Bureau of Mines Report 4936 Axeman-Andersen Anthratube Boiler

 
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Yanche
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Post by Yanche » Wed. Jul. 04, 2007 10:40 pm

In the early 1950's the US Bureau of Mines tested an Axeman-Andersen Model 130 Anthratube boiler. It was installed in private home with extensive instrumentation and measurements taken over two years. While it's a test on a specific Athracite coal boiler the testing methods and much of the collected data applies to any coal burning appliance. For example coal input and ash output weights were measured.

I've converted the original paper report to electronic format. Click on the links below for the full report (5MB) or the collected data in an Excel spreadsheet file (31 KB). Hopefully some forum members with Excel experience will post some interesting charts or graphs created from the data.

Attachments

Bureau_of_Mines_4936_Table_I.xls
.XLS | 31.7KB | Bureau_of_Mines_4936_Table_I.xls
Bureau_of_Mines_Report_4936A.pdf
.PDF | 4.8MB | Bureau_of_Mines_Report_4936A.pdf
Last edited by Yanche on Thu. Jul. 05, 2007 9:15 am, edited 2 times in total.


 
Bob
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Post by Bob » Thu. Jul. 05, 2007 9:45 am

Yanche--thanks for posting the report. It is interesting reading!

 
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Richard S.
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Post by Richard S. » Thu. Jul. 05, 2007 11:06 am

Nice Work Yanche, I see it's text which is really nice. I'll clean up the images for you if you want, PM me if you're interested. Here's a quick sample. I'll emphasize quick, I can do a lot more especially if you feel like taking the time to rescan them. Most of the noise appears to be a moire pattern and that can be reduced if you find the right angle to scan the image at. Moire patterns have something to do with angles and how images are physically printed. Squaring the image up to the scanner exacerbates the pattern, scanning the image crooked can eliminate a lot of it. Then you straighten in your image editor.
Last edited by Richard S. on Thu. Jul. 05, 2007 11:54 am, edited 2 times in total.

 
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europachris
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Post by europachris » Thu. Jul. 05, 2007 11:29 am

Richard S. wrote:Nice Work Yanche, I see it's text which is really nice. I'll clean up the images for you if you want, PM me if you're interested. Here's a quick sample. I'll emphasize quick, I can do a lot more especially if you feel like taking the time to rescan them. Most of the noise appears to be a moire pattern and that can be reduced if you find the right angle, instead of scanning them squared to the scanner you need to twist them. You can usually reduce that pattern quite a bit and a little experimentation should find the right angle. That pattern has something to do with the angles in how things are printed. Even in the sample it gest reduced a little through resizing.
I'd love to see all the images that went along with the report! Fascinating reading, almost makes we want to go out and buy one, rip out the gas forced air I have and put in cast iron radiators and an Anthratube!

Chris

 
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coaledsweat
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Post by coaledsweat » Thu. Jul. 05, 2007 12:05 pm

Thanks Yanche, you did a nice job on that. I have an original and Yanche has captured exactly what the photos are, pretty poor quality. When I first read the report I thought they were Daguerreotypes from the Civil War! It may have turned out that way because of the repeated copying over the years?

 
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Yanche
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Post by Yanche » Thu. Jul. 05, 2007 2:57 pm

Richard, Thanks for the offer to improve the images. But unless there is a groundswell of demand I don't see the need. Many of the photographs of the the instrumentation would only be of historical interest. The temperature chart recorders shown, most likely Leeds & Northrop brand were old when I started engineering in 1963. The watt hour meters are just like the kind your grandfather's house had, on his 110 volt service entrance. I'm sure we will get excellent color photos of an Anthratube when GregL gets his A-A 260 back in service.

I've tried to find out the location of the home. No luck. The Bureau of Mines, Utilization Division that did the testing was located in Pittsburgh at the time. It could have been there. The home looks a lot like the older homes in Chevy Chase, MD. Chevey Chase adjoins the District of Columbia and would be the place a high official in the federal government would want to live in the 1950's. It's still the place to live. Old home prices are over a million and are being torn down and replaced with multi-million dollar McMansions.

BTY, GregL tells me on his trip home with the boiler someone at a rest stop asked him if it was a peanut roster. I go to an antique steam tractor show each October. Last year they had over 50 coal fired steam tractors, quite a site to see especially at night when they purposely make sparks come out the stack. There is a fresh peanut vendor that has a coal fired peanut roaster. It looks a lot like the Antratube boiler! Hope to get Greg a photo this fall.

 
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Post by coal_kid » Sat. Jul. 07, 2007 7:31 am

Wow very interesting. It’s amazing how efficient the AA’s are.

I like the data where they show the Coal (LB) per degree day (cpdd). Big surprise, you all know I am hooked to heating degree days. Anyway, they averaged 2.25 Coal (LB) per degree day (cpdd) the entire study. The study was in a 9 room three story house, sq ft unknown. With my 1950, 7 room 1600 sq ft house I averaged 2.02 cpdd from Oct 06- April 07.


 
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Yanche
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Post by Yanche » Sat. Jul. 07, 2007 12:40 pm

coal_kid wrote:Wow very interesting. It’s amazing how efficient the AA’s are.
I would expect the Eshland (AHS) design to have similar efficiency. Perhaps more because of the slightly different internal water flow path and the ceramic heat insulator. I'll know numbers by the end of next winter. I've purchase and restored a Bacharach combustion tester that measures both flu gas O2 and CO. It's my belief a coalgun or antratube could be made even more efficient with a variable speed blower that would some how adjust to supply the required combustion air with only a little extra for safety.

 
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Yanche
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Post by Yanche » Thu. Jul. 19, 2007 2:37 am

One of questions new coal heat users always want to know is how much ash will be produced. The Bureau of Mines report measured the weight of coal burned and the weight of the resulting ash. I have taken their monthly data from the winter of 1950-51 to show typical ash amounts. They were burning buckwheat size Anthracite Coal. Your coal appliance may produce more ash depending on its combustion efficiency and the quality of your coal. I do not know of a typical conversion value for coal ash weight to volume.

The graph was produced in Excel from the .xls data, printed as a pdf file and then converted to .jpg using Ifanview.

Attachments

4936_Coal_vs_Ash.jpg
.JPG | 78.8KB | 4936_Coal_vs_Ash.jpg

 
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brckwlt
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Post by brckwlt » Sun. Mar. 29, 2009 9:46 pm

This report is very interesting. Thank you for posting it yanche.

If I am reading the xls report right, I see that during the winter the most coal they burnt per day was roughly 112 lbs per day during the 12/13/50 to 12/23/50 period with 1121 total pounds of coal over a 10 day period. That seems impressive to me. Also from what I could tell they only burnt as little as 25 pounds a day during the summer? I think that maybe be roughly 10-11 ton a year?

Does anyone know the sq footage of the house. I saw the house is a nine-room, three-story
brick house and would supply hot water for radiator heating. This sounds a lot like my house.

Once again thanx for the report, I love how it even has all the control settings for the boiler.

 
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coaledsweat
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Post by coaledsweat » Mon. Mar. 30, 2009 9:57 am

brckwlt wrote:If I am reading the xls report right, I see that during the winter the most coal they burnt per day was roughly 112 lbs per day during the 12/13/50 to 12/23/50 period with 1121 total pounds of coal over a 10 day period.

Does anyone know the sq footage of the house. I saw the house is a nine-room, three-story
brick house and would supply hot water for radiator heating. This sounds a lot like my house.
It was a very cold week as I recall (not really me, dad said it was the coldest day of the year when I was born on the 8th in Chi-town). :)

It is a monster, 785' of radiation plus hot water. It doesn't give the sq. ft. of the house unfortunately.

I wonder if it is still there, it would be interesting to find out.

 
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Post by brckwlt » Mon. Mar. 30, 2009 4:01 pm

coaledsweat wrote:It is a monster, 785' of radiation
What exactly does this mean?

 
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Post by Matthaus » Mon. Mar. 30, 2009 7:10 pm

brckwlt wrote:
coaledsweat wrote:It is a monster, 785' of radiation
What exactly does this mean?
Square footage of radiators I believe.

 
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Yanche
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Post by Yanche » Mon. Mar. 30, 2009 9:03 pm

Matthaus wrote:
brckwlt wrote: What exactly does this mean?
Square footage of radiators I believe.
Matthaus is right, it means square feet of cast iron radiators. Here's a on-line calculator the will allow you to calculate the BTU capability of your existing radiators. Note the assumption that the radiator supply water temperature is 190 deg. F.

**Broken Link(s) Removed**The same web site has a building heat loss calculator.
**Broken Link(s) Removed**These calculators are rule of thumb type calculators, they are useful but do not give engineering type precision values. Use with appropriate caution.

 
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brckwlt
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Post by brckwlt » Mon. Mar. 30, 2009 9:05 pm

Thank you for the links....

Maybe this is a dumb question ...

Is This a lot of coal to burn...

112 lbs per day during the 12/13/50 to 12/23/50 period with 1121 total pounds of coal over a 10 day period.

It seems like a big house, thats why I ask


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