I thought its called gasification not a SMOKIFICATION

[jhunter19]

I too am having a simular problem. This is my first year with my BioMass. I have never seen blue flames in my gassification chamber. My wood has 15-20% moisture but my understanding is this acceptable. I am having a hard time figuring the proper adjustments on primary, secondary, and fan speed. I get yellow/orange flames in the gassification. and my smoke outside seems a bit yellow. Is a blue flame really possible? I certainly have never seen it. Thanks for any tips on tweaking this thing. I feel like right now I am burning through a lot of wood and winter hasnt really arrived yet.

 

[Singed Eyebrows]

Are you being carefull to not uncover the nozzles when loading? It sure looks like you are pulling smoke through a partially uncovered nozzle. The WG has a very powerfull fan & just a small uncovered area will cause smoke, Randy

Really, wow i thought I was supposed to open them up to get the smoke and gasses down there to start the gasification.

Somehow I just can't feel the gratitude for trying to help you out Mike, Randy

 

[q-bull]

I too am having a simular problem. This is my first year with my BioMass. I have never seen blue flames in my gassification chamber. My wood has 15-20% moisture but my understanding is this acceptable. I am having a hard time figuring the proper adjustments on primary, secondary, and fan speed. I get yellow/orange flames in the gassification. and my smoke outside seems a bit yellow. Is a blue flame really possible? I certainly have never seen it. Thanks for any tips on tweaking this thing. I feel like right now I am burning through a lot of wood and winter hasnt really arrived yet.

I just started my 2nd yr with the Biomas 40 & last weekend found the secret for "Blue Flame" that seems to be working for me.
I always seemed to struggle with not enough chimney draft, (probably due to proximity of second story addition,) so I have hung an auxilliary blower motor onto the front of middle door, (removed triangular adjustment plate,) and now run this whenever my draft fan runs. I do switch it off when opening the door while loading or to fix bridging or blow outs. I am typically running both fans at 80% and even trying to use up some punky wood I now have the "Blue Flame" and 190-193 degree output. (I've not tried to go higher yet until I am more assured of adequate expansion capacity.) The aux. blower is small squirl cage type, 220v that I am running on 110v so it really does put out much, just what I needed though.

 

[taxidermist]

If your slot/Nozzles in the bottom do not have a good bed of hot coals over them you will get tons of smoke and little to no gasification.


Rob

 

[Singed Eyebrows]

I'm not sure about the Biomass, I know the WG has either a 1/2 or 3/4 hp inducer fan on it. If there isn't a "good" coal bed as Rob says or one with wood that has produced coals with very small air gaps the WG will smoke. I believe WG has a variable speed fan option to correct this & give the flammable gasses time to ignite. If the WG is under warrantee & is smoking excessively I would hope they would exchange fans with the customer paying the difference. A throttle plate in the flue pipe might also help to tame the fan some, Randy

 

[Gasifier]

True about the red coals covering the slots. In your case though Mike you said you had a real thick layer of coals, 4-5" if I remember right. With your boiler shutting down as often as it is, I could see that the bottom of your coal bed could cool down and eventually plug a slot or some of the slots. Seen it happen in mine before when the temperaturs were so warm that it was idleing more often. Just wanted you to keep an eye on that. Red coals good. But to much ash build up under them can clog up your slots. A little light stirring around will solve the problem and keep things flowing well. Keep us posted man.

 

[jhunter19]

I too am having a simular problem. This is my first year with my BioMass. I have never seen blue flames in my gassification chamber. My wood has 15-20% moisture but my understanding is this acceptable. I am having a hard time figuring the proper adjustments on primary, secondary, and fan speed. I get yellow/orange flames in the gassification. and my smoke outside seems a bit yellow. Is a blue flame really possible? I certainly have never seen it. Thanks for any tips on tweaking this thing. I feel like right now I am burning through a lot of wood and winter hasnt really arrived yet.

I just started my 2nd yr with the Biomas 40 & last weekend found the secret for "Blue Flame" that seems to be working for me.
I always seemed to struggle with not enough chimney draft, (probably due to proximity of second story addition,) so I have hung an auxilliary blower motor onto the front of middle door, (removed triangular adjustment plate,) and now run this whenever my draft fan runs. I do switch it off when opening the door while loading or to fix bridging or blow outs. I am typically running both fans at 80% and even trying to use up some punky wood I now have the "Blue Flame" and 190-193 degree output. (I've not tried to go higher yet until I am more assured of adequate expansion capacity.) The aux. blower is small squirl cage type, 220v that I am running on 110v so it really does put out much, just what I needed though.

What size openings are you using on your biomass. Most all of the posts here are for the EKO and they talk of # turns on the secondary. The BioMass has a slot for the secondary as well as the primaries. I am going to play with it some more tonight. There has to be a blue flame in my future.

 

[Tennman]

Hey Biomass guys. We are now discussing the specifics of "Tuning the BioMass". I hereby suggest one of us start a new thread called that so us BioMass owners will have one thread to capture all these great ideas. I for one am all about learning how you guys are getting the blue flame. I will start the thread and maybe copy some of the good advice already suggested. All in favor say aye.

 

[infinitymike]

Are you being carefull to not uncover the nozzles when loading? It sure looks like you are pulling smoke through a partially uncovered nozzle. The WG has a very powerfull fan & just a small uncovered area will cause smoke, Randy

Really, wow i thought I was supposed to open them up to get the smoke and gasses down there to start the gasification.

Somehow I just can't feel the gratitude for trying to help you out Mike, Randy

Randy, I am sorry. That wasn't a sarcastic remark. I really did think I needed to open the slots/nozzles in order to start the gasification process. I think I read it in the manual or saw it in their video. I'm not sure.
muncybob and gasifier said they clear the nozzles before reloading. maybe a wood gun is different? I don't see how. I would think (and thats most of the problem) that gasification would be the same in all units. So either we all would cover or uncover the nozzles. Do you think there is a significant difference between units in that matter?


Before this thread (know I'm not sure what to do)I would open the door and if there was a good bed of coals I would use the long cleaning tool as a poker and mix up/stoke the coals and kinda spread them around and level them out and try to clear the center out . If I cleared out a nozzle there would be a loud whoosing/roaring sound. Which quite honestly I thought was a good thing.

 

[infinitymike]

I'm not sure about the Biomass, I know the WG has either a 1/2 or 3/4 hp inducer fan on it. If there isn't a "good" coal bed as Rob says or one with wood that has produced coals with very small air gaps the WG will smoke. I believe WG has a variable speed fan option to correct this & give the flammable gasses time to ignite. If the WG is under warrantee & is smoking excessively I would hope they would exchange fans with the customer paying the difference. A throttle plate in the flue pipe might also help to tame the fan some, Randy

Thank you Randy,

I will call them and see if I can do that. Do you think the variable speed is automatically self adjusting or would it be something I set and have to monitor and reset to get the best burn?

The throttle plate in the flue, do you think that would cause back pressure in the unit and possibly push flames or smoke out of the fresh air intake in the back of the primary chamber?

 

[infinitymike]

Thanks for the morning humor to go with my coffee Mike. I know it's impolite to laugh at others misfortune, so I won't tell you I was laughing. For my first season my family was greatly entertained when I would come in the house with my eyebrows curly and smokin'. For some reason mustache hairs are tougher. I quickly learned what doors not to open when. This site should really be renamed, "Wood Boiler University". Far as I can tell it's the only place to go to learn how to run one of these things and commiserate together.

No storage right? Yep, just like me. Lots of idling now that weather in our area is mid-40's to 50's. This mild weather is great for the wood pile but really hard on a system without storage. My wood this year is very well seasoned and I still experience a fair amount of creosote but I've had that for 3 years because early on I burned unseasoned wood so now that I'm burning dry stuff, it's idling more because the wood has greater energy content!! This is really my first year where the boiler on a regular basis is generating significantly excess heat for our energy sieve of a house (my choice).

I agree with others that your night time exhaust looks like mine did last nite, mostly steam which given the state of your wood shouldn't surprise you. I'm fortunate that I have that little window to tell me the health of the burn when the fan is on. The other sign on the state of the burn is learning to read the exhaust color. Even in the midst of steam, I can tell if there is a faint blue color. That immediately tells me there is an open path thru the coal bed. On my gasser it doesn't take much of a clear opening into the lower chamber to allow unburnt particles to sneak thru. For me the revelation was when I dramatically cut back on the fan and reduced pressure in the upper chamber. As soon as an open path is created to the lower chamber the pressurized uppper chamber air takes the path of least resistance and very rapidly blows a bigger hole, leading to more smoke, less energy, etc, downward spiral. This year like my first year you are in a Catch 22, since your wood is not seasoned you need to keep the fire hot to burn wet wood which increases the likelyhood of bridging or blow holes. For me last year it was a balancing act to reduce upper chamber pressure (that's really what we're doing by tinkering with vents and fan rpms) to the point you're wet wood is happy. At the moment with the nicely seasoned wood I have my fan at the lowest setting (50%) which tells me I need to close off a vent somewhere so I have bandwidth to electronically adjust my fan. Now that I'm maybe a Sophomore at Boiler University I need to re-read the sticky about tuning the EKO because some of the finer points may start to make sense to me. Learning how to place the wood and the sizes of the splits and whether they go on top or bottom all are part of the art of learning your system. But my 2 cents is to play with reducing upper chamber pressure to delay the creation of blow holes. "Blow holes" is my term. One of the "Seniors" here may have a better name for it. Can ya wiggle yer toes? Merry Christmas, I gotta go order a replacement backflow preventer. Probably ought to do some work too.

I agree with you 100%..And don't worry your not being impolite, you are laughing out of identification. It's an empathy laugh. I must say I am laughing my butt off alot, just thinking about how insane I am getting over all this.

 

[taxidermist]

Mike,

You only need to clear the nozzles when you are lighting a new fire. so you can leave the bottom door open so the fire can get air. But gassificaton will only happen when you get glowing charcoal on the logs and over the nozzles. With mine as the coals burn away from the nozzles i start to loose my good blue flame and that turbo rush sound. If i still have some logs burning then it still will show some flames in lower chamber and no smoke out the chimney.

If I try to rush a relight or a refill with out having a good bed of coals I get smoke everywhere! pushing out of every nook and cranny and puffing out the stack. I then open the lower chamber and let the fire get going to form a coal bed.


Hope that helped a little.
Rob

 

[infinitymike]

Mike,

You only need to clear the nozzles when you are lighting a new fire. so you can leave the bottom door open so the fire can get air. But gassificaton will only happen when you get glowing charcoal on the logs and over the nozzles. With mine as the coals burn away from the nozzles i start to loose my good blue flame and that turbo rush sound. If i still have some logs burning then it still will show some flames in lower chamber and no smoke out the chimney.

If I try to rush a relight or a refill with out having a good bed of coals I get smoke everywhere! pushing out of every nook and cranny and puffing out the stack. I then open the lower chamber and let the fire get going to form a coal bed.


Hope that helped a little.
Rob

Thanks. I think a wood gun is different. When I open the lower door in the front (there is a door in the back as well) the gasifiacation tube has a removable plug. I dont think I can or should open it. However,I have opened it :bug: and it doesn't do anything. If I open the back door the gasification tube is NOT plugged and when I opened it I thought the thing was going to exploded. The gasification flame sucked back up into the primary chamber and black smoke poured out of the fresh air intake and the chimney. It also smelled like burning tires for a while.

 

[Singed Eyebrows]

I'm not sure about the Biomass, I know the WG has either a 1/2 or 3/4 hp inducer fan on it. If there isn't a "good" coal bed as Rob says or one with wood that has produced coals with very small air gaps the WG will smoke. I believe WG has a variable speed fan option to correct this & give the flammable gasses time to ignite. If the WG is under warrantee & is smoking excessively I would hope they would exchange fans with the customer paying the difference. A throttle plate in the flue pipe might also help to tame the fan some, Randy

Thank you Randy,

I will call them and see if I can do that. Do you think the variable speed is automatically self adjusting or would it be something I set and have to monitor and reset to get the best burn?

The throttle plate in the flue, do you think that would cause back pressure in the unit and possibly push flames or smoke out of the fresh air intake in the back of the primary chamber?

My take on the variable inducer was that it was a DC motor that you manually adjust. I tried to remember back two years ago as I was looking at buying a WG. I hope the WG was the one with the variable option./// I know it seems like flammable gas should easily ignite if it hits red hot coals, it needs to move through slow enough to be brought up to temp./// The throttle plate will work against the pressure side of the fan & if you keep the draft at design spec there shouldn't be any problems with smoke out the intake. Good luck, you should be able to get that boiler to burn clean, Randy

 

[taxidermist]

Different beast same idea! Too much cold smoke in the gassification chamber = creosote build up and when it sucked the flame in( aka smoke explosion) all the lit up and started to burn.



Rob

 

[Singed Eyebrows]

The WG did have the variable speed drive option for the induction fan, I pulled up an old brochure on Google. Hopefully they still have it, Randy

 

[infinitymike]

The WG did have the variable speed drive option for the induction fan, I pulled up an old brochure on Google. Hopefully they still have it, Randy

Thanks for your help. And yes Iam saying that with a grateful tone. LOL

What made you decide on an Atmos instead of a Wood Gun?

 

[Singed Eyebrows]

The WG did have the variable speed drive option for the induction fan, I pulled up an old brochure on Google. Hopefully they still have it, Randy

Thanks for your help. And yes Iam saying that with a grateful tone. LOL

What made you decide on an Atmos instead of a Wood Gun?

The WG(my first choice) was $7,000 & the Atmos was $3500 with shipping included. I only had money to buy the Atmos. It will be interesting to see if WG helps you, Randy

 

[muncybob]

Mike, I think I made an incomplete statement about using the poker to clear the nozzle. If the coals have reduced to ashes, that's when I try to clear the nozzle. This happens frequently in the shoulder season. Once temps get lower on a consistent basis there is always a nice bed of coals over the nozzle and I don;t mess with it much. About the only time I clean the nozzle in the main heating season is when we are away for a few days and the oil has been running, I'll give the box a good cleaning to remove a lot of the ash before getting a new fire going again.

I did notice that my chimney seemed to smoke a bit more when I ran the fresh air intake flap completely open(as I was told to do originally by AHS). Now they changed they tune on this and said close off the air intake a much as you can while still maintaining enough heat to satisfy the load, which for us is about 80-90% closed.

Good luck!

 

[FarmerTan]

I see that you don't have the smoke flap installed. You must get quite a cloud of smoke out every time you open the door?

 

[infinitymike]

I see that you don't have the smoke flap installed. You must get quite a cloud of smoke out every time you open the door?

yeah can be pretty intense. It is in the garage so its not a big deal but the ceiling is all ready dark brown. I plan on getting the smoke hood real soon.

 

[Gasifier]

The smoke hood, with no smoke flap in the way, is an outstanding improvement!

 

[woodsmaster]

That flap looks like a real pain.

 

[TCaldwell]

Combustion control of a batch burn of mixed mc and species firewood , regardless of control strategy is difficult to nail down. one parameter differs slightly and the whole burn changes signifigantly. the parameter changes available on each boiler obviously determine the success of its combustion control capabilities. Sometimes our expectations gained through shared knowledge are beyond the manufactured design capabilities. With what each of us has to work with, p/air, p/s air, static or variable speed air or any combination of will determine our degree of ''success''. For some it is just having enough hot water, for others it is the process value and setpoint line being one and the same, for me the latter. From a process control standpoint , consistency in a batch burn within your boilers capabilities is more realistic than expecting perfect burns . Most sucessful boimass boilers are controlled with a combination of independant p/s air, variable speed inducer determined by a firebox pressure, o2 feedback and a complex control algorithim, and probably autofeed. There is alot to learn from and tinker with, and this is half the fun.

 

[FarmerTan]

I found before I had my hood vented that the flap did a lot to keep the smoke in. I learned this from watching the clouds billow out whenever I raised it to load the thing. I'm also learning that because my wood is not fully seasoned, I need to keep a good load of coals going and load a couple of logs every couple of hours. That way the fresh ones at the top of the pile dry out. Once it goes down to 150 or so, it seems to take forever to get it back up. Have a Merry Christmas, or Happy Chanukah, or whatever celebration you engage in.