My EFM WCB24 Hand-Fired Boiler Was Wasting Coal

 
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Lightning
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Post by Lightning » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 11:37 am

stoker-man wrote:The one bucket of recycled coal is what I gain after sifting 4 ash bins, which hold 800 cubic inches each. So, 3200 cubic inches of ash, once sifted, leaves me one 5-gallon bucket of reusable coal mixed with small clinkers.
Right I understand.. :) But in this case you know how much coal was salvaged after how much you used so the volume of ash (3200 cubic inches) is irrelevant information.. The fact that you have 1 bucket salvaged from 30 buckets burned gives you a net loss of 3.3% coal lost thru the grates which IMHO is an acceptable amount. ;)


 
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Post by stoker-man » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 2:06 pm

Lightning wrote:The fact that you have 1 bucket salvaged from 30 buckets
I will have to do this again next season. I am missing some info somewhere. I know I am recycling close to 50%, or more, of the ash. I get more than one ash can per day. The 4 ash cans were probably from 3 days of burning; maybe 10 buckets of mixed raw and recycled coal.

Next year I'll try again.

 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 2:12 pm

Might want to try stove size coal as well...it could help with your grate jamming issues.

 
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Lightning
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Post by Lightning » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 3:03 pm

stoker-man wrote:Returnable coal includes some clinkers I don't pick out, such as what you see on the screening. The stuff on the screen gets reused. I reuse probably close to 50% of the raw ash. The 1.5 buckets of clinker, plus the ash in the cart, are all that remain after about 10 days of 24 hour burning. The amount of days are a close guess. I didn't do this test scientifically and I think I'm done with coal for this season, so I can't continue with the test.

As far as the amount of coal I use each day, I would add at least 4 shovels, 4 times a day. That's about 3, 5-gal. buckets a day for the last week of Feb/first week of March.
stoker-man wrote: I get more than one ash can per day. The 4 ash cans were probably from 3 days of burning; maybe 10 buckets of mixed raw and recycled
yeah, gotta get the info confirmed to make any accurate judgments...
Sorry if I got confused there... :)

 
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Post by stoker-man » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 6:26 pm

Rob R. wrote:Might want to try stove size coal as well...it could help with your grate jamming issues.
I can't get stove coal locally. After anything gets jammed in the grate, usually the first day, it's impossible to move them. Therefore, the long pipe.

 
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Lightning
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Post by Lightning » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 6:37 pm

I've always been successful dislodging things by poking and slicing up thru the bottom. Have you tried that?

 
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Post by stoker-man » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 9:08 pm

Even if I cleared it, another chunk would take its place. It's a poor design.


 
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hotblast1357
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Post by hotblast1357 » Sun. Mar. 15, 2015 9:11 pm

Maybe you shake too much....?

 
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Post by stoker-man » Mon. Mar. 16, 2015 5:21 am

Possibly. I feed coal at certain times each day. If the bed gets too deep, the fire burns too slowly to make heat. I keep the draft at .07 to .10 if I can. Usually when I tend it, the water temp is at the point where the circulator is off but the bed still glows.

 
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Post by hotblast1357 » Mon. Mar. 16, 2015 7:27 am

Alright well right now I'm doin 24 hr burns, I have the forced hot air furnace, but besides all that coal is coal, and even with the crappy hotblast rocker grate I don't run in to too many problems, I shake aggressively, but I find there's a fine line! If I go too much I get a jam because hard pieces of in burnt coal are at the grates.

 
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Post by Dennis » Mon. Mar. 16, 2015 6:51 pm

I know what your talking about, my boiler has the sloped sides and when shaking, the unburnt coal falls thru the sloped sides faster than the center.It's been a while since I looked at your boiler,but if you have your grates running front to back,you can do as I did and disconnect the shaker rods and shake the grates independently. I shake the outer sides less than the center.

 
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Post by hotblast1357 » Mon. Mar. 16, 2015 8:12 pm

Mine is totally different than yours, it has just one big grate that pivots.

 
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Post by Dennis » Mon. Mar. 16, 2015 8:29 pm

hotblast1357 wrote:Mine is totally different than yours, it has just one big grate that pivots.
I was refering to stoker-man's WCB24 boiler

 
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Post by davidmcbeth3 » Mon. Mar. 16, 2015 9:04 pm

I can shake so that zero coal goes through ... but its not an excellent shaking ..... an excellent shaking, where the red embers come through just slightly yields about 1% of ash. A very throughout shaking (maybe got some ash buildup in a corner trying to shake out) that has a bit more embers coming through, may 3% coal coming down the grates into the ash pan.

I guess I could recover it ... but I'm too lazy.

Good for the OP to get his top efficiency out of his unit.

 
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Post by stoker-man » Tue. Mar. 17, 2015 5:03 am

Top efficiency includes recycling the coal openly laying on my lane. :D Yesterday I raked it up and sifted it and got about 150# back. It annoyed me to see it there.


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