secondary burn chamber using the "filler tank" concept I mentioned earlier, placing this chamber above the top of the flame but still inside the main combustion chamber tank that is made from a 100 pound propane tank. By placing a foot tall SS closed bottom cylinder above the flame the flame should heat this cylinder well above the combustion temp of the smoke, the combustion gasses will pass up between the outer burn chamber wall and the outer wall of this cylinder, the top of this cylinder will be open but inside the cylinder will be a smaller cylinder who's upper end is connected to the flue outlet and who's lower end extends down just short of the bottom of this flame-heated secondary chamber. The flue gasses will have to make an up-down-up trip through this hot secondary chamber to reach the flue outlet, If I add an swirling (small version of your combustion chamber air blower inlet) air inlet to the top of this secondary chamber (maybe center or bottom would be better ?) I should get complete combustion of any fuel left in the flue gass, since the fuel is now totaly gasafied it should not take much air to complete the combustion, some of the additional heat from this combustion will be transfered to the outer propane tank burn chamber but a lot will go out with the flue gasses so it may require an external flue mounted heat exchanger to collect this additional heat. The other question is, if I need to add a blower to this secondary air inlet or will natural draft pull in enough air, have to build it to know.

what about your triple bowl concept to provide blue flame heat right in the burner without needing extra complexity?

Did you get a digicam for xmas?

Murph I think positive draught produces more heat at least partly by burning the fuel up faster. When I am blowing on my woodfire to get the kindling lit I can see that the forced draught of my breath makes the wood burn faster. But not more efficiently. I have heard a pellet stove is the way to go for efficient wood burning.

My wife made a comment to me the other day..

She asked me about making a heater for our home that runs on waste oils instead of wood.. But she wants the pretty flame like a wood stove..

So, I'm thinking of building a new unit for my own home and using some high-temp glass so we can see the flame.. Corn stoves and pellet stoves already do this.. even though its not wood burning, its nice to have in the home.

I might have to adapt to a double bowl design myself if I can't shorten my atomized flame..

I have not yet tried the tripple bowl or covered bowl idea yet, still intend to, but the new ss bowl is working so well I don't have much incentive. The new upper ss bowl burns so clean that I don't even bother cleaning the bowls until 3-4 days of burning, this extra baking time does create a tiny amount of hard coal that takes a few seconds of chipping but still only takes maybe 5 minutes to clean everything. I also have used up all the bowl-shaped scrap pieces that I cut out of the tops of the propane tanks when making funnels so don't have a handy bowl shaped piece of metal to test with til I make another funnel.

No digital camera yet but I will take a role of standard 35 MM film and scan in the pictures, have to dig my short lens out of storage to get good pictures of the stove and burner. Have close-up pictures of the bowls burning without any draft but intend to try putting a sheet of glass temperarily over the stove opening to get some pictures of the normal flame with a normal draft. not sure how well this will work ?

From what I have seen so far the flame from the bowl burner looks a lot different than a normal wood fire, much more "frantic" because of the draft of air being directed over it, don't think I would call it "pretty" exactly. There is also some amount of smoke produced, the density of the smoke in the fire box can be controled using the flue damper, closing down the damper slows the burn but holds more smoke in the firebox, opening the damper lets the smoke go up the chimney and definitely increases the rate of burn, the amount of heat produced is also increased, and the amount of smoke is lessened even though the fuel drip was not changed. A bit more heat is lost up the chimney but the stove still puts out more heat. You have to find the best compromise, I usually run with the damper set to about 45 degrees, nice burn with almost no smoke in the fire box and only a small amount of smoke exiting the top of the chimney.

Pellet and corn burners -- From the ones that I have seen burning corn they still burn with a fairly small yellow flame. the local home-built boiler that is being used to heat a 5000 sq ft work area uses a round burner pot with an internal diameter of 8 inches and burns a couple of bushel of shelled corn/day (2 bushel of corn amounts to about 6 gallon of oil or 9 gallon of propane BTU-wise, he is burning last years outdated seed corn at a cost of $1.00/bushel). The flame is mostly directed straight up out of the burner for maybe 4-5 inches and is pretty much a yellow flame, may be a tiny bit of blue at the very base of the flame but not much. This burner uses a cheap hair dryer for the combustion air (heat element disconnected), the air blows in through the bottom of the burner pot and up through the columb of unburnt corn rather than being blown AT the flame. There is also a row of 1/4 inch holes that do blow air in over the top of the burning corn, these holes cause the top of the corn columb to burn at there level inside the pot, any blue flames that are seen are located where the air exits these holes.
The blower speed is controled by connecting it to a cheap $6.00 lamp dimmer, the normal speed is only about 1/3 of max speed. The amount of air adjustment is used to compensate for the amount of moisture in the corn, wetter corn needs a bit more air.

Wood pellets alone -- The flame from wood pellets alone is a bit more of a whitish-yellow than the corn flame so it may be a bit hotter, still not a blue flame by any means, I think there are also veriations depending on the type of wood, I have read that the verious different woods make a big differance in the amount of ash and clinkers, some make almost none, some make a lot of both.

Tim,

All the techno babble aside,

How much money do you think you've saved so far by burning your double bowl?

Have you tracked the before and after energy usage by any means?

Savings -- I have to go back a few years for a cost comparison as I have been heating with free wood for the last few years, before that I used propane. Depending on the winter I would burn between 400-500 gallons of propane, at todays $1.80/gallon cost that would be someplace between $720.00 up to $900 per year each for the "live-in" house and the "workshop" house.

This has been a mild winter and I am still burning wood to heat the "live-in" house (about to get the syphon gun heater finished to start heating that house with oil, hoping to burn used motor oil rather than veg in it), so I have only burnt about 120 gallon of veg for heating, this would amount to about 185 gallons of propane for the same amount of heat, directly saving $335.00 so far this winter. This makes the small amount of smoke from this style burner much more acceptable.

quote:

Any suggestions on the price for the plans? There are quite a few parts that have to be made for it.. I was thinking about how I would offer the drawings, and instructions and what I would have to do to make them readable by the average person.. There are a few specialty parts that I thought I might include in the package also..

Hi Murph
Have you decided on the price for the plans (model 1.0, model 2.0)

The biggest problems with selling plans is that mine are going to be very hard to read by anyone but me.. Also, I have no photos while building it.

I want to sell the entire unit and when I build a 2nd one, I'll take photos this time.

Thanks,

small problem...
I live a few (quite a few) K miles from u,
so how can we proceed?

Oh ya.. Israel.. Shipping charges would be about a gazzillion dollars and your first born child.. LOL

What are you planning on burning in it?

Do you have fabrication tools and skills?

I could put something together and take some more detailed photos.. I'd have to also create a few cad drawings because photos wouldnt explain a few things you can't see.

I'm thinking I could probably put something together for $50.00 USD

What you would get:
*Detailed Photos of the completed unit. (Probably about 200+ of them showing the various parts) I'll take as many as required.

*My drawings that I made before I built the unit and modified to help you figure them out.
*New drawings to help with a few details
*Electrical schmatics
*Adequate substitution materials
*Reasonable assitance from me to answer your questions.

I was thinking of burning my by-prod and used motor oil.
My workshop is beside our Kibbutz's (village) garage , so there's no shortage of by-product and used motor -oil. Apart from that, on the enviromental factor - this solves a very very big headache .
Quote:"..I'm thinking I could probably put something together for $50.00 USD.."
Your price is fair enough. I can paypal.
Thanks

I guess you can send everything (docs, pics, drawings etc. ) on a DVD...

50.00 fair enough let me know when you have something ready... I'll buy it for bedside reading... Tigman

I am working on the plans for it now.

Give me a few days.. This looks like its going to be a minimum of 50+ pages and pictures.

If anyone has ever ordered plans like this before and didnt like something about them, please speak up now. I will consider all comments. Good and Bad..

i'm intrested also, any thoughts on the specialized parts that will be required?

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy:
...If anyone has ever ordered plans like this before and didnt like something about them, please speak up now. I will consider all comments. Good and Bad..

Your specialized parts should be VERYdetailed, and please consider 220V instead of 110V.
Thanks