Furnace Mods-changing from propane to waste oil

Evening all,

I know this probably isn't the place to post this, but i thought i would anyway. We are looking at buying a used Morgan LO2 furnace which is pretty knackered. Aparantly it runs off of gas, and we were wondering how easy it is to convert over to burning oil. We don't know much about burners, as so far we have done all our casting with a solid fuel furnace. I also don't really have any good photos, just the one on the listing, but i know it's a morgan felco burner. Kind of stuck on this one, as it's a really good size furnace, but we need it to run off of waste oil. sent an email to Morgan metal, but got f all response!

Let me know what you guys think!

Knows about and has built oil fired melting furnaces

http://stephenchastain.com/store/in...s_id=3&zenid=c5e83b66223c55fcd23cc172867d022e

Pstodds,

How would your proposed conversion atomize the oil? Would you propose to use preheated waste oil under pressure and compressed air?

Small #2 fuel oil furnaces commonly have a powerful blower with considerable volume, and a high-pressure pump which squirts the oil out of an atomizing jet in the middle of the air flow. The oil burns in a sort of fireball.

You want to use the waste oil that you have or can get cheaply rather than propane. My seat-of-the-pants guess is that the most economical thing to do with the particular furnace is to restore it to run on whatever gas it was originally designed for. Maybe convert to propane from Natural Gas, but that's about as far as I'd recommend going.

Many modern companies will not acknowledge the receipt of questions about product uses which they consider to be dangerous. They don't even send a "NO, thank you" note. They just pretend they never got the inquiry. Sometimes silence is a hint that what you wish to do is impractical or downright dangerous.

John Ruth
(Waiting for someone to say "Oh, it's easy! Here's how to do it!" )

John,

I was thinking of using compressed air, and yes heating the oil. The reason we wanted to use oil is purely from a cost stand point as we can get as much of it as we want for free. yes understand what you mean about the company not replying, that was my thought. however i did ask if they would supply an oil burner

Many thanks,

Paul

it's done all the time by guys on metal casting forum.
different ways of going about it also most use a siphon feed of some short with
compressed air, or you can use a pressure pump nozzles and such can be purchased.
no need to preheat the oil most of the time once you get it lit there is plenty heat in the furnace,

now it depends on what you want to cast, if just aluminum well gas or propane is easier
oil burner can get more hydrocarbons in you melt.
iron on the other hand oil is almost a requirement, talk about hot iron melt well really hot

the oil burner are a build your own kind of deal

I have noticed that my very good pattern/foundry guy uses propane and all the bullshit hobby guys around use waste oil.

Not sure what there is to that. Just have dealt with a lot of shitty bullshit foundries/hobby foundries and the smell of burning waste oil is a warning of a shitty bullshit foundry for me.

From a practical standpoint, the commercial guys want something that is reliable, dependable and simple. One thing I would be concerned with is that used oil has contaminates that could affect the end product.

Tom

Compressed air comes free over on your side of the pond eh ?

Right well this thread was really helpful as always. Yes since our electricity bill for our enitre forge (including running 3 forges and our 2 cwt power hammer as well as our other equipment) comes to around a fiver a day, i think we can say running our 2hp single phase compressor is more or less free. Found a company that makes burners, will use something like an air receiver to use as a fuel tank, will heat slightly and very slightly pressurize, after having it pressure checked of course. No we are not a commercial foundry, and certainly won't be doing it full time. all i can say is we will experiment, and since we shouldn't have that much money invested, if it doesn't work, oh well, we'll move onto another solution, maybe gas. However since this furnace will chew through a 47kg bottle of propane in just over an hour (according to company specs) i don't see that being cost affective or practical, and since we are not going to be using it heavily, there is absolutely no point in installing a gas line and paying rental etc.

Hold on here just a minute....
A 2hp air compressor will support a syphon gun ?

And your plan is to also take this used motor oil (might well contain
some gasoline too, most of ours does) put it in a pressure tank,
cork it up, and pressurize it ? Oh and then heat it up too ?

Ok. you have fun with this then.....

I suggest that you take this question to a different forum, more of a hobby
type one.

that furnace isn't a very efficient type, better off building one from scratch
the burner is a gas hog it takes quite a bit to get it hot as in a large thermal mass.
there is a reason why they are cheap

Well if that air compressor doesn't work, then we use our 10hp 270 litre HPC air compressor, either way, we're sorted on the compressor side of things. If we don't pressurize, then we could use a fuel pump, and perhaps an in line heater, this is where i need some advice. No, the thing is massive, so i don't imagine the thing is very efficient, good job fuel is free, and everything we need to run it cheap!

I've done this. It's not that hard, but I don't generally recommend it. It may work out for you. For the price, the book looks like money well spent.

My burner was an 1/8" copper tube carrying the waste oil inside 1/4" pipe, which carried the compressed air. At minimum fire it kept a 3 HP compressor fairly busy. I only used one pressure regulator to keep from rupturing my fuel tank. A second regulator on the air line would help reduce air consumption. You could probably get by with 2 Hp. Pre-heating the fuel shouldn't be necessary.

My minimum fire rate was too much for my application, and I wrote the whole thing off as an interesting exercise.