Ofeldt Blueflame Kerosene burner

[DetroiTug]

Here is a burner I've been working with off and on since summer and I think it is finally working properly.

This is a copy of an Ofeldt blue flame, although I have nothing other than a grainy picture from literature of the day to go by.

There is no sooting and it burns very hot and blue with virtually no fumes. Requires no steam pressure, electricity etc. Due to it running primarily on Kerosene/paraffin oil it makes it pretty safe to use. Burns hotter than gasoline or propane.

It has two pilot lights which are Optimus Nova camp stoves ( I tried it with one and it was not reliable). The pilots are situatued beneath the vaporizer which heat the vaporizer + ignite the burner + preheat the mixing tube which preheats the fuel air mixture somewhat. The pilots are powered by white gas which requires it's own 1/2" gallon tank at 15 psi. The main fuel Kerosene tank is pressurized to 50 psi.

The mixing tube is blanked off on the end and the fuel/air mixture exits at the top though the slots - if any raw fuel enters the mixing tube it does not go in the burner, it runs right back out, thus preventing internal burner backfiring.

The vaporizer is 72" of 1/8th Schedule 80 pipe wound in to a coil.

I've ran it at length twice (as much as the weather will allow), and it burns clean, quiet and powerful. Is very stable and controllable.









This is really for land vehicles, but could be adapted to a steamboat. For a vertical center drum type boiler, this is a very good burner as no heat is impinged on the bottom of the center drum, allowing it to act as a downcomer to increase boiler circulation.

From lighting the pilots to enough steam to turn the engine is less than 10 minutes.

-Ron

[fredrosse]

Good news to learn that you have put together a new burner that works well. I know fooling around with vaporizing burners takes lots of iterations with marginal performance usually.

The curved "hood" piece, forming the plenum for the radial burner tubes, is that just tacked in place, not tight to leakage?

More details please if you can provide them, maybe a drawing in the works?

[jschoenly]

Great Looking burner! I've shifted right now from Steamboats to Stanley's, so I'm familiar with the vaporizing burners. I like some of the details you got there and some features might be nice for a new burner build I'll be doing in the future.

What fuel pressures are you running? Did you do any test for consumption? Nice work!

Jared

[DetroiTug]

I plan to draw the burner up when it is removed from the car in a few weeks.

Fred, The tacks were just temporary, it is seal welded. I've found that if I'm not sure if something is going to work, my attention to detail suffers and why the welds are not so great and nothing is really finished off very well. There is a lot of evidence of early attempts. I may remake the whole burner to this design. Trying to find a design where they work can result in many changes. I just kept trying different things and making a list of what it liked (lots of air mixed with the fuel and more heat on the vaporizer) and then incorporated the changes.

Ofeldt spent 13 years developing this burner and it was the one a lot of people were switching to (because it would burn kerosene reliably) about the time the steam car died out. The Stanley and Baker type burners did not burn kerosene very well leading some modern day folks to claim that kerosene today is not what it used to be, which may be true. But I think it's a case of trying to use the same vaporizing scheme for different fuels which require a different vaporization method. And too, in the winter time the pilots were left running all night to keep the water from freezing. Insurance companies of the day would not insure a car burning gasoline or cover a fire resulting from a gasoline fire. Even some religious groups were speaking out about the "evils" of gasoline "a substance burning not unlike brimstone". It is somewhat comical to read some of the literature from that time, Ofeldt claimed that gasoline would soon be a thing of the past and reminded the reader that it is getting harder and harder to find - better switch to kerosene now before it's too late etc., this was written in 1908. Which is a bit puzzling because there were several gas burners on the road by that time. 75 different US car-makers/medallions by 1906.

The fuel pressure was 50 psi, it also burned on 30 psi. This burner doesn't seem to be very sensitive to fuel pressure.

-Ron

[S. Weaver]

... Even some religious groups were speaking out about the "evils" of gasoline "a substance burning not unlike brimstone."

Jury is still out on this one ...

[DetroiTug]

Yeah ...

[cyberbadger]

I am completely stealing DetroiTug's thunder....

But it looks like it works well...



I prefer wood/coal for fuel my steam shannagins.

Oil/d-iesel/Kerosene(parafin) smell fair to my nose.

That gasoline/petrol is what really what I don't like...

-CB

[DetroiTug]

Hey thanks for posting that. I was actually going to post it on the thread in Anoraks corner, because it is a bit too much "car" for the steamboating section of the forum.

Anyways, It seems to work very good now. It seems almost weird, since I started driving the car, the burner has been causing all sorts of trouble making the whole car almost inoperable. Now, it is just light and drive and forget about the burner. There are no fumes from it as it is burning completely.

-Ron

[Lopez Mike]

Hands down the most entertaining (and a little bit alarming) thing I've seen in ages.

Full of great one liners too.

"The pressure's going up!"
"Oh shit!"

Just don't end up like Casey Jones. "Oh they found him at the bottom with his hand on the throttle. Scalded to death by the steam."

[DetroiTug]

Hands down the most entertaining (and a little bit alarming) thing I've seen in ages.

Full of great one liners too.

"The pressure's going up!"
"Oh shit!"

Just don't end up like Casey Jones. "Oh they found him at the bottom with his hand on the throttle. Scalded to death by the steam."

Alarming yes... I told one apprehensive passenger the other day "Don't worry about that big fire we're sitting on, there's a homemade boiler in between to protect us"

Nahh its very safe, only about a gallon of water in the boiler. The burst pressure rating of the boiler components is around 2400 psi if I remember correctly. It is safetied at 250 psi, in steamcar-speak that is considered low pressure. I respect the h out of it, but I'm not afraid of it. The boiler and burner combined is 19" in diameter and 21" tall. To keep it safe I worked about 8 months struggling to burn kerosene, most of these are ran on gasoline, now that would scare me, that stuff is too volatile. Break a fuel line and it's a major fire. That happened to guy with a rare Stanley bus - burned it right to the ground.

These were the first police cars. I/C cars of the day would only do about 20 mph on the level. Steamers were the hot rods. It is very fun to drive, the best way to sum it up is "pure power". It's just so smooth and powerful it's hard to describe.

-Ron