The day was great to pull out the big boy and do some scrapping. Two heads, two manifolds (the left one is lost foam) and some other random car part. Around 20 kg in total. The end result, minus the various iron parts that were left in the furnace. Sorry for the bad photo, it was dark and had to use the light. Took about two hours to melt from cold, with propane. Video with some action and an overview of the whole process. Video of the burner I use installed in my casting furnace. Need to get some descent photos of the furnace and some dimensions. To give you some perspective, it can fit one 4 cylinder engine head with plenty of space.
Nice. I have a wood fired version of the same thing that melts 3 wheels at a time, but the water container that goes under it has rusted out. Must be nice not to have to sift the nuggets out of a bunch of soggy ashes and charcoal bits! Jeff
Nice, whatever works. I plan to have a dedicated wmo burner for this one as I have several buckets full of it. Propane is easy though. Some dimensions ID is 24-25 cm Inside height: 50 cm OD: 41 cm Exterior body height: 60 cm Tuyere diameter: 8 cm Distance from the ground: 30 cm Insulation provided by aerated concrete bricks (the white stuff) covered by a thick 1-2 cm layer of refractory. Doesn't see much use (maybe once every couple of months).
I know those are fairly common in Europe but for some reason, they're almost impossible to get in North America
That's sad. Any brand will do, Ytong or Alfablock brand. Can take the heat without melting but do crumble without protective refractory layer. Good for up to 1200 deg C iirc. We can easily find them in any building material supplier.
Yes, here in the US we sometimes tend to over apply the "not invented here" rule. Getting off topic: We may be able to make this, or something very similar, on the amateur level. When I worked in the lab for Halliburton we had 2 methods of making very light cement. One used the fine aluminum powder, but we didn't use it all that much because of the hydrogen produced during the pumping topside. We should not need an autoclave to make the process work for us. It seems to be used commercially mostly to speed up the cure. A lot of the holes we pumped it down were shallow and cold. We used 3% to 5% bentonite, or sometimes watergels, to keep the viscosity in a good range for the bubbles of hydrogen to do their work. I don't remember ever putting any lime in this mix, be we did occasionally include up to 10% Poz. 3% or so of NaCl or KCl speeds up the cure but slightly cuts down the ultimate compressive strength. Probably a good trade for us? For us, getting the fine aluminum powder is one of the harder things to source. Seems the BATF has it on some list that makes sellers ask questions.* West Marine is one, expensive, source. It is used as UV barrier in composites. Auto radiator sealer might be another option - I haven't tried it. I'm planning some more experiments with the locally available 2300 refractory mix. *Works nice with perchlorates and pinch of sulfur.