Liftoff

In the continuing saga off no-smoke charcoal making, I’ve added air injection to the system.In recent runs, I could tell the fire wasn’t getting enough oxygen. There were a couple reasons I knew this.

1. when running just the stove, I got a red jet flame out of the top. A picture from a previous post:

   If everything were running optimially, there’d be enough oxygen inside the stove that all combustion can happen inside the stove. Said another way, volitile gases waited til being exposed to outside air before doing their thing.

2. another reason; pretty much the same as #1, when making charcoal, I got a red flame around the paint can. I want it to be a nice bright flame under the can.

So I’ve added a supercharger.It’s kinda hard to see in the thumbnail, I drilled four small holes in the length of pipe between the cap and the coupling (actually, it’s called a nipple… heh heh, he said nipple ;-)). The other end of the pipe, but the valve is a connector that allows me to hook it to my air compressor. Air flows from the compressor through the valve (the throttle), through the pipe that runs through the middle of the combustion chamber when I get the side benefit if heating the air, and then it’s injected into the flow of gases coming off the fire. (check me out, using all this technical sounding language. you’d think I’m a rocket scientist. I’ll have to mail my fried Jose who actually IS a rocket scientist. literally)
Well, it worked quite nicely. I now get only a little bit of smoke right at the beginning of the burn. Best of all, it’s starting to SOUND like a rocket!!! I need to find a microphone so you all can hear it. Very cool. One by product of it all is that it burns to completion much quicker. I haven’t opened the paint can yet so I’m not sure if I got charcoal through out. If not, I’m gonna try adding a thermal mass to the upper section like I already have with the stove itself. Might make it a bit top heavy. My friends out there are probably starting to think that I’m losing my mind. Hopefully, the cool factor of it all compensates. I trust you’ll let me know. I’ll close with something this all makes me think of, the guys at Purdue that lit charcoal in a bbq using liquid oxygen.