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Does any one know at what temperature anthracite coal burns? In a refractory setting with plenty of primary air and secondary super heated air?

Nobody knows?

Assuming complete combustion of the anthracite coal, 4770 deg. F to 4910 deg. F.

Wow! thats hot. Do these coal stoves reach that temp. inside?
I am thinking of useing this coal in my home made boiler. I will have to be carfeul not to melt my heat exchanger. LOL. Hopefully the thermal mass will absorb the flue gases and knock temps down to 2000 degrees. I' ll see. Thanks

That is the temperature in the coal bed of perfect fire which will never happen in a coal fired appliance. I think the actual temp at the base of the flames will be around 2000 * F in a stoker but since the fire is small it's kind of like a concentrated flame on a torch so to speak. My stoves body will reach 500 -600 degress on about a 2/3 burn.

So I suppose I could burn the stuff in my outdoor wood boiler. Just need to watch how much air it gets. Now how do these stoves remove the ash from around the coal pile. Theold stuff I guess you shook some sort of grate. What do these auto feed stoves do?

Before you burn any coal in your furnace you should read up on how a hand fed stove works... you have to have grates and a way to shake them to get the ash to fall into an ash pan below. You also need a way to regulate air coming in under the caol bed. IMO your idea to burn blocks of coal will probably have some insurmountable challenges. But then again where there is a wil and plenty of time there is a way.

A stoker uses a catch pan under the stoker mechanism or a pit to remove the ash. Burning coal is way different than anything else and needs a proper design to work. My suggestion would be to read up on as many designs as you can before attempting to design your set up for burning coal.

Have fun, your boiler looks like a well thought out efficient design for burning wood.

I already have an 8inch high space for getting ash. I think some sort of fan to blast the ash off the coal every now and again might do the trick. We will see. I have looked at quite a few designs.

See images.

The long probe sits directly above the coal fire. Temps will vary between 700F & 1000F. The fire I show below corresponds to the image I included in real time. Note: The 2nd image is without a flash. The 3rd is with a flash.

I've used a probe thermometer and put it directly into the fire, the highest temp I saw was 2200*. Most of the time I could find 1600-1800* spots with ease.

Greg L

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LsFarm wrote:I've used a probe thermometer and put it directly into the fire, the highest temp I saw was 2200*. Most of the time I could find 1600-1800* spots with ease.

Greg L

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2200* is plenty hot. Steel melts at about 2500F and iron around 2750F, its obvious now what a good overdraft could do.

From the internet research I did tonight, anthracite burns at 900- 950 degrees. No wonder I had trouble getting it started from firewood, -Kent

Yeah, with an ignition point about 3 times that of wood, I would say its not easy to light. It has been waiting around so long to get used (300 million years, now thats seasoned!), it takes it a little while to get going.

Was just thinking the other day about some winter hobbies. You could suspend a crucible in there and melt some low point metals like aluminum, zinc and lead for some home made sand molds or projects.

Only caveat would be the effects of waste gases on the inside of the firebox over time.

Just thinking out loud......

You can melt steel too. I did it for years with my hand fired's firebrick retaining bars. The gases won't hurt the firebox to my knowledge.