Moving Coal With Air or Flex Auger (Picture Heavy)

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grobinson2
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Posts: 335
Joined: Wed. Dec. 24, 2008 1:35 pm
Location: Peach Bottom, PA
Stoker Coal Boiler: EFM 520 Highboy, and EFM 520 round door
Hand Fed Coal Stove: Coalbrookdale Darby, Harman Mark III, Stratford SC100, DutchWest 288 (With Coal Insert), Coalbrookdale Severn, Hitzer 50/93, Hitzer 354 Double Door, FrancoBelge La Normandie, DS Machine Anthramax
Coal Size/Type: Rice, Buck, Pea, Nut, and Stove
Other Heating: Vermont Castings Defiant 1975 FlexBurn, Fisher Grandpa Bear, Vermont Castings DutchWest 224, Vermont Castings Defiant 1945, Ravelli RV-100 Classic, Progress Hybrid, Glenwood Wood Chip Boiler

Post by grobinson2 » Mon. Dec. 21, 2015 1:09 am

Good evening Guys,
Over the last 10 years I have tried many many different ways of trying to move coal around the farm faster and with less effort then just carrying it in a 5 gallon bucket. Sometimes I have been successful and yet others using a 5 gallon bucket would have been much much easier then the rout I chose. I am as always more then happy to answer any questions you may have so please feel free to ask. Please post and do not PM me the question unless of course it would be better spoken about privately for one reason or another. I would like to apologize a head of time for any spelling errors I might have. I had eye surgery two weeks ago and while I feel my eyes should be good to go my eyes them selves have other ideas.

In a nut shell what I have found is that a flex auger system with the drive unit or drive head hanging above the coal bin is by far the fastest way to move coal. In my case a 2.39" flex auger will empty a 5 ton dump trailer worth of rice coal in about an hour. Buckwheat also works well with the 2.39" flex auger system but goes a little slower and of course makes the drive unit work harder. If the coal is wet or oiled add about half of the amount of time it should have originally taken to your overall time. As you can see in the pictures below I used simple 3" PVC pipe with 2.39" steel flex auger. This system and size of auger and pipe will not work with coal that is sized larger then buckwheat. The flex auger does not pulverize the coal and is fast. It is however VERY noisy and setup and tare-down is a pain in the but especially when doing it without any help. I use a simple electric motor and have the extension cord run by where the coal is loaded into the auger system so that if something goes wrong I can turn the motor off as there is no automatic shut off. It goes without saying that if you get any part of your body caught by the auger... It is a very bad day. I had it snag the sleeve of a light weight jacket and before I knew what was happening the sleeve was gone and heading up to the bin. I have found that the best way to load coal into this system is to have the auger lay in the bottom of a trough with an opening in the pipe approximately six inches long. Any larger and the system will become clogged with too much coal especially if the coal is wet. Any smaller and you have feeding issues. Obviously your bends need to be very wide or you will have binding issues. I sourced all of my parts for this system from old chicken houses that were no longer in use. Everything but the pipe was free. :) I did experiment with a solid auger system before the flex. What I found is that while it was a little bit faster it seemed to grind the coal more and I was getting a lot more grinds out of what used to be solid pieces of coal. It was also very hard to store and move when the auger was not needed. The flex auger is easily stored in our barn by simply rolling up the auger its self like a garden hose and hanging it on the wall and of course the PVC pipe comes apart and is stored vertically in a corner of the barn as well. The only piece of pipe that has needed to be replaced is where the auger lays in the trough. This was worn away the second year and has been replaced with a steel section. Be very careful when rolling up the auger and wear thick leather gloves as it will take a finger off in no time if it gets away from you. This is by far the biggest downside to the system. When I put the auger away I spray it down with waste motor oil to help stop rust during the months that it is not in use.

I started moving coal with air this year because while at my house I only have to fill my bin once every other year or at most once a year at the farm I have to fill the bin at least four times a year. This was not really a problem when we had our Kubota L5740 but since upgrading to a Kioti RX7320 the tractor will no longer fit in the space where the bin is located. I did not want to use the flex auger system due to setup time and so I started playing around with moving coal with air. As you can see in the pics below I am moving the coal a little over 30 horizontal feet around 7 feet vertically. At first I was using a large leaf collection system blower that is on a Kubota 3060 mower but what I found is that while the volume of air was almost too much the speed at which it traveled was not enough. So I switched to a simple leaf blower with much better results. I used the same 3" pipe that I used for the flex auger system and the same trough although in a different configuration. At first I came out of the trough strait down and used a 3" Y connector to bring the coal into the pipe right in front of the blower. What I found is that while it moved lots of coal it also created a very large amount of positive pressure inside the pipe that not only blew coal out into the desired coal bin but also back up and out of the trough and all over yours truly and everything else that was around me. When I walked in for lunch and my four year old told Mommy that Daddy was now a black man I thought it was time for a change. I played around with a verity of different setups and ended up filling a large box with now useless PVC fittings and settled on the setup below. The key was having the port where the air entered into the 3" pipe be smaller then the main pipe. I used a 3" x 2" Y and found that while this did not create a negative pressure in the pipe going up to the trough it was not positive ether and thus did not spit coal all over the place. I found that I was able to move 25 cubic feet of rice coal in about 15 minutes. The best part is that it was self sufficient and I did not have to worry about the auger, clogged pips or other issues and could instead do other work around the farm while it did its thing. I did not have any pulverized coal and setup and cleanup was a breeze. Once I found a setup that would work I tried every size of coal we had on the property. Everything worked except stove sized coal with rice being by far the best and fastest. Again I found that wet or heavily oiled coal moved quite a bit slower. One thing I have changed is instead of going from 3" to 4" at the coal bin with two 90's I have now gone with two 45's and used rubber instead of plastic. I find that the rubber helps with pieces of coal being bounced all over the place and instead puts them right into the bin. All bends had to be very shallow or speed was greatly reduced. As you can see I put a gave valve on the bottom of the trough and found that with rice coal about half way open let the perfect amount of coal down into the pipe. I am sure there are a million things I am not telling you guys that you will need or want to know so again please ask. I had been warned about creating static shock by shooting the coal through PVC pipe with air and that I should have a ground attached to the pipe. Apparently this is a HUGE issue with grain, however with the coal I did not have any issues with static buildup. I really hope this is able to help some of you out there who have perhaps run into some of the same issues I have around here.

Thanks again,
Glenn

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Richard S.
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Post by Richard S. » Mon. Dec. 21, 2015 6:09 am

Be close on both of them but you should be able to do both with a high lift. That's assuming you could back right up to the porch over the lawn and get alongside that wall on the other one. The one with the wall might be just a little too far, my best guess is you'd have take out one course of those ties. Of course pictures are hard to really tell.

If that front porch has room for coal under it the whole way what I would suggest to you if I was bringing the coal is take out a block on the foundation near the top every 5 feet or so. Be in and out of there in 15 minutes... ;) Really depends on the sitution inside. Anoither option would be taking one out under the steps. That should be doable with high lift too.

 
Kungur
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Location: Chardon,Ohio

Post by Kungur » Mon. Dec. 21, 2015 8:16 am

What do you all think the maximum distance one could achieve with the blower set up? Also would reducing the pipe diameter down line help ?


 
titleist1
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Post by titleist1 » Mon. Dec. 21, 2015 9:01 am

Thanks for sharing the info, that's a lot of field research you did there! :)

How does the coal get from the RR tie bin into the house?

 
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grobinson2
Member
Posts: 335
Joined: Wed. Dec. 24, 2008 1:35 pm
Location: Peach Bottom, PA
Stoker Coal Boiler: EFM 520 Highboy, and EFM 520 round door
Hand Fed Coal Stove: Coalbrookdale Darby, Harman Mark III, Stratford SC100, DutchWest 288 (With Coal Insert), Coalbrookdale Severn, Hitzer 50/93, Hitzer 354 Double Door, FrancoBelge La Normandie, DS Machine Anthramax
Coal Size/Type: Rice, Buck, Pea, Nut, and Stove
Other Heating: Vermont Castings Defiant 1975 FlexBurn, Fisher Grandpa Bear, Vermont Castings DutchWest 224, Vermont Castings Defiant 1945, Ravelli RV-100 Classic, Progress Hybrid, Glenwood Wood Chip Boiler

Post by grobinson2 » Mon. Dec. 21, 2015 9:55 am

Good morning Guys,
Pipe diameter does make a difference and if you are using just rice coal then a smaller pipe will of course allow for the coal to be blown farther. The problem I ran into was that when I tried to go smaller then 3" I was getting so much back pressure on the blower it did not want to run right. As far as high lifts are concerned I do not own a high lift and so I tried to use things that were around the farm. I do have a tractor (Pictured Below) and even at its highest position I was unable to get any coal to slide in a chute or pipe into the bins. I did think about buying my coal from a broker or coal yard instead of picking it up at the mine but in my area a high lift truck would not have fit anyway and then there is always the added cost of having to pay someone else to deliver the coal. I found that if I was buying more then two tons at a time for my distance from the mine (around 100 miles) it was cheaper for me to haul it my self. Mileage costs were based on the federal reimbursement rate. I found that bends in the pipe even as shallow as a 45 degree bend had the greatest negative impact on the moving the coal via air especially when it came to nut coal. Long shallow sweeps (This time of year we are obviously putting up all the trains and I was equate the long sweeps as similar as you would do if you were putting up a G gauge train set and wanted to run one of the Big Boys or a 4-8-8-4.) are the best. I found that the rubber unions or connectors that you can see in the pics worked very nicely as not only are you able to do those shallow bends but there are easy to take apart and move around where as once the coal goes through the PVC fittings even without glue they are very hard to get apart and then put back together without doing a very through wipe down. Someone had asked about distance. I was able to effectively blow rice coal 75 feet with three inch pipe and nut coal 40 feet. I did not extensively test smaller diameter pipe for the distance runs. Obviously at those distances the coal moved from the trough at a slower rate. At first I used the black drain pipe on the end going into the coal bin and found that for whatever reason it really caused issued with the coal or perhaps air turbulence in the pipe. I expected it to cause issues with the coal coming out of course as it would catch briefly on the little ridges or ribs but it also played with the air coming out somehow as well. As I said last night the hard elbows at the end worked but the rubber worked even better. I have of course seen plenty of youtube videos of some of the guys that were nice enough to upload video of how they move pellets or corn. My assumption as to why the coal was harder or trickier to move is that it is a much more dense or heavy media. I did feed some corn and prune pits though the same setup as I used for coal and found that it would have been maybe three times as fast moving those media instead of the coal. It was almost too fast and I could have really slowed down the air supply. The rubber barn mat under the leaf blower by the way was to keep it from vibrating all over the place and effecting the unglued pipe joints. Also the trough is not black from coal but was put in a 500 gallon propane tank with waste motor oil and then pressurized at 160 PSI. :) Today I was playing around with this setup and am going to try and find some 3" clear poly hose like we use for the sucker tank for WVO collection. I am thinking it will be lighter and easier to move around then the PVC and also allowing for more bends instead of hard couplers.

Thanks again,
Glenn

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