[TheForge] Restuperative burner

[Jeffrey Polaski]

Well, I finally got my recuperative burner built and it works fine! I've
read about the Sandia forge and its recuperative burner, so I thought
I'd make one too. But it's made from off-the-shelf hardware, so there is
very little fabrication.

I finally got around to it because I was in a traffic accident and the
inside of my old forge got busted up a bit... (The car I was in got
totaled, it knocked the wheels off the rear rims, but I was fine. The
only other "casualty" was a bottle of my favorite mead). Anyways, the
inside lining of the old forge got busted up a bit and it just didn't
run anywhere as hot. The ITC-100 really makes a difference! I decided
*not* to do the simple, obvious thing and repair the old forge... So I
made a new forge that would be a little more of a "test bed", to try out
a few burner ideas.

Just a little about the forge body: it's fairly big, and has three
inches of ceramic blanket insulation. It's all been soaked in colloidal
silica, then the inside was coated with a 1/4"--1/2" thick layer of
castable refractory (mizzou, I think). There is a piece of 1/2" thick
kiln-shelf at the bottom. I skimmed on a layer of satanite and zirconium
silicate on top of the kiln-shelf and castable. Then, just because I had
it, I put a layer of ITC-100 over all that. The back is 2" of ceramic
board, and the front is just a pile of fire-brick.

So, with that said, on to the burner... I don't remember if I posted
about it before, but it's built with off-the-shelf hardware from Home
depot.

In case you haven't seen a recuperative burner, the basic idea is that
you boost the heat your burner puts out by per-heating the air. It's
easily done by piping hot exhaust gas around the tube of the burner. 

It looks like this, sort of:
	
  \ /                A.) Reil-style burner head
  | |
  | |
  | |
 /| |\               B.) 2"--1" adapter
/ | | \
| | | |
| | | ---            C.) T "side" outlet
| | | 
| | | ---
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |              D.) End of 2" pipe
  | |
  / \                E.) Burner nozzle 


All I'm doing is running a 3/4" Reil-style burner through a 2" piece of
pipe with a 2" T at the end. The Reil burner "head" is above the T so it
doesn't get heated. At the top of the T there is a 2"--1" adapter that
the burner goes through. (no fancy fittings, it's just welded on). 

The larger pipe is open to the ceiling of the forge, so hot gas flows up
the larger pipe, and is exhausted out the side of the T.

I don't have any way to measure the output heat or anything, but I can
say it's a hella' hot setup. I've run it for a few hours at 10psi, with
a small blower, and the forge gets to yellow/orange. 

If any one is interested, I'll post a few pictures. 


Jeff Polaski
Research and Graduate Studies Webmaster
University of California, Irvine
http://www.rgs.uci.edu/
949.824.6363