Hello from the newbie on the list I have been having some success with burning WVO in a traditional oil burner. I at first attempted running it through mixed with an equal amount of #2 heating oil (aka diesel fuel)- although the mixture seemed to atomize normally, the mist only partially ignited. Second attempt, I mixed one part WVO with two parts #2 oil, this ignited almost completely. I have now logged about one hour of burning this mixture, starting from a cold state several times. The combustion makes an oscillating sound for a couple of minutes on startup, along with some puffs of blowback through the cracks in the boiler door, but it cleans up after the burner has been on for 2-3 minutes. The improvement could be due to the heat which has built up in the firebox walls- at that point the flame is clean white with very little smoke. After reading some of the things which have been written on this subject, I was expecting the WVO to block my nozzle orifice, but, (knock on oil can) this hasn't happened yet.
I'd like to eliminate the initial dodginess in the flame, and I'd also like to increase my ratio of WVO to #2 oil- one way I might be able to accomplish this is to start the burner with pure #2 oil then switch over to WVO/#2 mix after the firebox is good and hot (following the model employed in WVO burning cars). Preheating the oil also occurred to me, but it seems like any preheating I could do safely would be pretty modest compared with the firebox heat. Another idea is to build a babington style burner, which I have begun to assemble the parts for. I suspect that this type of burner will suffer from the same problem though- incomplete combustion of the oil mist at lower temperatures. The only babington style burner which I have seen in action was affixed to a 4" diameter steel tube about 20" long, again, possibly to build up heat quickly and radiate it back onto the flame. Comments welcome. Stephen Bosco Arlington, Mass., USA ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> 4 DVDs Free +s&p Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/mG3HAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
