Didn't someone post a while back (months) about a new type of "oil burner" that burned around 99% efficiency to the point that the furnace and/or boiler no longer required annual cleaning or maintenance ? or much less maintenance .............. I wanted to go to that website whereas my folks are in the market for a new boiler. I will be too for that matter in the next couple years.
OIL heating, new efficient / cleaner burners ???
- Thread starter gregm
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I know there's a european company by the name of Riollo that is making burners now. They are used in Carrier and Munchkin furnaces and boilers. From what I have heard, they are blue-flame burners. A blue flame indicates more complete combustion, with less soot. Of course efficiency is also at the mercy of the system it's installed in too!
here's a company I found after googling "blue flame oil burner" that may be closer to what you were looking for.
http://www.hed.com/blueflame/index.html
http://www.hed.com/blueflame/index.html
RIELLO it is.
I was leery of going with one, since Beckett burners were the leaders for decades.
I have no complaints and really like the lack of the need of an annual cleaning.
Due to a higher atomizing pressure in a Riello, a smaller orifice/nozzle is normally used to get the same heat output. BTW, I have seen in older Becketts 1.25 gallons per hour burn rate nozzles(or smaller) for home use with a tankless hot water producing coil.
http://www.rielloburners.com/cgi-bi...fdghndgmn.0&menuOpenedVoice=-8068&menuLevel=0
I was leery of going with one, since Beckett burners were the leaders for decades.
I have no complaints and really like the lack of the need of an annual cleaning.
Due to a higher atomizing pressure in a Riello, a smaller orifice/nozzle is normally used to get the same heat output. BTW, I have seen in older Becketts 1.25 gallons per hour burn rate nozzles(or smaller) for home use with a tankless hot water producing coil.
http://www.rielloburners.com/cgi-bi...fdghndgmn.0&menuOpenedVoice=-8068&menuLevel=0
Yep, the nice thing about Becketts is that finding parts for them, or any of the "old school" oil burners is amazingly easy. They typically need the same things when they malfunction, filter, water separator, nozzle, and electrodes. Replacing those parts, along with a good cleaning, which will cost you under $30 if you do the work yourself, usually has your furnace running like brand new for another season.
I'm not sure how much overall or frequent service the Riollo's need, and how cheap/expensive the parts are, and how easy it is to get to them. Like many many technologies, the latest technology also includes less routine maintence.
I've always wondered how oil based tankless heaters performed. I've got a propane powered Rinnai that is an awesome heater. It knows exactly how much heat to apply no matter how much water you are running, from a little trickle, to a flood. I can also turn the temp up at an instant. For example, I turn the temp down to 98 degrees for a shower, so I don't waste energy mixing in cold, but then I turn it up to 140 to do laundry or dishes. I have a hot water tap on the outside of the house too I use for washing the cars. The Rinnai keeps right on giving me 120 degree water to the power washer!
I'm not sure how much overall or frequent service the Riollo's need, and how cheap/expensive the parts are, and how easy it is to get to them. Like many many technologies, the latest technology also includes less routine maintence.
I've always wondered how oil based tankless heaters performed. I've got a propane powered Rinnai that is an awesome heater. It knows exactly how much heat to apply no matter how much water you are running, from a little trickle, to a flood. I can also turn the temp up at an instant. For example, I turn the temp down to 98 degrees for a shower, so I don't waste energy mixing in cold, but then I turn it up to 140 to do laundry or dishes. I have a hot water tap on the outside of the house too I use for washing the cars. The Rinnai keeps right on giving me 120 degree water to the power washer!
On the subject of oil heat, how do you find a fuel oil dealer. I'm looking at a house which heats with oil, and doing a Google search was really frustrating...none of the Northeast buying groups have anything in Michigan, and finally on page 4 of a search "Heating Oil Michigan" did I get a local dealer (who said that they had 4000 customers). Any suggestions? I don't want to get into a weird situation where I'd be forced to convert right after I bought it.
I'm told the best you can do with oil burner efficiency is around 85-88%. Gas can/does have a high 90's efficiency rating.
washerboy
Well-known member
Someone please explain this oil burner heat thing. Have heard of if but never seen it. We use either wood, natural gas, bottled gas, or electirc to heat with here. I'm thinking buring oil would be exteremly dirty. I know back in the day when white walls were the rage, one always painted with off white paint becaue after winter the "clean burning" natural gas would yellow the walls...you could always see where the picturs hung. Most of us here (Arkansas) use natural gas because it was so much cheaper than electric..needles to say that's all changed..my gas bills from winter before last were ungodly...my Feb. 04 bill was 316.00..gasp!!! so last winter I beat the gas company and just did'nt turn the heat on anymore than was necessay..I kept the themostate at 64...I got used to it..just wore more cloths around the house. My natural gas bill..highest was 200.00. How much is heating oil and how long does it last....do you also use that in the hot water tank and cook stove?
Heavens no. you would use oil for furnace/boiler and potentially for hot water (they make oil water heaters). Generally used when natural gas isn't/wasn't available. It's roughly equivalent to using LP (tank outside or in the basement) but you only use it for the above
Heating oil is a common source of heat in the northeast and mid-atlantic. In the northeast especially, outside of cities. In these locations, there's not natural gas, and it gets too cold for heat pumps to be particularly efficient (Electricity in those areas is also quite expensive) Many homes, for example the Levitt homes built in that area had a boiler that performed double duty. They heated the home by circulating water through baseboard radiators, or with pipes mounted directly in the concrete slab (radiant floor heating...very comfortable) The boiler also heats the domestic hot water too.
In some early cases, there was no separation between the DHW, and the HHW. THe only difference was that the circulator pump wouldn't start when there wasn't a call for heat. Still, when someone took a shower during the summer, the radiators would still warm up a little, and in many small homes, the boiler was installed in a living space like the kitchen. For newer boilers, there's usually a DHW loop to separate the DHW from the HHW. This allows valves to be installed in the HHW loop that can be turned off during the summer, and also allows HHW to be glycol, and the DHW not to be tainted with the "stale" HHW.
An oil burner is quite an interesting device. Fuel oil for furnaces is actually the same as diesel fuel. The only difference is that home heating oil is not taxed. If you throw a match into a pool of heating oil, the stuff will not explode or burn, but will put the match out. Despite the fact the stuff is not explosive, when it actually does get to burning, it carries the most BTU's per part of any fuel source, and is still a value, even being sold at around $2.00 a gallon. It's very watery, thin stuff, and would probably make a very poor lubricant. Some of the oil suppliers around here also sell pure bio-diesel and bio-diesel blends for home heating use. Bio-diesel is made from vegitable oil instead of petroleum.
A typical "gun" oil burner, like a Beckett has a motor on it that does two things. It pressurizes the oil to about 125-150 PSI, and then sprays the oil through a nozzle to atomize it. It also has a blower on it too. Air is also forced into the sprayed oil for optimal combustion. The end of the burner frequently has a flower shaped device that shapes the spray pattern of the atomized oil and air spray. It varies depending on the furnace the burner is installed in. On the top of the oil burner is a high voltage transformer similar to a neon light transformer. Right at the end of this flower shaped piece is also too electrodes that produce an arc from this transformer. This ignites the spray of oil and produces the bright yellow flame.
These electrodes wear out, and eventually, will have a hard time maintaining an arc, and thus keeping the burner lit. An electrode inside the burner detects light from the flame, and if the flame goes out, it will trip a circuit breaker causing the burner to shut down. This keeps the oil from flaring up if it builds up in the furnace because it's not being burned. The oil may also not light properly if the nozzle is dirty. If this occurs, atomization does not occur as effectively, and the electrodes have a hard time igniting the larger droplets of oil.
Oil furnaces are not as popular as they used to be because of efficiency issues, and price issues. Although heating oil has a tremendous amount of BTU, it is not burned efficiently, and the furnaces and boilers designed to use it are not as efficient at transfering the heat energy into the heated space as a gas furnace. Electric heating systems can be considered 100% efficient because all the heat produced goes into the conditioned space. Oil furnaces are only about 85% efficent at best, good gas furnaces though are about 92%-95%. The burner is also not efficient at extracting all the heat from the fuel. Traditional gun burners burn with a yellow flame. The yellow comes from iridescent soot during incomplete combustion. Of course a blue flame indicates complete combustion, and until recently, blue-flame oil burners were just too expensive for residental use. There's also the issue of the motor and ignitors, which in a traditional gun burner, consumes about 300 to 500 watts. Blue flame burners could use up to 1000 watts or more, so electrical consumption can end up negating efficiency and the BTU benefits of oil heat.
Some older oil furnaces resemble kerosene heaters. My home had something like this when it was originally built. these are entirely simple devices that do not require any electricity to oparate at all. The furnace has a round wick in the bottom of it and a duct to draft air into towards the wick. The burner is surrounded by a metal heat exchanger that transfers the heat to the interior of the home without allowing in fumes. The bottom of the furnace is open, allowing air to draft into the burner side of the heat exchanger and allow combustion, and to allow a convection flow of heat into the home. Thermostat control of these units was performed with a thermocouple or a bi-metallic strip that would raise or lower the wick depending on the setting. The furnace however could not be shut off completely when heat wasn't necessary. In larger homes with basements, these furnaces were a version of the common old "octopus" furnaces that had ductwork to direct the convection heat to the individual rooms (no forced-air fans) In smaller homes, like mine, the air was drafted right out the crawl space, and there was no ductwork, just a grate in the hallway. Obviously , this was terribly inefficient and depended on the home being a bit drafty and leaky. Remember, we are talking about 1951, and oil oil was only a few pennies a gallon, so it wasn't an issue!
In some early cases, there was no separation between the DHW, and the HHW. THe only difference was that the circulator pump wouldn't start when there wasn't a call for heat. Still, when someone took a shower during the summer, the radiators would still warm up a little, and in many small homes, the boiler was installed in a living space like the kitchen. For newer boilers, there's usually a DHW loop to separate the DHW from the HHW. This allows valves to be installed in the HHW loop that can be turned off during the summer, and also allows HHW to be glycol, and the DHW not to be tainted with the "stale" HHW.
An oil burner is quite an interesting device. Fuel oil for furnaces is actually the same as diesel fuel. The only difference is that home heating oil is not taxed. If you throw a match into a pool of heating oil, the stuff will not explode or burn, but will put the match out. Despite the fact the stuff is not explosive, when it actually does get to burning, it carries the most BTU's per part of any fuel source, and is still a value, even being sold at around $2.00 a gallon. It's very watery, thin stuff, and would probably make a very poor lubricant. Some of the oil suppliers around here also sell pure bio-diesel and bio-diesel blends for home heating use. Bio-diesel is made from vegitable oil instead of petroleum.
A typical "gun" oil burner, like a Beckett has a motor on it that does two things. It pressurizes the oil to about 125-150 PSI, and then sprays the oil through a nozzle to atomize it. It also has a blower on it too. Air is also forced into the sprayed oil for optimal combustion. The end of the burner frequently has a flower shaped device that shapes the spray pattern of the atomized oil and air spray. It varies depending on the furnace the burner is installed in. On the top of the oil burner is a high voltage transformer similar to a neon light transformer. Right at the end of this flower shaped piece is also too electrodes that produce an arc from this transformer. This ignites the spray of oil and produces the bright yellow flame.
These electrodes wear out, and eventually, will have a hard time maintaining an arc, and thus keeping the burner lit. An electrode inside the burner detects light from the flame, and if the flame goes out, it will trip a circuit breaker causing the burner to shut down. This keeps the oil from flaring up if it builds up in the furnace because it's not being burned. The oil may also not light properly if the nozzle is dirty. If this occurs, atomization does not occur as effectively, and the electrodes have a hard time igniting the larger droplets of oil.
Oil furnaces are not as popular as they used to be because of efficiency issues, and price issues. Although heating oil has a tremendous amount of BTU, it is not burned efficiently, and the furnaces and boilers designed to use it are not as efficient at transfering the heat energy into the heated space as a gas furnace. Electric heating systems can be considered 100% efficient because all the heat produced goes into the conditioned space. Oil furnaces are only about 85% efficent at best, good gas furnaces though are about 92%-95%. The burner is also not efficient at extracting all the heat from the fuel. Traditional gun burners burn with a yellow flame. The yellow comes from iridescent soot during incomplete combustion. Of course a blue flame indicates complete combustion, and until recently, blue-flame oil burners were just too expensive for residental use. There's also the issue of the motor and ignitors, which in a traditional gun burner, consumes about 300 to 500 watts. Blue flame burners could use up to 1000 watts or more, so electrical consumption can end up negating efficiency and the BTU benefits of oil heat.
Some older oil furnaces resemble kerosene heaters. My home had something like this when it was originally built. these are entirely simple devices that do not require any electricity to oparate at all. The furnace has a round wick in the bottom of it and a duct to draft air into towards the wick. The burner is surrounded by a metal heat exchanger that transfers the heat to the interior of the home without allowing in fumes. The bottom of the furnace is open, allowing air to draft into the burner side of the heat exchanger and allow combustion, and to allow a convection flow of heat into the home. Thermostat control of these units was performed with a thermocouple or a bi-metallic strip that would raise or lower the wick depending on the setting. The furnace however could not be shut off completely when heat wasn't necessary. In larger homes with basements, these furnaces were a version of the common old "octopus" furnaces that had ductwork to direct the convection heat to the individual rooms (no forced-air fans) In smaller homes, like mine, the air was drafted right out the crawl space, and there was no ductwork, just a grate in the hallway. Obviously , this was terribly inefficient and depended on the home being a bit drafty and leaky. Remember, we are talking about 1951, and oil oil was only a few pennies a gallon, so it wasn't an issue!
At the transmitter plant where I work--the #2 fuel oil used in most heating boilers can also be used in Deisel engines-have done this at a radio station where I used to work for their emgergency generator-and at the plant I am at now they have two 7500 gallon tanks of oil for both the generator here and two Cleaver Brooks Boilers.When the gen is run on load managment days-it can burn 400 gal fuel per hour.the boilers use less.The boilers of course don't run in the summer.the Caterpillar engine on our "jenny" is a 16Cylinder 2700 hp unit.Makes quite a noise outside when it runs-and the Red-Hot turbocharger housings!!--DON'T TOUCH!!
I wonder if you guys could save some energy if you were to take the waste heat from the generator's engine block, and use that for heating purposes instead of the boiler? Of course during the summer months, this would not yield much benefit, but during the winter, I imagine there's more than enough heat thrown off that genny to heat the building too!
The place I am at is crazy in energy use-its a gov't building-The transmitters we run would put out enough heat to heat the building and then some-wouldn't need the boilers at all when the tranmsitters were on.The generator is used only for load mangement days-as requested by the power company-the generator belongs to them-the agency leases it.Also the gen really does not put out enough power to run our tranmsitters at full-when we are using it we have to run the transmitters at half power.The gen is rated at 1.8 Meg watt average load-300Kw is accounted for for "building load"AC,lights,etc.When this plant was built in the early 60's fuel and power were dirt cheap-guess recycling transmitter heat was not a consideration-I have used Tx waste heat at other plants-it sure feels good on a cold winter day when you are working there.The heat can be exhausted outside during the spring and summer.Would have loved it if we took up the offer from the Army Corps of Enineers-they could have provided a 4.5MegWatt gas turbine-would run from the same deisel fuel-and we could run anything we like without worry.Also the gas turbines are air cooled-and yes you could heat water with them by adding a boiler attachment to the exhaust.Caterpillar's "Solar" division makes them.And they run VERY quiet-less noise then the deisel engine.Power companies use them for load mangement-and if you are in downtown DCnear the Government buildings-they have a group of these turbine generators-they run so Queit-you have to listen to hear them running.
A clarification on efficiency:
Typical gas furnaces of the improved efficiency type are in the 80 to 85% range (the same is true for better water heaters).
Regardless of fuel, be it liquid, gas or solid, it is very difficult to get above aprox. 85-88% efficiency without using a condensing type furnace or apparatus to recover the flue heat from the products of combustion and excess air.
If you were to apply a high efficiency oil burner (i.e., maybe one of these blue flame types) within a properly designed condensing furnace, I suspect you would have your 90%+ efficiency.
Older gas furnaces of the standing and/or intermittent pilot type are in the neigborhood of 60% to 75% efficient.
Efficiency ratings generally include all losses including the stack and radiation, any electrical power input not converted to usable heat and losses that occur when unit is in an off cycle (reverse exchange).
Just adding a vent damper can improve overall efficiency 10--15% by conserving heat during the off cycle. And this holds even more true for storage type water heaters.
It is true that electrical resistance heating is near 100% efficent--but only at the end user location--the power plant and distribution is not. (power plants are usually pretty good though and account for just about everything in their heat balance)
And speaking of electricity, it is interesting to note that heat pumps are about 3x more efficient than resistance heating.
Finally, I personally feel that conservation, in the form of waste heat recovery, should be mandatory given the finite nature of fossil fuel supplies.
My 2 cents.
Typical gas furnaces of the improved efficiency type are in the 80 to 85% range (the same is true for better water heaters).
Regardless of fuel, be it liquid, gas or solid, it is very difficult to get above aprox. 85-88% efficiency without using a condensing type furnace or apparatus to recover the flue heat from the products of combustion and excess air.
If you were to apply a high efficiency oil burner (i.e., maybe one of these blue flame types) within a properly designed condensing furnace, I suspect you would have your 90%+ efficiency.
Older gas furnaces of the standing and/or intermittent pilot type are in the neigborhood of 60% to 75% efficient.
Efficiency ratings generally include all losses including the stack and radiation, any electrical power input not converted to usable heat and losses that occur when unit is in an off cycle (reverse exchange).
Just adding a vent damper can improve overall efficiency 10--15% by conserving heat during the off cycle. And this holds even more true for storage type water heaters.
It is true that electrical resistance heating is near 100% efficent--but only at the end user location--the power plant and distribution is not. (power plants are usually pretty good though and account for just about everything in their heat balance)
And speaking of electricity, it is interesting to note that heat pumps are about 3x more efficient than resistance heating.
Finally, I personally feel that conservation, in the form of waste heat recovery, should be mandatory given the finite nature of fossil fuel supplies.
My 2 cents.
The efficiency of the heat pump is due to the fact that the heat pump is transfering heat from one place to another-rather than creating heat.Trying to create heat requires more energy.
Properly engineered electrical transmission and distribution systems are more efficient tahn people think.The losses are dropping to less then 20 percent.Power stations do use forms of heat recovery before the condensed boiler water is returned to the boilers-the boiler pumps are low pressure turbines.
Properly engineered electrical transmission and distribution systems are more efficient tahn people think.The losses are dropping to less then 20 percent.Power stations do use forms of heat recovery before the condensed boiler water is returned to the boilers-the boiler pumps are low pressure turbines.
YAY to heat-pumps when fossil /solid fuels are not an option!
Just remember with its efficiency (overall) being 3x that of resistance-electric heat, one can heat 6 rooms for the same cost as running two portable electric room heaters. Spot heating may not pay.
Just remember with its efficiency (overall) being 3x that of resistance-electric heat, one can heat 6 rooms for the same cost as running two portable electric room heaters. Spot heating may not pay.
Available also are domestic-hot-water producing heat-pumps that are especially suited to warm climates. These provide a "free" (additional?) side-benefit of cooling and drying the ambient indoor air.
http://www.chilipepperapp.com/hpwh.htm
http://www.chilipepperapp.com/hpwh.htm
Beckett brand oil-burning heads in link.
Here in New York City, most buidlngs were/are heated by a steam system. These were originally coal-fired. It was the perfect blending of technology and availble fuel (coal/wood/garbage) at the time. it is interestongto note that a stem system requres tons of heat at fist, then less. Thsi is how a load of coalls curns. Anyhoo...Non-electric controls- bi-metal (thermostatic) air dampers were used to control flame size. No pumps or fans needed to distribute heat.
These were converted to use oil eventually as /after electricity became availabe. Only a fuel-oil storage tank, some piping and a burner-head were required. Controls became electric, making these systems fully automatic.
An aquastat (water-thermostat) maintained 180*F to produve hot-water for use at taps via a tankless coil in the boiler. A pressure limiter (two by law, minimum) kept the boiler from exploding. One cyceling control for general pressure limitation (generally 5 psi- [pounds per square inch] or less. A second control with a manual reset to stop the boiler should pressure become excessive (i.e. if the first control fails). Should both pressure-limiters fail, a pressure-relief valve opens allowing trapped steam to escape preventung rupture/explosion.
This may explain why we see oil in the northeast primarily. My understanding is that the mid-west (USA) uses mostly gas for heating, not fuel-oil.
Fuel oil is available in grades-
#2 is the "lightest" and most refined. Basically for residential and small-bldg. commerical use. Cleanest and most expensive.
#4 is mid-range.
#6 is the heaviest (least refined [closest to crude-oil] and dirtiest). It is, of course, the least expensive grade. This grade of oil is hardest to ignite. Normally one sees an oil-prejeater in the boiler room. It has a pump and a coil that resembels a car's radiator. Its mission is to keep the oil heated and moving and filtered. It gathers waste heat found in the boiler room. Due to complexity /difficulty of establishing ignition, #6 burner-heads frequently rely on natural gas to establish a flame. A small pilot light ignites a gas burner, which in turn ignites the oil flame. Gas is much cleaner and more expensive (traditionally) than fuel-oil; commerical users avoid it due to prohibitive cost.
This pricing ends up benefiting residential users. As the temperature falls/ approaches 20*F (Isn't 10*F also 10*C?) large commercial users of gas must revert to oil [as a condtion of beign grated supply/connection and price concessions] to ensure enough supply for small and residential users. Dual-fuel burners are common.There are times when demand for natural gas exceeds pipeline capacity to move it.
http://www.beckettcorp.com/Welcome.html
Here in New York City, most buidlngs were/are heated by a steam system. These were originally coal-fired. It was the perfect blending of technology and availble fuel (coal/wood/garbage) at the time. it is interestongto note that a stem system requres tons of heat at fist, then less. Thsi is how a load of coalls curns. Anyhoo...Non-electric controls- bi-metal (thermostatic) air dampers were used to control flame size. No pumps or fans needed to distribute heat.
These were converted to use oil eventually as /after electricity became availabe. Only a fuel-oil storage tank, some piping and a burner-head were required. Controls became electric, making these systems fully automatic.
An aquastat (water-thermostat) maintained 180*F to produve hot-water for use at taps via a tankless coil in the boiler. A pressure limiter (two by law, minimum) kept the boiler from exploding. One cyceling control for general pressure limitation (generally 5 psi- [pounds per square inch] or less. A second control with a manual reset to stop the boiler should pressure become excessive (i.e. if the first control fails). Should both pressure-limiters fail, a pressure-relief valve opens allowing trapped steam to escape preventung rupture/explosion.
This may explain why we see oil in the northeast primarily. My understanding is that the mid-west (USA) uses mostly gas for heating, not fuel-oil.
Fuel oil is available in grades-
#2 is the "lightest" and most refined. Basically for residential and small-bldg. commerical use. Cleanest and most expensive.
#4 is mid-range.
#6 is the heaviest (least refined [closest to crude-oil] and dirtiest). It is, of course, the least expensive grade. This grade of oil is hardest to ignite. Normally one sees an oil-prejeater in the boiler room. It has a pump and a coil that resembels a car's radiator. Its mission is to keep the oil heated and moving and filtered. It gathers waste heat found in the boiler room. Due to complexity /difficulty of establishing ignition, #6 burner-heads frequently rely on natural gas to establish a flame. A small pilot light ignites a gas burner, which in turn ignites the oil flame. Gas is much cleaner and more expensive (traditionally) than fuel-oil; commerical users avoid it due to prohibitive cost.
This pricing ends up benefiting residential users. As the temperature falls/ approaches 20*F (Isn't 10*F also 10*C?) large commercial users of gas must revert to oil [as a condtion of beign grated supply/connection and price concessions] to ensure enough supply for small and residential users. Dual-fuel burners are common.There are times when demand for natural gas exceeds pipeline capacity to move it.
http://www.beckettcorp.com/Welcome.html
Bi is the way to go.
oh I guess I should say dual-fuel
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6DE163CF936A1575BC0A967958260
oh I guess I should say dual-fuel
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6DE163CF936A1575BC0A967958260
