Spike's Truck Drum Waste Oil Heater

[senojekips]

?ust a bit more info. The flame is pretty steady but does vibrate the heater slightly. And yes it will fill the garage with smoke. It does not smell like oil cooking on an engine exhaust manifold but, does have an odor. Enough that I could not wait to shower after it finished.
My flue is 6 inch inner diameter and is 15 feet long. It is about 1 foot above the ridge of the house.
I pulled the secondary burner out of the heater and sandblasted it. I had to remove the paint so I could mark it for drilling. My plan is to add 18 additional 1/15 holes above the existing 39- 5/16 holes. The reason I am using a 5/16 drill bit is because the cylinder is so hard and the only carbide drill bit I have access to is a 5/16 bit.
I also plan on reinstalling the baffle that I removed Friday.

I feel that you would achieve far better results if you just drilled out some of your existing holes to 3/8" rather than drilling more holes.

Allister built his heater to heat a machine shop in the North of England and has had great success with only a few much larger holes (about 3/4") from what I can see of his photos. He is burning up to 5 quarts an hour, and producing some serious heat in sub zero temperatures.

Here is the link to Gordon's heater that I promised earlier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xwbej95XyI

 

[dngspot]

I fired it up again. With the additional 19 5/16 holes she could reach higher temps. I probably had too much oil in the pot about .5 inches, but as the temp kept climbing she eventually through flames from the secondary burner. She does not through short burst of flame, it ran that way until it burned away the oil and then returned to a proper flame. It also went from a clean exhaust to a smoky one. There is definitely an improvement, so I am going to add another 19 5/16 holes. This will give me a total of 78 5/16 holes. Or I will attempt to open the lower row of holes to 3/8. I might be able to get through them with a colbalt drill bit.

 

[senojekips]

More small holes will make it slower to start and settle down, also you will find that larger holes will give you a far better range of clean burning. I think you will be surprised at the difference.

I have never had any problems with drilling in the cylinder liners, in fact, that is one of the reasons that I like them so much, the nice fine grained grey cast iron normally drills like a piece of butter and is very good on drill bits. I feel that your liner must have had some sort of heat treatment or similar.

 

[dngspot]

Then should I open them all to 3/8"? Looking at Gordon's heater, he has his holes grouped closer than mine. He also uses three rows like I now have. From the close up it looks like he may have more holes than the 58 holes I have and they look much larger than mine. Also the nice thing about the 5/16 holes, if I need to plug any I just need 5/16 nuts and bolts, they will work fine.
Spike, I appreciate your help, thanks.

 

[senojekips]

I would drill out one row at a time, starting with the top row, then lighting up to see if there is an improvement. Keep going either until it is burning cleanly or no further improvement is seen.

I actually made an extended drill bit with a bit of 3/8' rod, and drilled mine out with the heater fired up. The difference was amazing, it burned clean and got up to temperature in about half the time after I had finished. I have my holes spaced so that there is only enough metal between them to give the tube the mechanical strength it needs. I figure the closer they are together, the more even the fuel vapor and air mix will be. I dunno if this is right, but it worked for me.

No need for thanks. Being of three parts Scottish and one part Jewish ancestry, I love to see anything that saves some money,... for anyone.

In my experience, using many smaller holes will eventually achieve the same result, but the clean burning range is smaller and it will take longer to get up to operating temperature by a factor of nearly two.

 

[dngspot]

I drilled two rows of to a total of 28 holes to 3/8 inch. I did one row at a time; both times eventually it would flame to the outside of the secondary burner. After each row was drilled, more oil was needed to make it happen. I guess I will drill the remainder holes and make another attempt. I did attempt to drill while the heater was running; I could make it just to the i.d. of the cylinder and the drill stopped cutting. This must be done on a drill press with my cylinder.
I used an inferred temp gun to check the pot, drums and exhaust. Just after the heater settles after the flame outside of the burner, the temps were; pot 725 F, drums 255 F and the exhaust 235 F.
I still continue to believe it is not getting enough air. As I push down on the pot to expose the flame from under the lid, the flame seems spread and sound louder, like it is burning better. I am giving thought to drilling 4 lid holes from 1/4 to 5/16.

 

[Redneck in training]

My father used to be a diesel injection pump specialist in army repair shop. He built a burner using injection pump and injectors. It was capable to heat whole house during the test but not used too long due to dramatic increase in cost of heating oil. Later on it was powered just by a hand crank and used to start coal burning in the boiler.

 

[dngspot]

All 57 holes have been drilled out to 3/8 and 4 of the pot lid to 5/16. It is still flaming out of the secondary burner. I might be getting closer to the solution, when I tip the pot to expose the burning oil, it does not act as if it is starving for air as much as it did. The flame does grow a little and sounds even before the last modification it grew quite a bit then would sound even. I can only wonder if my secondary burner is larger and might be causing the problem. It is 5.5" I.D. and might require more holes because it is able to take in a larger amount of vapor.

When the flame comes out of the secondary burner, the sound it makes is a rumbling sound. With each addition of holes or enlarging holes, more smoke is pulled back into the lower holes in the secondary burner. The first time it pushed flames out I was chased out of the garage from the smoke. Now it does not seem so bad.

My next move is to remove the secondary burner again and drill a new set of holes below the lowest row in the cylinder. This thing is going to look like a screen door soon.

 

[senojekips]

All 57 holes have been drilled out to 3/8 and 4 of the pot lid to 5/16. It is still flaming out of the secondary burner. I might be getting closer to the solution, when I tip the pot to expose the burning oil, it does not act as if it is starving for air as much as it did. The flame does grow a little and sounds even before the last modification it grew quite a bit then would sound even. I can only wonder if my secondary burner is larger and might be causing the problem. It is 5.5" I.D. and might require more holes because it is able to take in a larger amount of vapor.

When the flame comes out of the secondary burner, the sound it makes is a rumbling sound. With each addition of holes or enlarging holes, more smoke is pulled back into the lower holes in the secondary burner. The first time it pushed flames out I was chased out of the garage from the smoke. Now it does not seem so bad.

My next move is to remove the secondary burner again and drill a new set of holes below the lowest row in the cylinder. This thing is going to look like a screen door soon.

Righto David, that rumbling sound tells me a lot. It is called "panting" and is generally caused by one of two things (maybe a bit of each). At it's worst it can be almost frightening with flames shooting out of the air holes blowing soot and sparks everywhere.

(1), You are attempting to force the heater too hard. this happens just after lighting up espacially when you have too much oil in the pan. The oil must be trickled in slowly until it gets up to working temperature. This is very common if you have no feed pipe and just pour some oil into the pan and light it up. In normal operation there is only a small pool of oil under the feed trough and the remainder of the pan is virtually dry.

(2) The other possible cause is that you are getting too much air into the primary pan, making the flame there far too hot. This in turn vaporises too much oil and makes your mixture too rich.

Do you have a good (virtually airtight) seal between the pan and the lid?

I would say with absolute certainty that you have far to many holes in your secondary tube, I only have 32 x 3/8" and 32 x 3/16". Having too many holes allows relatively cold air into the heater destroying the temperature of the flue gasses and consequently you will lose draft.

 

[dngspot]

No it is not air tight. What I might do is install a band in the lid so it makes contact with the pot. The thing only shows flames after the pot has heated to about 400 deg. If I have too many holes then I will bring home bolts and use them to plug the holes. When excess oil burns down the heater will run at low temp. and a clean exhaust can be seen. If I had to many holes wouldn't the draft be lost at low temps first?