home made outdoor waste oil boiler experiment

[gardrail]

Greetings,

I just registered the other night, and thought I'd post one of my projects. With the cost of heating going through the roof, and my cousin having a few hundred gallons of waste motor oil laying around, i thought I'd make an attempt of building a hot water heating system to beef up the heat in my garage and downdstairs when it gets cold.

The basic idea behind this is to get a large pipe, run some exhaust pipes up through it and cap the top and bottom with water tight welds. There will be two 2" bungs to allow for water circulation through the system...

During a salvage yard run, I managed to score some 16" diameter 1/2" wall pipe, and some 1/2" steel plate to serve as both a top & bottom cap of the boiler. The exhaust pipes that will take hot gas from the waste oil burner, up through the boiler is some 1" black iron pipe.

I'll have to upload some pictures later, but so far the top and bottom plates have been cut, and the 5 holes in each side cut out to accommodate the black iron pipe. The pipes have been tack welded in, and just tonight I managed to get an old stick welder out and weld up the pipes in the bottom plate. Keep in mind that this is my second welding project and I've only been welding for a couple months.


In the grand scheme of things, I want to have a cast iron radiator in the garage and setup radiant floor heating in the downstairs of my home. I figure the hard part will be building the boiler and making it water tight. After that I'll focus on an intermediate holding tank for the hot water (since the unit itself will only hold ~ 17 gallons), and running the PEX into the house about 50' away from the burner.

Managed to score pipe for the chimney (8"), and enough 16" diameter pipe to make a few boilers (and a nice piece of 1/2" plate)


Had to burn the paint/tar off of the casing (24" tall x 16" diameter)


The boiler core with the five 1" diameter exhaust pipes running through it tacked in place. will MMA it with 6011 to hopefully make a water tight seal

 

[magicheater]

Will this be a multi-fuel or strictly a waste oil boiler? Are you going with a water jacket or water tube type? How do you plan to introduce your fuel source and regulate it? Please post some of the dimensions you plan to use.

 

[gardrail]

Those are good questions - I'd like to focus initially on a waste oil, but I want to make it modular enough to where I could change out the burner (or firebox) under the thing.

I have no faith in my welds since i've only been doing it for about 6 months. I opted to fill the larger volume with water, and use the black iron to channel the hot gasses up and out to the exhaust above the unit.

The unit itself is 25" tall, 16" in diameter... When I get to the point of welding things up - i want to make sure i have a bung on the top to screw in a pressure relief valve, and do a leak test to see if my welds have gotten any better (they are getting better, but I don't think I should quit my day job)

There's a couple waste oil burners that interest me as a potential heat source... one is a gravity fed type where the oil is dripped down on a hot plate which vaporizes the fuel & continues the process... the other one that might actually work out a bit better (but will require some fiddling) is a burner that uses compressed air and a siphon nozzle to atomize the fuel (Waste oil Burner.wmv - YouTube)

 

[gardrail]

Managed to get a bit more work done on it. In order to ensure that I get a good weld, I took the time to take the oxy torch and attempt to bevel the edges of the various cuts that I made. Two holes are in the side of the tank, one at the top, one at the bottom that will accommodate two threaded 1" couplings.
(top hole - bottom hole not pictured)




At the top, I cut a hole to allow for a pressure relief valve in the off chance this thing actually produces pressure in an open-system configuration.





And Before I called it a night, I then beveled the edges of the top and bottom plate...



here's some close ups of the beveled edges - i'm planning on hitting them with an angle grinder to clean them up a bit... I'm still new at oxy-acetylene cutting so it's not very clean..

(bottom plate bevel)

(top plate bevel)



When it's all said and done, the piece i was cutting on should slide right into the outer casing something like this:

 

[vpd66]

What type of burner do you plan on using? I have an old Beckett oil gun I've been thinking of converting and retrofitting in to the door of my outdoor wood boiler. Then I can burn up my waste oil and it would still burn wood. It would be dual fuel.

 

[gardrail]

I'm planning on starting out with a waste oil burner primarily but am thinking of different ways of using either wood or coal in addition to waste oil.

 

[Stick895]

I'm no en-gineer but this seems like a project that shouldn't be done in a home built manner. Just my $.02

 

[gardrail]

yer probably right. but hey why not?

 

[hr3]

Ya why not,, keep it up I can't wait to see how you make out,,,

 

[gardrail]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm hoping to make some progress this weekend to include sand blasting the inside bits. More than likely I'll find some cheap paint to coat every thing - even though it's going to be sealed up and have water in it.

With any luck I'll have it welded shut & test it for leaks.