This is the method I devised for mounting the motor and blower. I cast two half circle "clamps" to wrap around and grip the motor. The clamps are attached to a mounting post attached to the cart.
This mold is for the side of the blower where the air enters.
Here is a comparison between the blower patterns on the left and the castings. The blower rotor in this photo is actually rather ruff since I was overly gentle when ramming the mold causing the sand to contact the pattern poorly.
Here is the frame before it's all been painted and without the fuel tank and burner.
Tragically even the advanced G4 burner had a serious design flaw. The sheetmetal body did a poor job of supporting the refractory and allowed it to shift and crack. Flames burst forth and oil runeth out...
This is the welded steel shell for the G5 waste oil burner. The holes (cut with a hole saw) and the flat spots surrounding them are where the intake manifold and flame exit port are bolted on. I used diamond tread plate because that's just what I had available. But flat plate would be easier to work with.
This is the G5 (Generation 5) burner and it's potentially iron melting flame! The poor quality of my furnace refractory prevented reliable iron melting but I did melt some. It has many improvements over the G4 burner. The most obvious improvement is that this burner has a welded steel body composed of steel diamond tread plate. It looks nice and I just happened to have a big piece of it. The rugged tread plate design can also be a metaphor for the merciless brute force of the massive thermal energy out put of this device. The overall problem with the "box burner" design such as this is that the flame is generated inside the burner box and therefore a lot of the heat is absorbed by the burner and doesn't contribute to melting the metal. None-the-less back in 2005 this was the state-of-the-art in homemade waste oil burners here at Lionel's Laboratory. Now I think of it the same way most people think of black and white televisions...
Short Answer:
Negative. The G5 burner's flame is the perfect color for this burner, yellowish white. Oil molecules have so much more carbon than propane has that the oxygen in the air can not burn it all at once. So the temperature of the excess carbon drops down to the yellow/orange color range and burns slower. The great quantity of this yellow burning carbon blocks out the blue areas of the flame which would otherwise be visible.
Oil burners which use a coil to vaporize the oil can burn with a blue flame because the coil removes the excess carbon and turns the rest of the oil into a gaseous vapor (like propane). But just like propane there is less heat provided from this method because much of the carbon has been removed and left in the coil as soot and crud which must be cleaned out from time to time!
Long(er) answer:
Many people believe that a flame must be blue in order to provide complete combustion. For the standards of backyard metalcasting, complete combustion can be had with a yellow flame and incomplete combustion can result with a blue flame! For our particular discussion the flame's color depends on how rapidly the carbon in the fuel is combined with oxygen and burned. Blue flames are called "non-luminous" because they put out very little light. Yellow flames however are very luminous putting out a lot of light. The real experts test for complete combustion not by flame color but by testing for the presence of carbon monoxide in the flame byproducts (exhaust). Complete combustion combines each of the carbon (C) and hydrogen (H) atoms in the fuel with sufficient oxygen (O2) molecules resulting in nothing but Carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). If there is insufficient oxygen then the exhaust contains carbon monoxide (CO). Oil is MUCH more dense than gas (such as propane or natural gas) Oil molecules have many more carbon atoms in their molecules. Also the bonds between the molecules are stronger (as oil is used the heat weakens the bonds breaking them down which is partly why used oil is easier to burn than new oil). However as the oil burns the bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms must be broken for the oxygen to combine with the carbon and hydrogen properly. This takes more time with oil than with gaseous fuels. Oil molecules have so much more carbon than propane has that the oxygen in the air can not combine with and burn it all at once. So the temperature of the excess carbon drops down to the yellow/orange color range and burns slower and further from the burner (sometimes as an orange flame that blasts out of the furnace vent if the furnace is too small). The great quantity of this yellow burning carbon blocks out the blue areas of the flame which would otherwise be visible. You can think of this orange flame as millions of tiny sparks all grouped together. That is in reality what it is! A spark is a burning piece of material, such as the sparks from charcoal are burning specs of charcoal. The orange flames blasting out of the furnace can be considered millions of tiny sparks created by the excess carbon atoms burning in the orange color rage! This is lost heat/fuel. If the furnace were larger then this carbon would burn within the furnace chamber and the heat would not be lost. If this excess carbon contacts a comparatively cold surface then it may cool completely and form soot (the excess carbon)! However given enough space (a large enough furnace chamber or out in the open) the carbon can combine with oxygen and burn completely (at least in theory since there are other variables to consider). Oil burners which use a coil to vaporize the oil can burn with a blue flame because the oil has been turned into a gaseous vapor (like propane). But just like propane there is less heat provided from this method because a lot of the carbon is left in the coil as soot and crud which must be cleaned out from time to time! And this carbon is therefore lost as a fuel source! Thusly, an oil burner with a true vaporizer assembly may burn with less heat than a propane burner! Additionally since the propane flame is blue (a higher temperature color) the flame is hotter than a yellow oil flame, but the larger oil flame and oil's higher heat density (British Thermal Unit - BTU content) makes up for it with a quality burner!Lionel's scientific discussion on the colors of flames and the reason for said colors.
Unfortunately the manifold design was flawed. There seemed to be some air turbulence in the manifold which prevented the burner from running properly. The turbulence seemed to be some "back flow" of air. To solve the problem I removed the cap from the top of the manifold and replaced it with this swiveling lid which provided a gap for the excess air to "leak" out of. This greatly reduced the turbulence and let the burner run much better.
Unfortunately again, The gap from the swiveling lid allowed oil droplets to splash out fairly often. So to "encapsulate" the sprayed droplets I used this elbow fitting and section of pipe. The turbulent air was still able to escape but the oil droplets were mostly caught. Most of the oil shown on the manifold was from it dripping down when the swiveling lid was in place. Often a lot of this oil would vaporize off the surface when the burner was hot. Even so this burner is now a part of the Lionel's Lab museum of retro technology.
The small oil heating chamber became a problem when I didn't heat the oil. It tended to allow sludge to buildup. Therefore I had to pressurize the fuel tank to push the oil through. If I regularly used the oil heater this probably would not have been necessary. Go to the; Previous page -- Next page.