Gasifier performance using cold intake air.

[barnartist]

im just wondering about getting from 0 degree days to say 70 degree air.
Im planning on changing my stack and probably scrapping my heat saver. I had one of my stack elbos come a bit loose the other day, and oddly enough, very little smoke was comming out of the crack. Before I retightened it, I walked out and looked at my chimney top and noticed way more smoke there. So I assume that much of my smoke comes from creasote inside the stack either from idling allot or some from the heat saver.

 

[jebatty]

Something which surprises me just a little is that the manufacturer's don't chime in on some of these technical questions, not so much as to answer the questions in the abstract but rather to provide info on the engineering or design spec of their boilers as related to the questions.

For example, on the questions at hand, manufacturer of Brand XX might say, "Brand XX was designed based on assumed air intake temperature between ____ and ____."

The manufacturers have a tremendous resource in this forum to aid them in better design and improvement of their boilers, and it would be nice to also have more positive assistance from them.

I suppose it also could be true that much of the design was done out of intuitive ignorance, and as to many questions the manufacturers don't have any knowledge and they don't want to be embarrassed by a show of that ignorance.

 

[Eric Johnson]

Thinking about what leaddog said, it occurs to me that on the EKO, the air enters the boiler through the blowers, which push the primary air up to the top of the boiler, where it enters tubes in the firebox. Then it has to travel down the entire height of the firebox and out the bottom of the tubes before it actually enters the firebox. So by the time it gets to the flame, it's pretty warm. Overall the same amount of cold air needs to be warmed by the system, but undoubtedly there's some efficiency gain by preheating the primary air. The secondary air, of course, is superheated in the tubes feeding the nozzles. They run right through the refractory right below the bed of coals.