efm Bituminous boiler testing is next week

One of our major efm dealers in the Western US asked about making a soft coal boiler because of the abundance of soft coal, claiming to have a ready market out there. The idea took off and we will be testing a unit next week.

It will use the 520 boiler and other parts from former efm products. A handfull of prototypes will be made, if the experiment goes well, and we'll see how it goes. If all goes well, there could be units ready for this Fall.

They will be built to the same quality standards as the current DF520s and the price will reflect that.

Cool, I'm assuming once they get it to work a conversion kit will become available to be able to burn both in the same boiler?

That could be true.

stoker-man wrote:That could be true.

And don't forget about us Eastern bituminous people! I can get some double washed Illinois stoker bituminous for $80/ton at the mine compared to $325/ton for Blaschak.

be real nice to get it to burn right in the stoker. is the BTU the same as anthracite? hope all goes well.

coal berner would know the btu, I don't. If the prototypes go well, they should be able to burn any type of Bit coal, but let's see how the test goes in Shenandoah next week, providing we can find some soft coal before then.

Is there a suggested MSRP yet?

Sorry, not yet. I guess it would be in the ballpark of the current DF520. We're going to use some of the older efm model parts, like the burner ring for which we have casting molds for, but I'm sure new molds will be necessary at about $3000 a pop.

has EFM ever tried to just run bit. coal in the regular 520 and see what happens?

stoker-man wrote:coal berner would know the btu, I don't. If the prototypes go well, they should be able to burn any type of Bit coal, but let's see how the test goes in Shenandoah next week, providing we can find some soft coal before then.

Try this place they are 6 miles from me they sell both Anthracite & Bituminous

http://www.tyloon.com/business_profile/ ... mpany.html

http://www.direnzocoal.com/ourproducts.html

ken wrote:be real nice to get it to burn right in the stoker. is the BTU the same as anthracite? hope all goes well.

Good Quality Bituminous coal can have higher BTU's Per lb then Anthracite Member berlin burns high Quality Bit coal
his coal burns around 14.600 Btu's Per lb or more Good Quality Anthracite will be 13.400 to 13.800 BTU's Per lb

Thanks coal berner. It's for Joe in Shenandoah. How close is it to him?

One problem I see with burning Bituminous in the EFM, is the size of most Bituminous.. The so-called 'stoker coal' in bituminous is about Pea size in anthracite. Getting the larger, softer coal to feed in the EFM 520 auger may be an issue.

Maybe the Bituminous coal kit will include a larger auger and tube,, Also, bituminous is soft,, and makes a lot more fines than anthracite coal does.. so it will be interesting to see how this works.. I sure hope it does.. it will be nice to have a good, high quality stoker boiler available to burn Bitum coal..

Greg L
.

as i see it, to make it viable for as many people as possible it would have to be able to feed the larger sizes bituminous, have an easy way to deal w/ the fines and have a large, sloping ring around the firepot to deal with the chunks of coal that fuse together and burn casually on the side of the main fire pot. do all these things and you will likely have a winner, don't successfully do all of them and it will continue to be a poor selling fringe market for the boiler, with the only purchasers being the people that are willing to put up w/ more work to burn bituminous.

on edit i'm not familier w/ the efm boiler, but it needs some access to horizontal areas of heat exchanger as there will be some soot over time. during development don't expect to be able to produce completely smokeless results esp. with common high vol bituminous coal, ideally most underfed stokers burn w/ a light grey haze, (big ones or small ones) if one tries to eliminate all trace of smoke, you will end up burning out the pot in short order.
btw, if you need a supply of decent bituminous coal that is high vol (like most of the country's coal) contact mark at valier coalyard, valier pa (outside punxsuatawney).

I will relay the information from Berlin. After the initial test, it will go to the lab for more extensive testing.

As an aside, our dealer in Wyoming says that there are 6500 miners living nearby who can take the coal free from the mine site. Unconfirmed on our end.