Babington Burner

[Ivan]

This morning, on the way to work, I picked up an oil boiler from Avonmouth, which I'm hoping to modify to accept a babington burner.

Anyone got any tips for drilling a 0.35mm hole? I've got pillar drills and a dremel. Is it best to drill this size hole with a high rpm drill like the dremel?

[Stuart]

would always use the pillar drill, least you know its going in square and true, so you can consentrate on how gently you driving it down. Any side pressure will snap that little bit sharpish. what metal you drilling into?

[Ivan]

I'm thinking of using a piece of 28mm copper pipe as a 2-dimensional sphere. Not sure if anyone's done it before, but it seems logical to me.

Yes, I'm worried about breakage. The drill bits aren't exactly cheap.

I wonder whether it needs to be high speed drilling, or whether standard pillar drill speeds will do? I did wonder about strapping the dremel to the pillar drill

[Stuart]

coppers fairly soft, strapping the dremmel to the pillar probably best, that copper isn't going to get hot enough for any soilder joints to melt is it?
last set of tiny bits i got was about £10 and i use a pin vice with them. I like this idea, as i can get lots of waste engine oil
was going to have a go at converting a oil burner and have a fuel filter system myself next year.
one for heating the shed and another for preheating locomotive engine water

hope this will be a show us yours thread?

[KenB]

Ivan,

You can buy a pre-drilled brass ball from Andy Mahoney at Homebrewpower.    It comes complete with a 15mm compression fitting to take the air-line.  At £40, he's making a healthy profit - but it might save you some drilling grief.   Or go to B&Q and buy a hollow brass door-knob with a screw fitting for under a fiver.

These sub-0.5mm drills are intended for pcb drilling and are spun at high speed  (ie dremel) rather than the pedestrian pillal drill.   Why not clamp the dremel to the pillar drill and get the best of both - high speed and rigidiny/true and square?

The original Babington balls have a 10 thou hole - which at 0.254mm is quite a bit smaller than the 0.35 you are proposing.   Consider the area of the hole and you will see that the 0.35mm hole has nearly twice the area.


Ken

[Ivan]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll see if I can strap the dremel to the pillar drill, then.

Yes, I should probably have gone with 0.25mm. But I'd already purchased the 0.35mm drillbits. I'll give it a go with 0.35mm to begin with and when I've got it working, I'll upgrade to 0.25mm. Just done the calculation, 0.35mm hole is twice the area of 0.25mm. Anyone know how hole diameter/air pressure relates to BTU? I'm guessing/hoping 2x0.35mm is equivalent to around 50 000BTU.

I wondered about using doorknobs - had planned to, but couldn't find any. I want to make this a low-cost project, otherwise it's not really worth doing....and I've already spent £100 on a second hand oil boiler to convert. Anyway, I might learn something!

[Ivan]

Verdict: strapping dremel to pillar drill and boring 0.35mm hole that way is pretty straightforward. If the burner works, I'll order some 0.25mm drill bits and see what the difference is.

I'm going to try a different burner design. I can't find any doorknobs, even though I know I've got some, somewhere. So I'm going to make a 2D version of the doorknob babington - I'm going to use some 22mm pipe (I was going to use 28mm, but I don't have the right fittings).

Here's some pics of the procedure. The dremel was attached using two large jubilee clips. I needed to have the unit permanently displaced downwards to avoid the dremel fouling on the body of the drill, so I used another jubilee clip on the pillar drill shaft to prevent it from returning fully.

Before I started drilling, I needed to make sure the drillbit was parallel to the plane in which the drill is to be moved - I used a small engineering square to check it in two planes before drilling (thus avoiding drill being snapped off). Easy to adjust the position by simply wriggling the tool within the tightened jubilee clips.

I went very slowly, watching the swarf around the hole to judge how fast it was penetrating the copper. The tube is quite thick walled compared to doorknobs, so I went in/out in/out several times during the operation to clear swarf from the drillbit

TIP: If you're trying this, first unplug the pillar drill. It's very easy to forget and press the start button of the drill rather than the dremel tool! (Speaking from experience   )

[dhaslam]

There doesn't seem to be much reference to burning glycerine  but this chap seems to have been making an attempt without documenting it.   He seems to use propane  instead of air  to increase the combustion temperature.   The combustion temperature needs to be over 300C but propane burns at temperatures way above this. 

www.aipengineering.com/babington/Babington_Oil_Burner_HOWTO.html

There is also a specific burner for glycerine

www.glycerinburners.com/glycerin_burner.php

[Ivan]

Thanks for the links. Looks like it's worth pursuing...

Here's some picture updates.

Picture1: The fuel reservoir. This is a large metal tin can (baby milk powder) with a 22mm hole bored in the base, into which was fitted a tank connector. A short piece of 15mm pipe connects this to a 15mm-8mm reducer, and a short length of 8mm pipe is used to couple this to a piece of flexible rubber pipe. The other end of this flexible is jubilee-clipped onto the feed pipe of the burner

Picture2: The burner. Based on a standard tin can (Heinz tomato soup), it has two 22mm holes bored in-line across the diameter as close as I could make it to the front of the can. Actually, it was too close, so I hammered the end slightly to clear the 22mm pipe which is used for the air supply, feeding two 0.35mm holes which are situated behind the two 8mm holes in the end plate. Underneath is another 8mm hole which allows any excess fuel to drip back into a lower reservoir. The 22mm tube has a blanking plug on one end (copper push-fit, to allow me to disassemble when I find out it's not working correctly), and a reducer to 15mm on the other end. A short 15mm bend then leads to a 15mm-8mm reducer and some 8mm pipe which is in turn attached to a flexible pipe into which an airline fitting is inserted - allowing me to feed this from the regulator on my air compressor.

Picture3: Front view (flame comes out of this end)

Picture4: View of Inside of tin: Shows the 2x 6mm drip feeds which dump fuel onto the 22mm pipe. These are connected to a T-piece above the burner, which in turn is fed by a 8mm feed pipe. I really like this design of Tee - it has seats for both 6mm and 8mm pipes/olives - so I've used this as an adaptor - 8mm feed in, and 2 x 6mm out.

It's very crude - just to prove the principle. I'm only using gravity to provide fuel pressure at this point in time. By having the feed reservoir attached by a flexible pipe, I can vary the head very easily by lowering or raising the reservoir. First firing tomorrow....

[Ivan]

pics 3 and 4...

[frotter]

Like it!


 

[Tombo]

I am slightly concerned about burning glycerine from biodiesel production.   We looked at combustion of the glycerine by-product from ester production using ethanol and potassium hydroxide. High levels of dioxins were formed when it was burned in air.  So unless you can get the temperature  and residency time high enough then it could pose a serious risk to your health and that of those around you.  
The WVO we used was pretty good with a titration around 6.5  from memory.
When reading up on the subject it's important to remember that what you get as a biodiesel by-product isn't pure glycerine, where as most research will have been carried out using pure glycerine.

[iann41]

I like your bab burner. There may be an issue with the oil feed tube tho. As you know, this is going to burn hot and the heat may melt or soften the tube. Also the tin can may not last very long in service. I once built a bab burner some time ago with 1/4" steel walled tubing and that glowed white hot in places. Fantastic heat was produced over some run times. Just like a jet engine. Beware!

[jotec]

Looking forward to seeing pics of the test fire!

[Ivan]

Tombo, Thanks for the warning. Can you tell me more? I wasn't aware that dioxins would be produced. What causes this? Presence of water? Alkalinity? How were you burning by-product? How did you measure dioxin production? Is it likely to be a problem with veg oil combustion?

Iann, There are several problems with the bab as it stands, but I wanted to test the principle and see 1st hand how useful or otherwise it would be. I've seen a really nice version here - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/altfuelbabington/photos/album/920299576/pic/list (think you'll need to have a yahoo account to view it)