Burning Fines: How Do You?

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VigIIPeaBurner
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Post by VigIIPeaBurner » Thu. Jan. 16, 2020 1:06 pm

After quite a few years of hauling my own coal home I've got a lot of fines. Buckets of them. 100s of pounds of them. They've accumulated from different places - mainly on the tarp I dump the load onto and the bottom of the bin at the end of the season.
The Vigilant II 2310 burns about anything I throw into it but like you'd expect too many slows how the fire bed passes air through. I can't bring myself to chuck them out.

I've seen videos where someone will mix them with cement or mortar. Seems to me it'd make for more ash and a heavier ash pan. There was a recent discussion about using water glass (sodium silicate) and it got me thinking about using water glass to form chunks of coal from the fines. They use it to make casting molds for molten metal and it holds the sand just fine under the heat of the molten metal. I'm going to try it to see if it works ok and holds the fines in chunks so the carbon can burn and the chunks would form larger combustion air passages. If I find the right water to water glass dilution ratio the ash chunk should disintegrate or break up by grate action.

Ah, 🤔 would sodium silicate harm my stove or SS chimney? It's very basic (high pH). Coal forms sulfuric acid (low pH). Neither one should be an issue in the absence of condensed steam or liquid water. If they met, they should neutralize each other to some extent. This makes me think there'd be no issues.

I have the fines. A 1 gallon of 100% Rutland sodium silicate is around $26 bucks online the big A store. I'll give it a spare time try.

 
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Post by kirtsy420 » Thu. Jan. 16, 2020 3:12 pm

i take a brown paper bag and fill bout 2 or 3 inch deep with fines. roll it up tight and lay it on top of a hot bed of coals. the heat will mold the fines together and make a coal log. burns like a cigarette would. kinda weird and cool at the same time.

 
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Post by CapeCoaler » Thu. Jan. 16, 2020 10:51 pm

just pour about 3lbs worth on the top of the full hopper...
Never a problem...
Just burn them as ya find them and don't stockpile them...

 
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VigIIPeaBurner
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Post by VigIIPeaBurner » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 9:29 am

I usually do just like you said to do in my batch burner, no hopper. For a decade plus I've been getting my coal from dry breakers at the mine and dump 4 ton loads on top of a tarp. From the tarp I load it into a 2 ton bin I refill 2 times a year with a FEL. The bin feeds buckets from the bottom. I shovel from the floor of the bin. What ever comes out of the bin goes into the batch burning stove and there's always fines in the bottom.

When the tarp empties there's lots of coal dirt on it since I prolly pulled 12-16 ton off the tarp before it tears up. Lots of coal dirt there. I burn mostly pea and when it's sized on the lower side of the size range too much coal dirt chokes off the airways. Burning fines works better with nut. That's the easy answer right there - burn nut and dump coal dirt on top like you said. It'd still take a long time to work through the stock of fines.


 
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Post by freetown fred » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 9:31 am

Hey Dave---ya BORED?????????????????????? LOL

 
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Post by warminmn » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 10:55 am

It might make a good base for a spot you want to drive or build on in place of using sand. It would take an awful long time to burn that amount up a couple pounds at a time and just might not be worth the effort to do so.

 
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VigIIPeaBurner
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Post by VigIIPeaBurner » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 11:18 am

freetown fred wrote:
Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 9:31 am
Hey Dave---ya BORED?????????????????????? LOL
😜😜
From time to time! Started digging young black birch trees out the past week to clear a place for my wood and coal. It was warm and ground was just right until I hit the bucket ram hose against the tree I was working on. Broke the seal at the joint andnow it's bleeding fluid when i cycle the bucket. Tree was a leaner but when I got down a few feet I saw the roots anchored in bolder cracks. Would have never fallen over!
warminmn wrote:
Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 10:55 am
It might make a good base for a spot you want to drive or build on in place of using sand. It would take an awful long time to burn that amount up a couple pounds at a time and just might not be worth the effort to do so.
That there is the best idea yet! I have a few 4x4 4" thick concrete pads I move around I'm planning to use as a base for the bin. I'll use it under them as a grout on top of a crushed gravel base. Thanks!

Still half interested to see if the water glass would work since I paid for all that carbon. Had visions of dumping coal dirt & water glass in the cement mixer and dumping it on a tarp. Figured I'd run the tractor over it when it set up. Sound easy?

 
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Post by BostonBob » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 11:48 am

I don’t get a lot of fines, if I had a bunch I’d think about using as mulch around the house (no bugs !)


 
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Post by Sunny Boy » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 1:38 pm

In the smaller firebox of the range, I put the fines in a clump kinda like a large piece of coal. It burns well without clogging and slowing, or stalling the fire.

In the bigger firepot of the GW#6 I just dump the fines into the magazine with the rest of the coal in the bucket. Most of it falls straight down out of the mag to the center of the firebed, which is the hottest part, so it doesn't seem to bother it at all.

I used to worry about fines, and I would separate them out. But when I learned how to burn them, I realized it is heat I paid for so why waste it ?

They are also handy for slowing a too-hot firebed.

Paul

 
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Post by Lightning » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 4:32 pm

Here is what I did with my fines. It worked very good as a blanket to keep the fuel bed healthy during low slow burns.

Managing Low Slow Burns

 
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Post by jedneck » Fri. Jan. 17, 2020 7:40 pm

I burn bag blashac nut. For the range i dump bag into a 15 gallon galvanized trash can and scoop out to load range. Any fines at bottom go into range when can gets low. They burn n make heat. In antramax they go in hopper from bucket. Same they burn n make heat

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