Bituminous Coal

Just a few pics of last load of coal and how its burning.

i don't thinke it's working

Lets try this again here are a few pics of last load of coal and how its burning.

Good looking coal and I like the way it's burning.

Where is the coal mined and do you have an analysis of it for volatiles vs. fixed carbon? It appears to be a fairly low volatile coal judging by the lack of yellow, sooty flames.

Chris

Hi chris,
I do not have any analysis of the coal.But it is mined in western Pa.
Later RCI

lack of "sooty flames" is likely due more to the phase of burning in which he took the pics. looks just like my kittaning coal does at about 3/4 through the burn cycle.

RCI,

I don't live too far from you and my Bit coal burns the same way, with very little smoke and blue flames on top once it gets going. When it is burning well I don't have any smoke coming out of the chimney at all.
I think when you burn Bit coal, it all depends on what stove/boiler it is being burned in. Your firebox looks ALOT like mine on my AHS boiler.

We're looking into burning bituminous in our wood/coal Energy King furnace. I understand that certain furnace operations can cause the coal to smoke. Does anyone know what causes the smoking?

well, that is a fairly complex question, when burning bituminous, reduction of combustion air will increase smoke, to a point, then actually decrease it before increasing it agian. so for a specific unit, one would have to play around to discover where those points are. however, all bituminous coal will have smoke, except for low volitile bituminous, which does produce smoke, but to such a low degree you generally won't be able to see much if any leaving the chimney. the design of the furnace will be a main factor in how much smoke an average high volitile bituminous coal will produce.

really, if you live in an area where smoke will be objectionable, don't bother trying to heat with it; while you may have a furnace that burns it fairly clean, you won't know untill you've made the investment and it potentially could not be designed well enough to burn it cleanly, then you have already lost your money. so the first step is making sure that regardless of smoke output you're ok either way, then decide to burn bituminous.

on edit, I realize that you already have a furnace, just try burning it, play around, and then ask spcific questions about the operation and let us know how it goes.

I'll try to add to Berlin's post and information.

Basicly, all bituminous coal will smoke quite a bit. Especially when it is first added to the fire, and is burning off the volitiles in the coal. Think of the volitiles as if the bituminous coal is like a hard sponge and was soaked in old motor oil. When you first put it on the fire in the firebox, the 'oil' [the volitiles] have to be burnt out of the coal [which burn with a dirty black smoke] before the coal will burn clean.

Some bituminous coals have more volitiles than others, but from my experience, no bituminous is as smoke free as Anthracite coal.

If the Firebox is designed to burn high volitile bituminous coal it will have a provision for pre-heated air entering over the top of the fire to add extra oxygen to the smoke, which burns off a lot of it. But the provision of over the fire pre-heated air is not a common feature in stoves claiming to burn Bituminous coal. It actually is quite rare.

I totally agree with 'berlin' to just go ahead and try some bituminous in your furnace, it may burn it OK, and since Bituminous coal varies wildly from mine to mine, you may get lucky and have a fairly low volitiles coal available in your area.

Beware that the soot from burning Bituminous can clog a chimney with soot pretty fast if it is real smokey, and may require more frequent furnace and chimney maintenance [cleaning] because of the accumulated soot.

Hope this helps Greg L

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RCI wrote:Lets try this again here are a few pics of last load of coal and how its burning.

That fire looks better than anything I have burned. Where in western pa did you get it? Also if any of you fine gentlemen are attending the coal and beer fest, I would like to trade a bag of bit. that I found along the Pa. tpk at the 15.0 yard line east bound side.The whole side of the hill eroded onto the sholder during a rainstorm about 4 mo. ago. Being a truck driver, I rescued 400 lbs from the tpk athoritys cleanup crew. :headbang: It smokes alot but does not inflate very much and turn into a big blob that needs much breaking up.

Ifyou can get high quality, low volitile bit .. it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot? i'm not planning on it, but curiosity got the best of me. more smoke, but you coud save a great deal of money.

You won't know how good the Bit. coal is untill you've tried it in your stove. Some stoves may burn Bit coal reasonably well others not at all. You cannot burn Bit coal in an Anthracite stoker stove, the sticking, swelling and clinkers will clog it up quickly. I tried it, and I never got past a few hours without major problems.

So if you have a hand feed stove, and have a convenient local source for Bit coal, it is worth a try. Just beware that Bit usually makes lots of smoke when first heating up and starting to burn. I'm talking about black oily soot-filled smoke that will fill a 16'x16' room with soot in seconds.

When I burnt Bit. coal for half a season, I had to powerwash the inside of my boiler building the next summer, the wood was black.

Greg L.

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I am from Michigan and move to the Black Hills of South Dakota. I work for one of the coal mines in the black powder basin. Well, one of the employee benefits is that between Sept - April I can pickup 15 tons of coal free. Stoker coal from a dealer in Sherdian, WY or lump coal from one of mine sites.

With that in mind, I thought I would consider a coal burning whatever. Not having a clue what that in tells, I searched out what I thought would be best, add-on forced air coal furnace to go along with a electric furnace (keeping in mind this is for future purposes, just to see if its worth doing or not)

Now I'm seeing that all coal furnaces don't burn all coal, so now I have all kinds of ????? in my head.

To the point forced air vs radiant heat(water)?
I gather that all have to be shoved fill?(search girlie man in these forums)

And any other info that might be helpful, for or against.

Thank you for your time and advice in advance
Michael

PS: for a possible 2500 to 3000 sqft home ranch style maybe split level

Please give http://www.peasefeedandcoal.com a call and talk to Michael. They are out in your neck of the woods and deal in bituminous stoker fed stoves, furnaces and boilers. They should be able to give you some solid advice.

Chris