Building a Waste Oil Burner - a Hybrid Drip/Beckett Setup

Keep plugging away at it, I know you'll figure it out.

I have a complete Beckett unit out in the shed, guess I'll keep it around just in case you need it.

Thanks!

I found out the thermal switch still works on this one at least ....

SUCCESS!!! WAAAHOOO!!

So this morning I took down the oil line & eliminated the sight glass (the one I suspected trouble with), removed the brake rotor and welded some pieces of scrap to block all the holes, then tried again. I used my modified soup can as a tank just to test. Started with a little #2 poured on some paper towels. Fire seemed alot better this time. Fired up the Beckett, and same thing .. started to blow out the fire. So I unplugged it and walked away for a bit. I returned to a loud roar, and some tall flames! Nice!!

Plugged in the Beckett again, gave the squirrel-cage a spin and queue the sound of a jet taking off! WOW what a friggin fire!! YEAH!!!

It's nice when hard work finally pays off! Here's some pics ... and maybe video if I can resize the monstrous file ...

Looks good Smitty,
I'll save all my used oil for ya.

Nice, enjoy the warmth!! I love having the stoker in the workshop / garage for those mid winter projects!!

I'm loving the soup can, but maybe you could splurge & upsize to a #10 can and cut down on your refill frequency!!

Congratulations !!
I have and use a waste oil burning furnace in my shop. I use it to augment the heated concrete floor. The floor keeps the place around 45*-50*, and if I'm going to be working a project out there for more than an hour to two, I fire up the waste oil heater to bring up the air temperature.

My heater, which was a commercially made unit has a removable cast iron pan in the bottom of the burn chamber. The pan is 12" in diameter, 2" deep, with a slot on one of the outer edges, with the 2" high edge around the 'slot' . This slot is so that the pan can be pulled up, past the oil delivery tube that sticks out from the wall of the combustion chamber. Once the pan is past the supply tube, and resting on the floor of the combustion chamber, the pan is given a turn, so the slot does not lie under the oil supply tube, The oil has to drip into the pan [ of course] .

The combustion chamber's outer wall is about 16" deep, and only about 13" diameter, just large enough in diameter to let the burn pan be lifted out and returned easily. The burn pan has a cast-in lifting ring in the middle, a bent-wire hook is used to remove the pan each day.

Above the combustion chamber the furnace increases in diameter to about 24" up to a total height of roughly 40". There is a cast iron lid with locking tabs covering the entire combustion chamber/furnace fire chamber. There is a 6" flue exiting out the back of the chamber near the top.

To light the fire is pretty simple. The cast iron pan is filled with about a 1/2 cup of #2 or diesel, then a few bits of paper towel are stood up in the shallow puddle of #2, a BBQ lighter is used to ignite the paper 'wicks'. The fire from the paper towel wicks is lazy, and VERY smoky. But not for long ! The iron lid is set in place on the top of the cylinder, and turned to lock the tabs. While not a perfect seal, the combustion smoke/smell etc does go out the flue, not leak out around the lid's perimeter.

The smaller diameter combustion chamber's wall is drilled full of holes. about 8-10 rows starting about 2" above the top of the iron fire pot/pan, then roughly equally spaced to near the top of the cylinder. There is a second wall, a larger diameter wall around the outside of the combustion chamber [drilled] wall. There is a small combustion blower feeding air into this double wall. The holes let the air into the combustion chamber, and the results are rather spectacular. The fire is nearly white, with a tinge of yellow, it swirls like a tornado, and not a wisp of smoke exits the chimney, and no odor either. .

The function of the cast iron pan is two-fold. First it get HOT. and the oil supply tube dribbles oil into the pan, much faster than a drip would, it is supplied by a very small piston pump. I think it supplies about 1 tablespoon of used oil every minute.. not sure, but roughly that amount. The oil instantly vaporizes and is swept up into the fire-tornado, being fed hot, fresh air to fully burn the oil vapor.
The second function of the iron pan is to hold the dirt, carbon, crap etc that was in the waste oil. This is the crap that was in your car or truck's engine oil, that the filter did not capture. And there is an amazing amount of this crud.

If I burn nothing but clear ATF, the iron fire pan only has a thin, maybe 1/16" layer of white crust. And I can use the pan without cleaning for 3 days or more. But if I'm burning dirty waste oil from car and truck oil changes, then there is a very hard, baked on layer in the pan, often 1" deep, and it requires some pretty aggressive scraping to remove it. I do this outside, since the black, carbon-like stuff flies everywhere, and makes a real mess. And I usually just dump it in the gravel drive alongside the shop, It washes away each spring.

Sting's question about synthetic motor oils is one I pondered as well, and experimented with. I use Mobil Diesel Truck Synthetic oil in all my farm machinery and diesel vehicles. I cleaned out the furnace's oil reservoir and put just synthetic motor oil in, and fired it up. I didn't notice any difference in lighting the fire, or how it burned.. So I suppose as long as the fire is well established, the higher flash point of synthetic motor oil won't make much difference.

I burn waste hydraulic oil, vegetable oil, ATF, motor oil, dirty or waste diesel, contaminated #2 heating oil, and just about anything that 'should' burn. The only problem I've ever had was with some oil that was heavily mixed with antifreeze or water. The water flashes to steam, and cools down the combustion chamber. I've had one fire go out due to too much water in the fuel.

it sure is nice to get some heat from the waste oil, and not have to find someplace to take it for 'disposal'.

GregL

Nice goin Smitty Dial that puppy in and market the thing

happy holidays
waldo

Thanks fellas!

Greg, your setup sounds like a really well engineered design there! While my setup doesn't smoke too bad, it still smokes ... and if I crank the oil up, it REALLY smokes. Burned for about an hour and a half yesterday after that post - there is definitely some nasty buildup in there already! I also shelved the soup can, and hooked up my 6 gallon pail. I have a piece of wood on top that fits my 10" metal funnel with screen perfectly. I've been pouring oil out of the mountain of 6 gallon buckets I've had stacked here for years now. There's also a FULL 55 gallon drum too .. but I need to buy some fittings to mount a recently acquired hand crank pump to it to extract the filtered oil from that.

In testing I had forgotten I had taped up the intake of the Beckett to slow the airflow down! When I removed that tape, WOW what a blast furnace! Then when I taped up the large open area where the ignitor normally rests, I got even MORE air! This thing was RIPPING! Had 900° on that front strip that I have since welded a 12" long section of angle-iron to to keep it from warping again. I've since burned most of the paint off the front of the stove, LOL ! You can tell the stove doesn't sit level by the heat favoring one side in the burn pattern of the paint. Guess I need to get some stove black .... or at least something rated higher than 500°. The outer jacket of the furnace seemed to average about 250° - some hotter, some cooler sections. Stack was over 400° on that rip-snorting test.

Only issue I'm having is smoke coming out the ash door. Sort of figured since there's no gasket ... or a place to put a gasket. Last night after I shut it down, I ran a bead of Permatex Right Stuff along the perimeter - that should have cured by now, and hopefully will fix the leakage issue there. Problem is that stuff is also rated for only 500°. Guess I should mellow out the full-throttle runs ...

Oh one more addition to the chamber - I threw in my old stainless chimney cap to sort of deflect the flame from exiting directly from the burn chamber to the chimney. With that resting there, it's forced up and over the cap to heat the stove before exiting. That;s my theory at least. Stack temps do seem about 50° cooler, give or take, after that addition.

Got some more pics from testing - enjoy!

There must he something wrong with the Crown Royal here in Cancun because I'm almost more interested in your garage stove Smitty. Congrats on gettin it going!

cabinover wrote:There must he something wrong with the Crown Royal here in Cancun because I'm almost more interested in your garage stove Smitty. !

I hear they have a new flavor out... Apple, or something.

Thanks Cabin!

I prefer the alcohol flavor ...

SMITTY wrote:There's also a FULL 55 gallon drum too .. but I need to buy some fittings to mount a recently acquired hand crank pump to it to extract the filtered oil from that.

Mount a screw on replaceable filter housing inline. Something off a tractor/semi/heavy equipment, bigger screw on diesel or oil filter. Then you'd catch most of the junk and likely cut down in the ash in the pan.
You could transfer your little cans into the drum as you use it and filter an awful lot of gunk out.
Get a cleaner hotter fire.
When we bought this place the oil tank cap and sight glass were missing. All kinds of junk/water/who knows in the tank, clogging the filter and nozzles on my beckett. Now, I change the screw-on filter once a year, biocide and anti-gel the fuel, and no problems.

Oh one more addition to the chamber - I threw in my old stainless chimney cap to sort of deflect the flame from exiting directly from the burn chamber to the chimney. With that resting there, it's forced up and over the cap to heat the stove before exiting. That's my theory at least. Stack temps do seem about 50° cooler, give or take, after that addition.

Makes me wonder if you could do some kind of 'reburner' to capture the unburnt volatiles and cycle them back into the flame.

All great ideas Nealkas ... but now we're moving out of my comfort zone of "SIMPLE" and "CHEAP".

I've got to put a little more work into sealing up that lower ash door. Today, all the Right Stuff burned right off. Looks like I have no choice but to weld up some more metal, and buy some rope gasket. Damn I hate spending money ...

Had the barn at 65° today, albeit in a gray/blue haze. Should do wonders for my asthma ... but anyway, I got some air helper springs installed in the truck, and rewired some faulty lights on my neighbor's plow ... and of course, replaced a 3' rotted section of rear brake line on the same truck.

My productivity goes WAY up when I'm WARM!

Oh, and I burned roughly 4.5 gallons in 7 hours. I can live with that! Even as I found out that my rubber hose was never attached inside the Beckett! All the oil is just running down the exhaust pipe instead of through the copper line! No wonder it takes so long to react to flow settings ... I'll fix that tomorrow. Simple enough.