Melting iron with waste oil

Mike sez: ">

Any comments? I haven't bought the book yet, though I will be ordering it in the near future."

Comments ? Comments ? ....

Only 1 comment, Mike ! Yeeee, Hawwwww !!!

This special find has been added to my bookmarked file in your honor. Many thanks, Mike.

Sincerely,

Bob Swinney

================== Not familiar with this book/author but see

Some of their books are a little "strange" but all are interesting. Their foundry books cover a lot of the old techniques that are of use to the home shop foundry, but better products/methods may have been developed. ( I am thinking particularly of the suggestion to use horse dung as an additive to core sand for strength, probably free in the days the books were written.)

Good luck on the foundry work.

Another good book, and cheaper, too:

Waste oil?

When you can do it with grass clippings or old newspapers, then I'll be interested.

I'm surprised that the book is written in the UK - all the health hazards and environmental hazards associated with burning waste oil appear to have completely by-passed the author. Whilst death is inevitable, I'd prefer not to inflict an early death by cancer on myself by following his advice. I'm almost certain that it is illegal to burn untreated waste engine oil in the UK & continental Europe due to its high sulphur content and all the other nasties it contains. Regards Ian

I agree, waste motor oil has some nasty stuff in it and burning it (untreated) should be avoided at all costs.

I wonder however if you could use fuel oil or kerosene. The other link in a different response seems geared towards Aluminum, and competes with the thousands of designs for Aluminum furnaces out there.

Iron melting furnaces on the other hand seem very rare.

According to Marc Britten :

[ ... ]

Well ... at least one of our regulars has one -- Wayne Cook. It is gas fired, and he discovered that it would reach those temperatures (and that his pyrometer was inaccurate) when he was trying to heat-treat some cast iron -- and it ran out the oven door onto the ground. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Most of those who fire with waste oil use vegetable oil. I know of only a few who use motor oil.

I've used waste engine oil. it pays to mix some dieselene or kero in it to make it ignite a little easier. when you have the furnace up to temperature you are spraying the oil air mix on to white hot incandescent furnace walls and the oil is vaporised totally. it burns pretty well completely and there is no smoke from a furnace on the roar.

...of course get the oil air mix wrong and you'll see instantly why they poured smoke from destroyers and battleships to evade the enemy in ww2 :-)

I believe that the pollutants are from incompletely burnt mixes. the really hot burns are pretty well sorting out the chemistry.

btw my little furnace would take about a kilo of mazak/aluminium from cold to a molten crucible in 20 minutes.

Stealth Pilot

I know what kerosene is, but dieselene has me stumped. Is it a mixture of diesel oil and gasoline? Here is a fellow who seems to think that oil and water make a good mix, and the crazy thing is that he seems to know what he is talking about:

I had no idea you were into such strange, kinky stuff! And not afraid to shout it from the rooftops. I don't swing that way, but good for you!

That's perfect. I was actually searching for something like that (the oil treatment part). After reading a bit about crank case oil burning, I was looking for something on how to pre-treat the oil for burning.

I think that those who run their diesel cars, vans, or trucks on waste cooking oil have figured out how to process it, and for either cooking oil or motor oil, I think that the most sophisticated way of treating it is to use a centrifuge. I know of no reason why a hobbiest could not build his own centrifuge, also. I probably will build one myself.

Interesting looking book and web site. I have a set of these plans:

around here some where. Real basic construction, relys on

90psi compressed air to make it work. There used to be a foundry across the road from my old high school and I remember watching them when they were casting. Lots of black smoke...and fire

ED

To do any good, centrifuges have to run at high speed. Make sure you have good solid bearing mounts and a well balanced rotor. These things can store a LOT of energy, and will make a hell of a mess if they come unstuck. I had two of them in a brewery I was Chief Engineer at. The rotors weighed a ton each and they were driven by 250 HP motors through electro-magnetic couplings. They ran at 2000 RPM,and we had to bring an operator in

2 hours before start-up to have them at speed by the time the shift started. They frightened hell out me then and still do 20 years later on. See if you can find an old farm cream separator and put a drive motor on it. You'll live longer.

This was in the kiln building book I used to design and build an electric brass melting furnace about 25 years ago. Karl

MikeMandaville wrote:

Iwas told of a similar technique used in WW2 in the desert IIRC. It just required an oil drip onto an a steel plate placed at about 45 degrees. When the plate was sufficiently pre-heated the oil would splash/vapourise and combustion would be self-sustaining.

--Hey I wonder if this would be a good application for a spinning cup burner like the ones the SACA West gang use for their flash boiler steam cars..