I'm running a 0.75GPH Monarch nozzle setup on my burner. Just had a bad session, where I couldn't get the thing to run correctly. It's like it didn't want to "open up". Cold burn. Ended up aborting the session. Ran a pour two days ago, and it was running fine. I'm curious to hear what experience others have with these nozzles. Mine is probably about six months old, and probably has maybe 30 or 40 melts on it. I went ahead and ordered a couple spares. Also, do you do anything in particular for nozzle maintenance? What about the thing the nozzle screws in to? Do you pull that periodically and clean it out?
I run a different nozzle on diesel---a siphon burner nozzle. I double filter my fuel. The second filter is in a part of the line that is never disconnected from the nozle. No maintenance for 2 year now otherwise. Before I final filtered fuel, it would occasionally become partially obstructed. Your problem "has to be" crud in the nozzle. I do not think this nozzle type has an O-ring----right? Denis
I agree with Denis, you had an issue with contamination "crud" in your oil. With clean, dry, filtered oil, a nozzle should last at least a thousand hours of burn time. My house is heated by an oil furnace, at the beginning of each heating season, the spray pattern of the nozzle is checked and if it's at all abnormal, the nozzle gets replaced, I can go several winters on a single nozzle.
Thanks, gentlemen. I get used motor oil from the motorcycle shop next door. One glaring weakness in my rig right now is the lack of filtration. I've been running it through a paint filter as I pour it in the pressure tank, but that not only is a chore, I doubt its good enough. I've got the parts for an inline filter on order. Hopefully that gets it running reliably. PS: Yea, it has an o-ring. When I pulled it apart, the ring appears ok, but no telling how well it is actually sealing.
I wanted to build one of these back when I was heating my shop with used oil - but just never got around to it. There are DIY articles out there someplace. My only problem with oil/diesel heaters has been plugging from dirty fuel..,,,,,..and worn igniters. Going to 3D print one to separate juice for jelly next fall.
Size-wise, the o-ring should be the same as for the Delavan. I bought a replacement pack on ebay. They were cheap. If it gets cooked or otherwise worn out your burner will definitely not work right. When you reassemble the nozzle you should feel a definite drag of the o-ring. I pull mine apart frequently to clean and inspect. Pete
I got curious about the centrifuge you linked so I found this video of someone who made one. The concept seems generally attractive, but actual function sounds less than optimal to put it mildly when applied to motor oil. It will not separate particulates from motor oil in his experience. Water, yes, but not particulates. In addition he had problems with foaming and slow function. While adding common fuel filters rated for diesel to my low pressure system was trivial, filtering pressurized oil may be challenging. But then maybe you have relatively low pressure in your tank and then a pressure boost pump just before it gets to the nozzle. Your nozzle needs oil pressurized to about 100 pounds or so? Denis
I run my oil pressure tank at 20 to 25 pounds. The current plan is to install a standard automotive type oil filter just ahead of the burner. Not sure how much pressure drop I'll get across the filter, so I'm thinking of adding another pressure gauge after the filter. My theory is that I can monitor for filter replacement by tracking pressure in vs pressure out.
Figured it out. Turns out it was bad fuel. I'm running used oil from the motorcycle shop next door. The problem started when I started drawing from the latest barrel. Went ahead and got a new nozzle. Also took the opportunity to plumb in an oil filter (standard automotive type). Got her all fired up, and same thing. So I went and bought five gal of diesel. Pulled five gal of the old oil out of my pressure tank (only holds 11 gal), added the diesel, and just like that she's running like a scalded dog.
So, are you running nearly pure diesel, or around half and half? Diesel always gives the scalded dog effect compared to straight waste oil, especially in colder weather. I’ve most recently been dropping a 20 gallon drum off at my local auto repair shop and they fill it up in a couple of days. Just crank case oil, no garbage or (intentional) coolant. I transfer that into my stationary tank (50 gal) and add 10 gallons of diesel. It’s a winning combination. It’s actually a hot water tank so it has a drain valve at the bottom. That gives me an opportunity drain off settled water coming from contamination in the fuel (there have been times when my supply hasn’t been so consistent) as well as any moisture that might accumulate from the compressor. I use the tank’s original dip tube to mix the fuel contents by blowing in compressed air after tapping off the water. I also don’t have a gauge downstream from my spin-on filter either so I don’t really know how much pressure I’m really getting at the nozzle, but around 20psi into the tank delivers a good flow. I mentioned above that my o-ring has failed in the past. I cooked it once by turning everything off and leaving it in a hot furnace for a few minutes. It stopped working right immediately and, realizing my error, I was able to just switch it out with my spare nozzle and keep on going. So if the latest issue was simply a winter/summer viscosity issue, at least you ended up with a spare. Pete
I've been getting 55gal drums from next door (the motorcycle shop). When I'm empty, I just wheel it over and swap it out for a full one. I think the moral of the story is to ask them to be more careful, and not dump anything into "my" barrel other than used oil. But I'm also going to need a solution for the inevitable contamination and water infiltration. I have a hand crank pump for the barrel. The pickup tube runs down to the bottom. I use that to pump to transfer the oil to my 11gal pressure tank. My pressure tank started life as one of those portable air tanks. Basically a horizontal cylinder with rounded ends. I welded a big (3" dia) nipple onto the top for filling, and have a 3/4" dia nipple at the bottom of one of the ends for the outlet. My problems started last week when I swapped barrels. My pressure tank was about half full, so the first thing I did was pull about five gal from the new barrel and put it in the pressure tank. That was when the trouble started. Furnace wouldn't run. So I started this thread, ordered a new nozzle, added an inline oil filter and some pressure gauges to my rig. As of yesterday morning, all that had come together and I was ready to give it another shot. And...no good. Same thing. Wouldn't burn. Went and got five gal of diesel, intending to put it into the pressure tank. Needed to make room, so I took the pressure tank output hose and directed it into a separate five gal bucket. Used air pressure to force out five gal. It was obvious right away that I was getting water. At least initially. By the time I had extracted five gallons, what was coming out looked like proper oil. Added the diesel to the pressure tank, and Bob's your Uncle. In terms of pressures, I run 20# into the pressure tank. Thanks to the gauges I just added, I found that I'm running about 5# into the nozzle (downstream of the needle valve, that is). Here it is from yesterday, running hot and hard: https://youtube.com/shorts/JvJEpISSIUc At a minimum, the takeaway from all this is I need to pull the first few gallons out of each new barrel and make sure I'm not getting water. Longer term, I need to come up with a drain valve at the bottom of my pressure tank. Your comment about water in the compressed air settling is something I hadn't considered, and it's a problem that's going to need attention. That said, part of me thinks a little incidental water in the oil from time to time will just get burned (evaporated) off at the nozzle. The real problem came when I inadvertently dumped a whole bunch of water into the tank all at once. Other than this recent adventure, I've been running 100% waste oil for a while now with good results. At $4+/gal for diesel these days, I'd rather keep it that way if I can.
With any column of contaminated fluid you will have flotsam and jetsam. After awhile the flotsam begins to sink and contaminates the column. So, the cleanest portion of the column is 6 inches below the surface. A possible solution is to replace the solid standpipe with a flexible hose with the end of it tethered to a float so it hangs 6 inches below the surface. As the level of the fluid drops the end of the hose follows. I used this method on a water tank that caught rain water for camp use.
Omaha, Good for you for adding filtration. One comment on yellow your flame at the exhaust would suggest you can turn your oil flow down a bit until that flame is pretty faint. I suspect you are just a little rich. Your flame will be hotter a little leaner, I think. I would first reduce the oil rather than increase air as most of us tend to blow too much air/fuel through our furnaces. What is your fuel burn rate in liters per minute? For that size furnace I am thinking maybe .13 to .15 l/m. Denis
I only have seat of the pants information on that, but roughly 2.5 gal/h which is in the ballpark of your numbers. I would like to get some more instrumentation on this rig so I can dial it in more precisely.
I am going to spend some time in the next week or so cleaning up the engineering of my burner setup. Any recommendations on a fuel meter? That might be nice to add. The alternative, I suppose, is to rig up some sort of scale so I can track the weight of my pressure tank. That seems a bit of a fiddle, though.
Yes I do: http://forums.thehomefoundry.org/in...with-a-pelton-sensor-and-digital-readout.811/ I will also suggest that though your fuel burn is “in the ball park “ (actually a bit greater than) my guessed flow for your furnace, small differences significantly performance. If you are not melting iron, you don’t need to tune all that accurately. Aluminum will melt no matter what. But, for iron, a not quite optimally tuned furnace will take three hours and 15 gallons of mostly wasted fuel where a well tuned furnace will do the same melt in 1 he and 40 mins. And I’m not talking grossly out of tune. Just off a moderate amount. Since adding the flow meter my melts are much much more consistent and faster and I burn a lot less fuel. Do not waste your money on a cheap “low flow meter” on Amazon and eBay. They are worse than useless because they waste your time. Denis
That flow rate measurement system looks very cool. Thanks! Bad news is the eBay seller you linked to is MIA. I poked around a little, and couldn't find a US based distributor that had them. Reached out to the manufacturer in Germany to see if they could point me to a US stocking dealer. We'll see how it goes.
On this page I found the following USA/Canada distributor listed: https://www.btflowmeter.com/en/international.html International distributers USA / Canada Aquatic Life Ltd. P.O. Box 39 34 Alexander Ave. Pinawa, Manitowa R0E 1L0 And here is a UK distributor. Somehow I think I bought mine from the UK and it seems like shipping was not bad nor unduly slow. https://www.conrad.com/p/bt-bio-tec...non-corrosive-liquids-water-diesel-oil-150392 Denis
By the way, these meters need to be calibrated for fluid viscosity and they need to be fed clean liquid. I have a fuel filter in the line as it enters the meter. That filter was placed after I had crud in the meter and it became erratic until cleaned out. Not trouble since that filter was put in. If you vary the mix of used oil to diesel, that will change viscosity and so recalibration will be needed. Recalibration is not hard. I just get out a 1 gallon pitcher with milliliter marks and test how many pulses (counted by the Digi-ten unit) it takes to equal a liter. Since I just use diesel, the unit has been rock solid. I verify it’s readings once in awhile by weighing the fuel can after ten minutes flow to make sure it jibes with the meter. It does. I would feel really at a disadvantage if I could not measure fuel flow. On the back burner right now is a mass air flow sensor that I want to incorporate as well. Denis
That checks out. Just heard back from the Germans and they pointed me to the same outfit in Manitoba.
