ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Photos for General Discussion Oil Burner Primer

I'm assuming that the heat exchange takes place over the cast iron surface of the old stove, and that the air is circulated through the galvanized sheet enclosure built over the old shell.

Aussie:

Two common types of combustion central heating in the US:

The first is just like you mentioned, an oil or natural gas fired burner with a heat exchanger to separate flue gasses from heated air. The heat exchanger is several layers of thin steel, every other space between layers has either combustion gasses or heated air.

The second type is hydronic heating where a oil or natural gas fired burner heats water which is pumped through radiant heating units throughout the house, Several styles of radiators are available.

Most heaters are now natural gas since every urban and suburban neighborhood has gas delivered by the local utility. I live in a rural area and I have an oil fired heater with a 275 gallon oil tank that we fill about once a month.

And the oil is very similar to kerosene. Fuel oil is given grade numbers here based on how thoroughly it's refined. No. 1 oil is kerosene. No. 2 oil is diesel fuel or home heating oil. I've never seen anything heavier than No.2 in anything other than a large commercial or industrial application. The heaver grade oils need to be heated in the tank or they won't flow in cold weather.

Here's a more or less 'modern' version of a pressure jet burner, cover off. Exactly the same functions as the 'Ray', except all the parts are crammed into the smallest possible space to make maintenance a nightmare. [Just like under the hood of your car!]. This one happens to be running on vegetable oil, hence the fryer at rear heating the oil to get the viscosity and flash point closer to diesel oil's.

https://www.electrical-contractor.net/PC/AB_CIMG0741.JPG

The main safety feature in pressure jet burners is a photoresistance coupled with the controller. At 'call for heat', the photoresist circuit will not allow the oil solenoid to open if it 'sees' light or IR, for that indicates that the boiler/furnace is already on fire! Assuming it's not, the controller instigates ignition, and the photoresistance must now see light/IR within about 15 seconds, or it shuts down the burn. It monitors that burn throughout ensuring flame outs dont cause a hazard. This is to prevent the firebox filling with diesel, all primed to burn your house down next time ignition succeeds! Finally at 'call end' the controller resets, awaiting next call.
Older controllers are just a series of relays and timers arranged to a safe sequence, modern ones may be solid state.
If a burn sequence fails, it's usual for the controller to 'lock-out' and await a manual reset. [I should add that there are other sequences in the controller, such as pre-heat nozzle, spark on/off, motor on/off etc.]

Aussie, what you saw was probably a wick type burner. These only ran on kerosene [paraffin to us limeys!], a lighter fraction which is re-processed to remove low flash-point fractions [petrols]. This fuel was first used earlier last century as lamp oil. The wick burners are very efficient, hence the blue flame, but obviously need more care to keep the wicks in good trim. When I was a kid smaller units ran in folks houses exhausting fumes into the rooms. Deodorised kero was often used, [Pink Dont Stink, Esso Blee-Dooler, ]
I have lately noticed these in-room blue flame heaters on sale here in France. And they do stink!

As to bursting into flame, that is thankfully a rare event, but it does happen. A guy up the road from here lost his home in an oil boiler fire. The burner malfunctioned and pumped diesel into the fire. The granite walls melted!

Alan.,

There one thing it did remind my old days I used have old oil stove that is not a wick type more like pot burner type dang., set it low to med setting you will keep the house more than just a toasty warm but only one glitch is once a week to twice a month clean up the burner { more often if burn on #2 diesel fuel unless you snagged 400 liter worth of JP-8 now that is very clean fuel }

And that burner you show to us it simuair what we have in the states not much differnce on design.

Merci,Marc

I remember one of the "pot" type oil furnaces at my grandma's place. It was a brown glazed metal, about the size of one of the old woodstoves, obviously made to replace such a stove. If I remember correctly, the oil was siphon fed and you had to light it manually. It had a fairly large compartment that you could remove the burning bowl from for cleaning; I vaguely remember that it was also used to burn papers and things in, although I'm not sure if that was a valid use or not.

Those wick-less bowl burners were probably the infamous 'drip-feed' heaters. They were cheap to make and were often used as additional heating appliances, being portable and almost always used unvented in the UK, mainly by poorer folks. In 1956 in Britain, over 2000 house fires were attributed to these beasts. By 1958, the number of fires had doubled to over 4000, and they represented over a third of all domestic fires. In 1960 a Private Members Bill was placed before Parliament, forcing makers to introduce safety features so onerous that it effectively killed them off, thank goodness. The problem was that in quite mild drafts, less than 4mph, the bloody things went off like a bomb, with flames emitted in all directions. That sometimes meant just opening a door! Folks burned to death refuelling them while they were running. Many of the fatalities were young children and babies, and it became illegal to leave kids unattended in a room with one. Even so, the fires spread so rapidly that, in at least one instance, adults in a room were powerless to stop children getting badly burned. The legislation also covered wick-type burners, the main effect being that they were fitted with a tilt device, so that in the event of the stove getting knocked over, it triggered a snuffer to put out the flame. A friend of mine burned his ass by sitting on one in the fifties! Ouch!

Here's an old style British-made 'Aladdin' blue-flame wick burner of the period. Makes a handy stool, don't you think?

http://www.hattersley.co.uk/images/products/b1.gif

Alan

Pressure jet burners used to be common on garbage incinerators in older apartment buildings and schools. I still see complete units in the boiler rooms of these places but never operational.

A.D

beside that alot of larger furance or boiler have dual fuel set up so they can run either natural gaz or fuel oil { diesel fuel } majorty of them used on gaz but keep the oil on stand by or where the gas supply drop a bit.

there are serveral way to get the oil system on but two most common is either high pressure pump or use the steam {more often used with HFO ( Hevey Fuel Oil )]

Merci,Marc

Marc, you mentioned burning waste lube-oils. These short US videos give an excellent description of the pressure jet burner adapted for that purpose, show a burner set up, running and what oils it will burn, [ These are adverts, so this is not a personal endorsement of the product.]

The parts are described in American English.
You will note that there is no gear-pump, the oil being delivered by air-powered venturi nozzles, so an air compressor is required. The nozzles look similar to Danfoss-Hago stainless-steel types which I've used. The machine is fed from a day-tank, scales to about 20-30 US gallons. The oil is heated to about 212F/100C for viscosity and ignition purposes - veg oil has to be a lot hotter. The air is heated too, with a cartridge-heater; this is an essential part of the machine.
This is a powerful burner, twin top-end Hagos could put out well in excess of a million BTU/hr = 290kW.

You can rate oil consumption at roughly :
1 liter waste lube or veg oil = 10kW hours
1 US gallon " ditto " = 129,000 BTU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4ZriEMN0FQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SX1lNvUjZg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrTXJDcTzn4&feature=channel

Alan