Hank Murrow on wed 20 jan 10
On Jan 20, 2010, at 12:54 PM, L TURNER wrote:
>
> Modern car and truck oils all include a series of additives that
> inhibit easy oxidation of the oil, but as Marcia points out the stuff
> will burn IF you get it hot enough.
OR if you create low pressure over the oil thus lowering the boiling
point as I posted today.
> There will be a lot of smoke, so excess air will be reguired for clean
> burning. Smoke in waste oil burning implies lots of sooting and tells
> you nothing about reduction. Get the kiln firing clean on waste oil
> and then add extra clean burning fuel downstream of the oil burners to
> consume the excess air and trim for reduction.
With my natural draft burners I never had any trouble getting good
reduction from the use of the active damper.
Cheers, Hank Murrow
Marcia Selsor on wed 20 jan 10
Since this thread sounds like I need an explanation for oil burners,=3D20
which I don't, I am changing it to Oil burners explained...perioid.
On Jan 19, 2010, at 8:28 PM, Lee Love wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 4:37 PM, douglas fur <23drb50@gmail.com> =3D
wrote:
>> Lee
>> =3D46rom what I've learned the type of burner used is the "rotary cup" =
=3D
type. I
>> think they're a bit big for the studio size kilns we have.
>=3D20
>=3D20
> They come in all different sizes. A friend had them on about a
> 40cube kiln he fired in Kasama.
>=3D20
> --
> Lee, a Mashiko potter in Minneapolis
> http://mashikopots.blogspot.com/
>=3D20
> "Ta tIr na n-=3DF3g ar chul an tI=3D97tIr dlainn trina ch=3DE9ile"=3D97th=
at =3D
is, "The
> land of eternal youth is behind the house, a beautiful land fluent
> within itself." -- John O'Donohue
>=3D20
Marcia Selsor
http://www.marciaselsor.com
Marcia Selsor on wed 20 jan 10
It is too thick. But for starters you can filter is with charcoal =3D
briquets.
To burn motor oil you need to get it really hot..with another fuel =3D
source until you can get it to burn...then watch out because it produces =
=3D
a lot of BTUs quickly. You'll hit temperature easily.=3D20
M
On Jan 19, 2010, at 8:48 PM, Phoenix Rising Farm wrote:
> Does anyone on the list have any experience with waste
> automotive engine oil put through a household style
> oil burner (as in furnace burner)?
> I have about 50 gallons I can access (and more coming).
> Thinning the oil would not be a problem.
> Anyone?
>=3D20
> Best,
> Wayne Seidl
>=3D20
> On 1/19/2010 7:29 PM, Marcia Selsor wrote:
>> The burners I used were household burners used in homes. I had one =3D
for the heater in my kitchen in Huntley, Mt.
>> I didn't find that type of burner really noisy. If it were, how could =
=3D
it be used in homes?
>> Marcia
>>=3D20
>=3D20
Marcia Selsor
http://www.marciaselsor.com
Marcia Selsor on wed 20 jan 10
Hank,
I knew that step system was like something I had seen before. Anne =3D
Stannard's Drip Feed Oil/Water burner=3D20
is in the old Studio Potter Anthology on pages 153-155.
Also in that chapter is an Simple Oil Drip (three step) system by Fred =3D
Olsen, a Oil Carburetor by Soldner, Dennis Parks ' on firing with drain =3D
oil and our ( Mannino and Selsor) oil burner using three nozzles =3D
converted from a one nozzle household oil burner.
That is a really good resource book IMHO. Studio Potter Book 1978.
I read a lot of technical info from Germany on Oil Burnerswhen we were =3D
looking into our design back in 1972.
There is a lot of information out there. One of the most impressive oil =3D
systems I saw was Bill Weaver's in Bowling Green , KT. He had oil going =3D
through a coffee can of charcoal briquets and then on a feed line like =3D
an IV.
Marcia Selsor
http://www.marciaselsor.com
L TURNER on wed 20 jan 10
A good reference on waste oil burning is: "A Potters' Guide to Raw
Glazing and Oil Firing" , by Dennis Parks. I think that it is now
available from the Ceramics Arts Daily bookstore.
There are one or more articles in old issues of "The Studio Potter"
that covered oil burning.
Modern car and truck oils all include a series of additives that
inhibit easy oxidation of the oil, but as Marcia points out the stuff
will burn IF you get it hot enough.
There will be a lot of smoke, so excess air will be reguired for clean
burning. Smoke in waste oil burning implies lots of sooting and tells
you nothing about reduction. Get the kiln firing clean on waste oil
and then add extra clean burning fuel downstream of the oil burners to
consume the excess air and trim for reduction.
regards
Lou Turner
The Woodlands, TX
Marcia Selsor on wed 20 jan 10
Very cool. Thanks for the picture. I couldn't visualize your desciption. =
=3D
And I like your discovery of vaporization temps.\
On Jan 20, 2010, at 1:49 PM, Hank Murrow wrote:
>=3D20
> On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:20 AM, Marcia Selsor wrote:
>=3D20
>> Hank,
>> I knew that step system was like something I had seen before. Anne =3D
Stannard's Drip Feed Oil/Water burner is in the old Studio Potter =3D
Anthology on pages 153-155.
>=3D20
> Actually, Marcia, my burner did not use a step. It consisted of a cast =
=3D
iron plate with 1/4" edges to retain the oil, and was 4"x4" in size. I =3D
started with four plates stacked on top of each other, then two, and =3D
finally.... one with a 3/8" space between plate and roof of fire mouth. =3D
I enclose an image of two plates on each side, with each bottom plate =3D
blocked off.
>=3D20
> Cheers, Hank
>=3D20
>
> Two 4"x4" plates, one on each side with 3/8" space between plate and =3D
fire mouth roof. In the 60s, stove oil was $0.45 per gallon...... =3D
nowadays it is more like $1.25, so it would cost $12.50 to fire that =3D
kiln to Cone 10.
Marcia Selsor
http://www.marciaselsor.com
Vince Pitelka on wed 20 jan 10
Wayne Seidl wrote:
Does anyone on the list have any experience with waste automotive engine oi=
l
put through a household style oil burner (as in furnace burner)? I have
about 50 gallons I can access (and more coming). Thinning the oil would not
be a problem.
Wayne -
I have told this story before on Clayart, but it has been a few years, and
it bears repeating. This does not address a household oil burner, but if
the oil was spiked as indicated below and run through a proper filter, it
should work fine. Even used motor oil is pretty clean, in terms of
filtering out impurities.
Early in my pottery career in Humboldt County (NW California) I knew a
self-trained potter named Father Doug Nordby. He had sent in for a
Universal Life Church certificate, and performed weddings for the bikers,
thus the "Father." Before he got into clay, he had been known as "Father
Drug Nordby."
Doug had a very funky home and studio up on the bluff above Trinidad,
California, north of Arcata. His studio was a low-ceiling structure built
in kind of a low area on poorly-draining soil, and when it rained there was
six inches of water on the floor. He had worked as a fisherman, so he woul=
d
just go about his business wearing high rubber boots, sloshing around in th=
e
studio. His wheel was up on concrete blocks.
But I digress. Doug fired with waste engine oil. He'd pick up 55-gallon
drums of waste engine oil from service stations, and with a little 12-volt
transfer pump he'd move it up to another 55-gallon drum mounted atop an old
redwood stump about fifty feet from his kiln, for gravity feed. He spiked
each 50 gallons of drain oil with one gallon of gasoline to make it more
fluid and combustible.
He fired a large catenary arch hardbrick salt kiln using Leach-style drip
oil burners in three burner ports. The burners smoked like hell early in th=
e
firing (most people use auxiliary propane burners during that period), but
when it developed some heat in the burner ports and firebox he would mount
three Kirby vacuum cleaner blowers in front of the burner ports and from
there the thing climbed like a rocket. But it was no damn fun to listen to
at all. You couldn't carry on a conversation within 100 feet of the kiln
once those Kirby blowers were going.
The kiln was so loose that in any number of places you could look through
the cracks and see the pots firing inside. He was producing so many BTUs
that it didn't matter. Father Doug made nice, rugged folk pots. I wish I
had some today.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft
Tennessee Tech University
vpitelka@dtccom.net; wpitelka@tntech.edu
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka
Hank Murrow on wed 20 jan 10
--Apple-Mail-10-94421074
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
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charset=3DUS-ASCII;
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On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:20 AM, Marcia Selsor wrote:
> Hank,
> I knew that step system was like something I had seen before. Anne
> Stannard's Drip Feed Oil/Water burner is in the old Studio Potter
> Anthology on pages 153-155.
Actually, Marcia, my burner did not use a step. It consisted of a
cast iron plate with 1/4" edges to retain the oil, and was 4"x4" in
size. I started with four plates stacked on top of each other, then
two, and finally.... one with a 3/8" space between plate and roof of
fire mouth. I enclose an image of two plates on each side, with each
bottom plate blocked off.
Cheers, Hank
--Apple-Mail-10-94421074
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=3DUS-ASCII;
delsp=3Dyes;
format=3Dflowed
Two 4"x4" plates, one on each side with 3/8" space between plate and
fire mouth roof. In the 60s, stove oil was $0.45 per gallon......
nowadays it is more like $1.25, so it would cost $12.50 to fire that
kiln to Cone 10.
--Apple-Mail-10-94421074--
Hank Murrow on wed 20 jan 10
Various persons have asked about or offered solutions to using oil in
various forms as a fuel for kilns. While a student at the u of oregon
in the late 50s to early 60s, I thought I might try to create a kiln
that i could have in the back of a pickup, and travel to where the
materials were in the ground and make pottery 'off the grid' so to
speak. Electricity was out, and I thought oil, being relatively more
concentrated than either gaseous or solid fuels, might be just the
ticket. So I built several small(3cuft_15cuft) kilns testing all
manner of natural draft burners that I constructed for the purpose. I
tried preheating the fuel, heating the fuel by having the feed around
the burner, and many other strategies.
By this time, I decided that the kilns themselves were too
experimental, and built a very conservative cross draft kiln of 12
cuft. Well insulated and tight, with a 12 foot brick chimney, there
was plenty of draft and little leakage. My burners were cast-iron
plates set in two 4.5"x4.5" holes in the firebox wall. I got the
burners to work with much preheating and oily rags set alight in the
chimney wit consequent smoke; but cone ten seemed farther away than
ever. While idly trying these devices, I watched the pattern of draft
around the burner holes with the aid of a bundle of smoking punk,
like one uses to light fireworks. I found that the draft was
extremely concentrated at the top of the hole, but almost non-
existent at the bottom.
I thought I might increase the draft over the burner plates by
blocking the air in the bottom half of the 4.5" x4.5" holes.
immediately, the burners ran hotter, and the smoking ceased. I began
to wonder just how far I could restrict the flow before it would
diminish the draft. I can report that the final burner set-up was a
cast iron plate set 3/8" under the fire-mouth and air blocked off
completely below that narrow slot. So, two plates with a 3/8" air
slot x 4" wide allowed this 12 cuft kiln to be fired with 10 gallons
of stove oil to Cone 10 with no smoke after a one minute light-up.
Curious about why this worked, I measured the pressure over the plate
and found that it was way below normal atmospheric pressure. Re-
visiting Bernoulli's law, I read that increasing the speed of an
airflow over a surface would lower the pressure in that region. And
re-visiting kinetic theory allowed me to see again that "The boiling
point of a liquid is the temperature at which its vapor pressure is
equal to or lower than atmospheric pressure on the liquid". What I
had 'unknowingly' done was to lower the boiling point of the fuel by
lowering the pressure at the burner plate. in subsequent
experimentation, I found that I had lowered the boiling point of
stove oil from 575F to around 225F, and easy vaporization and no
smoke was the result.
I never did go 'out into the wilderness' to fire found materials on-
site; but I did fire a lot of fine salted wares in that small kiln,
and tried out the burner idea on other kilns with success. Several on
this list have asked me for more information on the burner, and I
have sent out same; but as so often happens on Clayart; no feedback
on their success or failures have come my way. I hope someone out
there can report that they were helped by the information.
Whether or not..... a natural draft oil burner is not only feasible,
but works a charm.
Cheers, Hank
Marcia Selsor on thu 21 jan 10
To add to this, Dennis parks, of Tuscarora, picks up used frier oil from =
=3D
places like MacDonalds in Elko, the big city 50 miles away. They are =3D
happy to give it to him.
Marcia Selsor
http://www.marciaselsor.com
On Jan 21, 2010, at 3:06 PM, douglas fur wrote:
> Wayne
> Responding out of ignorance...
> Household burners pump the oil at high pressure. They generally have =3D
a very
> fine screen (off the top finer than 129mesh) to keep grit from =3D
clogging the
> orifice, They're also designed for a fairly light oil.
> The weight of motor oil and the crud in it would require addressing =3D
these
> problems. Set-u[s I've seen fo rthis used gravity fed oil and a high
> velocity fan to atomize the oil.
> See:
> Apr 8, 2005 *...* Firing from Axners or visit the *Tuscarora* Pottery =3D
in *
> Tuscarora*, Nevada. *...* might be able to use the vegetable oil in a =3D
diesel
> fuel *burner*. *...*
> www.potters.org/subject84044.htm
>=3D20
> DRB
> Seattle
>=3D20
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