burning bituminous coal

I have found on this site that if you fill a cardboard tube with bituminous coal and put it over a hot layer of coals, the cardboard burns off and the coal stays in a round shape through it's burn cycle. I tried this and found this to be sucess ful. By putting a few of these in a wood/coal stove, I find it burns quite well and hot. The reason I had to do this was my coal had alot of fines in it and would smother my fire. The burn time was quit long to. Any one else ever heard such a thing? Jaytow

Yep, I used paper grocery bags, rolled a shovel full or two in the bag, set the bag between good anthracite coal or wood splits, and when the heat hit the bituminous fines, they got soft, stuck together, and made a 'coal log'. I usually broke up the 'log' into a few smaller pieces, to increase the surface area and heat output.

The fines in Bituminous are a pain, I tried to get sifted, sorted coal, but the soft coal 'makes fines' as it is handled hauled in trucks and trailers and shoveled. Hard coal doesn't make hardly any fines.

I used a fine-toothed pitchfork to sift the lumps from the fines in my bituminous. then bagged and burnt the fines in the paper grocery bags. All in all a lot of work... I eventually went with 100% anthracite hard coal.. a bit more money but much less work and worry, less ash, fewer clinkers, MUCH cleaner, NO soot.

If I lived next to the Bitum mines and breakers I'd find a way to burn it, the cost savings would offset the work..

Glad you found a way to burn up the fines...

Greg L.

Thanks L.S Farm
I,m going on my second day now and very happy in the burn. Lots of heat and long burn times. I have found a easy way of filling my cardboard tubes. I get the tubes from work and the coal from work. We operate a indoor Kiln and heat it with coal. Only problem is the coal has alot of fines in it. It,s ordered that way. All of the coal we burn at the mill goes through a coal mill first then blown in. So i try to make do with what I have at my finger tips. All the guys at work told me that this type of coal will not burn in house hold stoves. I didn't believe it so I had to try it myself! I'm glad I did and will keep that a secret around here. lol This summer I want to purchase the harmen Ls 2000. I thing thats the model. I looked at and liked it. Do you think it will burn bituminous? Its a hand fed stove. It should for the price of it! Look forward to hereing from yea, Thanks again
Jaytow

It would be a shame to burn Bitum in that nice stove... The bitum will make the glass opaque within about ten minutes of burning... I'd lean more towards a Harman Mark II or Mark III. The Mark models have secondary air vents on the loading door, and this should help burn up the volitiles off of the Bitum coal.

Since you get your coal at work, can you use a pitch fork like I mentioned and sift out some coal from the fines before it all goes through the grinder?? If you can get the coal pieces, from say ripe olive size up to large chicken egg size, you will like the way it burns.. more surface area and more heat.

To burn bitum well, you need to add pre-heated oxygen-rich air over the fire for the first hour or so after fresh coal is added. During this first hour, the volitiles burn off the coal, and need lots of hot oxygen to fully burn. The soot from a bitum coal fire is incomplete combustion of the volitiles. Once the voltiles have burn off, the coal burns almost identical to anthracite. Some bridging, and more ash, but with clean blue flames usually.

The underfeed stoker I have in my 'Big Bertha' is designed to burn bituminous coal, As the coal is pushed up into the hot retort, under the fire, the coal is heated, the volitiles go up through the burning coal bed, get burnt completely, so the soot is minimal, then the coal continues to rise into the burning area, and burn fully.

I'd keep an eye on your local papers, craigslist.com and bulitin boards, I'd even post 'want to buy' ads for coal stoves, you never know what may show up.

Greg L

I find these burn nice!

I tightly wrap the coal in the paper bag and toss in the hot coals. Burns nice and hot! Go through about ten of these a day. I figure 50 #s aday.