Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
Outdoor Furnaces - Manufacturers with NON EPA-Certified Models Only => Home Made => Topic started by: astro_ss_340 on December 26, 2013, 08:11:20 PM
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I am new to this, I understand how to build a conventional boiler, but would like to make a high efficiency gasifier boiler. What I cannot seem to wrap my head around is the chamber sizes and how to make it gasify, I hear talk about nozzles and such but cannot find detailed instructions and pics.
Any help would be appreciated.
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Are you wanting to sell them or just build one for yourself as an experiment
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I live on a farm, in an older house, my heating oil bill last year was $3000, I am wanting to build one to save money. My father in-law has a conventional one he has bought and he got me interested. And I enjoy making things, I tend to build things I want and cannon afford lol. I built myself a 200amp portable welder with a built in air compressor and just recently finished a snow plow for my 75 chevy.
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Nice where do you live, wondering if we could sit and talk shop, I'm in southern Maine, I have some thoughts but they probably would be better face to face.
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That would be nice, but I live in Saskatchewan Canada, little far away. I have been researching rocket stoves and am curious to see if I can apply the theory to a boiler. I made a small scale rocket stove today with my father, was pretty fun lol
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Have you tried going through the posts of the member who built his own gasifier and documented it with a bunch of pictures?
Link below;
http://outdoorwoodfurnaceinfo.com/forum/index.php?topic=642.0 (http://outdoorwoodfurnaceinfo.com/forum/index.php?topic=642.0)
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I heard it was beach weather today in Sask. :thumbup:
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Have decided to make a rocket stove style boiler, I made a scale model of a rocket stove today with my father and was very impressed with the gasification process and secondary burn I was able to achieve.
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Here is what I have in mind. There is no actual burning in the fuel hopper, wood gas is created in the choked lower horizontal chamber and fed into the vertical riser along with fresh air to create a spinning vortex of 95% efficient burn.
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Interesting concept. How to you plan to extract the heat from the stove and transfer it into the water, IE how will your heat exchanger work?
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The exchanger will work much like a normal fire box, it will absorb the heat and pass it thru to the water, the vertical portion of the burner will have a sleeve around it 2 inches larger in diameter and will be full of perlite or sand or something able to retain heat. I may end up routing the exhaust pipe through the inside of the water jacket to absorb even more heat.
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great similarity with the study Dr Hill and boiler Jetstream
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Darn and here I thought I as original lol. Well my burner style is unique to my boiler, I am sure it has not been done, will post pics of it later.
Well after a morning of putting out my barn fire and relocating my pigs I went into the welding shop in town and got to work to get the fiasco off of my mind. I had previously built my burner system and today I encapsulated it all in a 100lb propane tank. Test fired it tonight and it works awesome so far. Been a bummer of a day but at least my theory has worked.
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Sorry to hear about your fire, glad it wasn't from welding!
I like your concept. Will you be able to constant fire or will it be more of a batch heater? You know we "need" pics! LOL
I like the idea of a Garn, lot's of storage and only fire once a day or so.
dave
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Thanks, appears the other big pigs have adopted the littluns lol.
I think if I have the damper set, it may be able to work as a constant fire, which I like the idea of.
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pics
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Going to pressure test and fix if necessary then paint tomorrow
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I am so interested to see this thing in operation and get some data on it. Looks awesome.Keep us posted! :thumbup:
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Pressure tested it to 30psi and ground all my pinholes and welded them up. I should have laid my root passes a little hotter and it would not have been a problem. There were so many twists and turns to weld on the exhaust, it was the worst, 12 er so pinholes all over the rig all together. At least when I put the water jacket on I only have to weld in a handful of bungs and the chimney, the chimney cleanout, and the fire intake.
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Sorry to hear about your fire, glad it wasn't from welding!
I like your concept. Will you be able to constant fire or will it be more of a batch heater? You know we "need" pics! LOL
I like the idea of a Garn, lot's of storage and only fire once a day or so.
dave
What is a garn lol
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Google Garn, it's a huge wood fired boiler, the key is lots of storage for long periods of draw and short periods of firing it.
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o ok, I knew garn was a brand, but I didn't know if there was an actual component to a boiler system called a garn(per say a nickname for the flue etc) lol
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Fired the up the rocket portion of the boiler after painting it, ran it for 2 hours, burnt very little wood again, and peak temp of the top of the housing was 380F* so am happy with that!
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Cool! :post:
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Well going to lop the bottom off of my 325lb propane tank tomorrow and possibly get my rocket installed atleast, maybe even weld the bottom back on too lol
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Stupid me forgot to take pics of the actual rocket setup inside the 325lb tank before I tacked the cap on!
(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/morgansmall2_zps7ae153e6.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/morgansmall2_zps7ae153e6.jpg.html)
(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/morgansmall1_zpsc2100e12.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/morgansmall1_zpsc2100e12.jpg.html)
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Got the bottom welded up solid, left a 1/16" gap, ground it to a 1/3 land and burnt it in with 7018 1/8 rod running DC reverse polarity. Good ole pipe line weld. Tacked some scrap brackets on it to stand it up level and square to tuck it out of the bosses way lol. Plan on making 4 main legs out o 4 inch channel and some skids welded onto the bottom also out of 4 inch channel, probably make them 3 feet long laying the 4" on the flat. Just have to grind all of the original mounts off, patch some holes where I cut the fuel guage out and a bung, seal where my exhaust comes out, weld a bung on the bottom for a drain and then put a tube up top to put my float in. Guess I will wire wheel the old girl and slap some paint on her too.
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(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/use_zpse0172ea9.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/use_zpse0172ea9.jpg.html)
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Congrats on your progress astro, looking good.
Also congrats on being able to post a pic, been trying to post some pics on my build thread for a couple of weeks without any luck. :bash:
How are you getting your pics to post?
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I use photobucket, load them onto there, then click the share button, then links, then click the (image url) one, copy it, and paste it inline on your post where you want it. I have been using photo bucket for years, seems to be good.
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I can't wait to see this thing in operation and hear about how it works for you.
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I have been kicking around something similar for some time. Most of the rocket stove examples out there don't use water (or at least on this scale) due to the need of electricity for motors. At least that has been my take away.
I did find one guy with some YouTube videos of his magazine fed rocket stove/water heater that he runs through a heat exchanger for heat in the house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-2HL3YVSs# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-2HL3YVSs#)
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eb5PEiktbs# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eb5PEiktbs#)
how he bundles the wood for the magazine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slQSoTOzLHk# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slQSoTOzLHk#)
Digging through his YouTube page he has a couple other videos on his setup also.
On damping the air so it can be idled, the only hard numbers I have found on the effects of doing this indicated that damping the exhaust kept the highest flue temperatures.
http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/Ogle/stovedraft.pdf (http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/Ogle/stovedraft.pdf)
The test where done on a cook stove and not a heater so not sure how that will affect its temps, or its draw.
I am all in on your stove, and like the rest, anxiously wait to see this come to life.
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I would not dampen the exhaust side at all! If you closed it off by accident too much your flames will come back out the intake and light your whole hopper of wood up in flames, I am going to dampen my intake side.
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Damn I going to build a burner to add on to my existing wood boiler. But It is going to be a biomass and burn grass leaves and best of all horse crap.lol I know a guy that has one he burns cow crap in but his is a bigger scale he heats two glass greenhouses with his saving him 9000.00 a month in heating costs. Keep up the good work I want to see more.
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With a rocket stove you don't need to have it burning, hay and wood chips in a small scale and it would not work with open flames, however when it was just smoldering, it created enough wood gas and when got hot enough the gas ignited in the riser! I think it worked because I had secondary air supplied to the riser. My rocket boiler doesn't however.
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Got some more work done, however I will be getting another hunnah pound propane tank and lopping 2 feet out of it and adding it to my fuel hopper for extra capacity.
(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/7_zpscb21e468.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/7_zpscb21e468.jpg.html)
(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/11_zps59d80d6e.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/11_zps59d80d6e.jpg.html)
(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/2014-02-04172055_zpsdf2e8982.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/2014-02-04172055_zpsdf2e8982.jpg.html)
(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/8_zps5505bd2d.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/8_zps5505bd2d.jpg.html)
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Extended my hopper and took the boiler outside for a test fire. I was not getting a good enough draft and needed a fan. I Did a test with 2 pc fans on top of the chimney, it worked better but needed more pull. My friend gave me the fan/pump assembly off of a oil furnace and I removed the pump and modified it to fit in the top of my chimney. It works excellent! I am however goin to have to put a aquastat on it to control the fan as I do not want it running all the time. Sorry I could not get any video of it running as my cell phone was low on power. I filled the hopper 3/4 full and it lasted 10 hours! So I can only imagine what it will do with a fan controller on it and a nicely packed hopper. I found an old spare tire holder that had a few formed hoops on it and recycled them into part of my skeleton I will fasten the tin to.
(http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/ad319/astro_ss_340/test_zpse9c3e4bb.jpg) (http://s947.photobucket.com/user/astro_ss_340/media/test_zpse9c3e4bb.jpg.html)
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Looks like you are getting there.
I'm not really clear on how the chimney/fan deal is plumbed but will that fan stand up very long to the exhaust heat?
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I too am interested how you plumbed the fan? It definitely wouldn't hold up to flue temps going through it. 10 hours on3/4 load heating anything or just keeping the water at temperature?
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That is the chimney its in, check the earlier posts for my diagram of the flue gas map. The temp of the exhaust is only 50F.
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10 hours burned, 3/4 of a hopper with no water, just the fire going full flame not shutting the fan off except for 20 mins or so. And the fan won't have to run all the time once water reaches desired temp. Will know for sure when fill it with water how long a hopper will last.
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Cool, can't wait to hear about it in action.
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What did you end up using to insulate the riser with?
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I did not insulate it, as I found the heat transfer to the 100lb containment tank transferred copious amounts. My flue temp was 40F-50F and will be even lower when the water is in the jacket.
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Any updates? Im interested in building a rocket stove myself but maybe larger and had some questions! Like to see how long of burn u get with the water and it Insulated! Keep us posted!
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I don't even know what to say.
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I did not insulate it, as I found the heat transfer to the 100lb containment tank transferred copious amounts. My flue temp was 40F-50F and will be even lower when the water is in the jacket.
Actually, and I might be totally off base here, but if your water is at say 170 degrees and your flue is in contact with the water, flue temps most likely will be higher. A heat exchanger works both ways and not always to our advantage.