I Have an Idea for a Boiler...What Do You Guys Think

 
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Lightning
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Post by Lightning » Fri. Feb. 28, 2014 6:11 pm

Sting wrote:10 gauge will work -- for a while :D

opps - I bet you now understand what I think of your idea

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Sting
Must be that my gray matter is a little too dense to understand this level of cranial humor. :lol:


 
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Post by franco b » Fri. Feb. 28, 2014 6:35 pm

Justify008 wrote:Maybe 1/2" for the chamber and 1/4" for the jacket hows that sound?
Any combustion chamber should be refractory lined to lessen the heat loss at that point, or like stokers that have the burn pot separated from the water backed walls. The wall thickness then can be the same as the rest of the boiler.Burning the fuel and absorbing the heat from it are two different functions and the boiler design has to reflect that to be at all efficient.

 
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Post by Justify008 » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 5:29 pm

Lightning wrote:
Sting wrote:10 gauge will work -- for a while :D

opps - I bet you now understand what I think of your idea

Kind Regards
Sting
Must be that my gray matter is a little too dense to understand this level of cranial humor. :lol:
Ya I'm with you there lighting I don't understand the humor but I got his point that he doesn't like my design, but I figured that out when he recommended to just go buy three heating systems. He must of been offended that I didn't take his advice. :lol:

 
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Post by Justify008 » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 5:49 pm

franco b wrote:
Justify008 wrote:Maybe 1/2" for the chamber and 1/4" for the jacket hows that sound?
Any combustion chamber should be refractory lined to lessen the heat loss at that point, or like stokers that have the burn pot separated from the water backed walls. The wall thickness then can be the same as the rest of the boiler.Burning the fuel and absorbing the heat from it are two different functions and the boiler design has to reflect that to be at all efficient.
Good point I should of mentioned I planned on putting firebrick from the grates up maybe half way or so. 1/2" is probably overkill but I think I have enough left over from another project to build the chamber that's why I asked would it hurt to go thicker besides taking longer to heat up? I've built other boilers in the past for other people but they were all waste oil fired with a series of water tubes running in front of the burn nozzle. I cant say what there efficiency % rating is but they've held up good and those people are happy to recover any heat from a waste product which is what I'm trying to do.

 
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Post by franco b » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 6:52 pm

Happy to see that you have had experience building waste oil boilers. That experience should help a lot.

It's very hard to get something just right out of the box and just as hard to make changes if things are too set in design. Still prefer something designed for chips only. Feed little and often and probably forced combustion air, very much like pellet stoves.

There must be mountains of chips available, but the problem is drying them and storage to keep dry.

 
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Post by Justify008 » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 7:44 pm

franco b wrote:Happy to see that you have had experience building waste oil boilers. That experience should help a lot.

It's very hard to get something just right out of the box and just as hard to make changes if things are too set in design. Still prefer something designed for chips only. Feed little and often and probably forced combustion air, very much like pellet stoves.
If I can get it going right and have a big enough hopper it will probably burn mostly chips but I like having a backup that if I run out of chips I can burn whatever wood I have laying around. I also have a lot of pieces of wood coming off the processor that are to big or knarly or partly rotten that I cant send to a customer so it would nice to just use those up without having to try and chip them to use them. It will be forced combustion air I planned to draw from outside, which is another question I have I figured that the cold air from outside would give better combustion since it is higher density more oxygen molecules per every say cubic foot then warm air similar to why they cool the air on turbocharged diesels but I've seen a couple boiler designs where they heat the incoming air claiming it give better combustion, so which is the better method warm or cold combustion air?
franco b wrote:There must be mountains of chips available, but the problem is drying them and storage to keep dry.
Supply of chips and material to make chips shouldn't be a problem dry chips is another story but if I only put a little bit at a time they should dry on the fire without smothering it. If I can dig up some chips Ill try and get a video of burning them in the clayton it does smoke when first loaded but does clear up and burns hot. And I would say its not smoking much more then when first loading it with regular firewood.

 
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Post by Sting » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 9:03 pm

Justify008 wrote:
Lightning wrote:10 gauge will work -- for a while :D

opps - I bet you now understand what I think of your idea

Kind Regards
Sting
Must be that my gray matter is a little too dense to understand this level of cranial humor. :lol:
Ya I'm with you there lighting I don't understand the humor but I got his point that he doesn't like my design, but I figured that out when he recommended to just go buy three heating systems. He must of been offended that I didn't take his advice. :lol:[/quote]
o it not that ez to piss me off = usually have the opposite effect LOL bu t you asked for opinion ...... and I gave it
Kind Regards
Sting


 
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Post by franco b » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 10:35 pm

Justify008 wrote: Supply of chips and material to make chips shouldn't be a problem dry chips is another story but if I only put a little bit at a time they should dry on the fire without smothering it. If I can dig up some chips Ill try and get a video of burning them in the clayton it does smoke when first loaded but does clear up and burns hot. And I would say its not smoking much more then when first loading it with regular firewood.
I think green is worse than some surface wet, but either way you are paying to evaporate that water in less heat output plus more creosote and smoked up heat exchange.

I don't think piping cold air will make any difference, though the installation will be a lot safer if there are any flammable fumes about.

Ideally you need the whole package of easy transport of chips and maybe a drying bin.

 
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Post by windyhill4.2 » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 11:26 pm

Why don't you just sell the chips for mulch and buy a coal stoker ?

 
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Post by Berlin » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 11:33 pm

windyhill4.2 wrote:Why don't you just sell the chips for mulch and buy a coal stoker ?
we have a winner !

Transporting green chips is uneconomical in all but the largest scale and burning them well is the same. The reason dry chips aren't used is because of the emissions, you have to put enough air through the fuel bed to get decent soot emission levels, but, at the same time, the fuel is light when dry so all that excess air lifts the fuel bed and makes it airborne. Green chips are actually easier to burn well than dry chips.

 
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Post by franco b » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 11:47 pm

Berlin wrote:The reason dry chips aren't used is because of the emissions, you have to put enough air through the fuel bed to get decent soot emission levels, but, at the same time, the fuel is light when dry so all that excess air lifts the fuel bed and makes it airborne.
I think that would depend on the fuel bed design, and feed, and air supply. Why doesn't that happen with pellets which are even lighter? Feed little and often in the right chamber with proper air.

 
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Post by Berlin » Sun. Mar. 02, 2014 8:49 am

franco b wrote:
Berlin wrote:The reason dry chips aren't used is because of the emissions, you have to put enough air through the fuel bed to get decent soot emission levels, but, at the same time, the fuel is light when dry so all that excess air lifts the fuel bed and makes it airborne.
I think that would depend on the fuel bed design, and feed, and air supply. Why doesn't that happen with pellets which are even lighter? Feed little and often in the right chamber with proper air.
yup, I did a poor job explaining myself. Of course the design makes a difference, but in general, that's a big issue regardless.

 
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Post by Justify008 » Tue. Mar. 04, 2014 8:42 pm

Thanks everybody for the input I'll try and respond to all and then I did some very scientific research and took pictures of burning some chips in the clayton to show you what I see.
I think green is worse than some surface wet, but either way you are paying to evaporate that water in less heat output plus more creosote and smoked up heat exchange.Ideally you need the whole package of easy transport of chips and maybe a drying bin.
Let me clarify when I say wet I don't mean green I plan on seasoning the chips but a pile of chips will always be wet. The system would be pretty easy on the chip side of it. I plan on building the hopper big enough to load with my skidsteer. As far as supply goes I have some arborist friends that would drop off chips that's as easy as it gets free heat delivered. But I also buy tree tops off several loggers I buy what they don't want usually from 6" and smaller, I can sell everything from 6"-2" as firewood but that still leaves a lot of branches left over that I either chip and sell as mulch or push in a pile and burn. There's a lot of supply in my area already for mulch so its usually not worth it to chip it unless I get someone that wants a special variety/ species. I have a good size dump trailer and a log trailer already that I use to pick up the tree tops I make the money on the firewood side of it so its not costing me anymore except time and fuel for the chipper im just trying to use up a waste product to make the operation more efficient. Ill put the pics and research in the next post since this one is getting long.

 
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Post by Scottscoaled » Tue. Mar. 04, 2014 10:33 pm

Wet piles of chips freeze solid in weather like this.

 
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Post by Justify008 » Fri. Mar. 07, 2014 7:43 pm

Scottscoaled wrote:Wet piles of chips freeze solid in weather like this.
Thats why I want to be able to still burn wood or coal. I plan on when I get my garage built and this installed to put the chute from the chipper through a hole in the wall right into the bin so if the pile freezes solid keep a supply of dry brush that I can feed through the chipper with the grapple.


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