[TheForge] burners and other addictions

[Jerry Frost]

The problem with preheating intake air by passing it across the forge shell 
is sinking heat from the forge. The idea is to keep as much heat inside the 
forge for as long as possible so deliberately cooling the forge is counter 
productive.

The recuperative double wall design recycles the exhaust preheating the 
inner wall and isolates it almost completely from outside temps. The 
insulated outer wall is subjected to lower absolute temps than a single wall 
furnace and if it's inner surface is coated with ITC-100, etc. it's heat 
exposure is even lower.

Of course there's nothing at all wrong with putting a heat exchanger on an 
exhaust stack (or whatever) to preheat the intake air. The benefits however 
aren't nearly as significant. About a year or so back I read an article from 
a UK company that was preheating the propane and getting much better results 
than preheating the intake air.

I can't see a reason not to do all three except the gadget factor and hassle 
of getting it all tuned. Still, taken one thing at a time would make it 
reasonable for a tinkerer. Know anybody who likes to tinker? <grin>

Frosty
-------------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

http://www.artmetalradio.com/



From: "Mike Porter" <michael.a.porter at comcast.net>


> Frosty,
> I gots to mull that idea over for a while (somewhere between a week and 
> five years, maybe :) I'm not disagreeing, it's just a lot to think about, 
> all at once like!
>
> The only thing missing up front, is that recouping heat from incoming air 
> also serves to keep an outer wall cooler, and therefore less of a thermal 
> stress on outer insulation. Of course that is only a concern with portable 
> equipment (another one of my addictions).
>
> Portable equipment is not fundamentally about working on jobsites and 
> doing demos for me. It is really all about helping young artists to keep 
> their greedy landlords in check, but that is a whole different 
> conversation...one that is already written up for book five.
> Mikey