Oil fuels

A special section just for steam engines and boilers, as without these you may as well fit a sail.
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RGSP
Full Steam Ahead
Full Steam Ahead
Posts: 246
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2015 2:12 pm
Boat Name: Platypus, Shelduck
Location: Very eastern England

Oil fuels

Post by RGSP » Wed May 03, 2017 2:43 pm

As part of a change of plan, I'm in process of buying an oil-fuelled steamboat to use while I'm building my own.

Now, I understand from the previous owner that the vaporising burner soots-up if used with standard kerosene, and needs Grade C1 premium fuel to run cleanly (known as premium paraffin in the UK). That's not too bad because I can buy 205 litre barrels of premium paraffin for about £245 - i.e. about £1.20/litre, whereas standard 28 second heating grade kerosene is about £0.60/litre. For the amount I'll use in a season, and compared with the other boat costs, that isn't worth worrying too much about.

However, sooting up with vaporising burners run on central heating fuel is also a problem with expensive oil-fired range cookers - Aga, Rayburn, Stanley etc. and one supposed solution there is additives to lower the tendency of the fuel to char. Several apparently similar additives are available, all of them fairly cheap. Does anyone have any experience of this problem, and using additives as a way of solving it? It isn't a problem with atomising burners normally.

Another way round the problem is supposed to be by adding 1 part petrol (gasoline for Americans) to 5 parts kero, but I don't really like that one for safety reasons.
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