Hello, I am new here and have some questions and thoughts on rocket stoves. A little background to ease into this post: I build industrial equipment for a living and own a small machine shop, fabrication shop and foundry. One of the areas that I work in is the design and construction of high temperature equipment like foundry furnaces, heat treat ovens, heat exchangers, and some boiler work. I want to build for our next house, green house and shop a
hot water heating system that uses multiple heat sources,
solar,
wood and a back up fuel. I am a tried and true scrounger and material re-user and have been collecting parts and materials for this system. I like the idea of using a
rocket stove, I use this term because the thermal mass I want to heat is
water, and bring in some other ideas. First; having a background in using refractory, I am considering making molds to form the
feed chute and burn tunnel in a hard dense castable refractory that will be much like fire brick when done. I thought of using a lower density castable for the vertical combustion chamber that would heat up much faster than the denser castable. I have wondered about a few things; would there be an advantage to introduce pre-heated combustion air into the combustions chamber to get better secondary combustion? This could be moulded into the refractory of the burn tunnel. Also, above the combustion stack is the horizontal surface as in the drums that I see being use, does this horizontal surface add to more complete combustion or is this just used as heat transfer? Is there a optimum vertical height to diameter for the combustion chamber? Has anyone used chipped wood or saw dust for a fuel source or do the smaller sized pieces get sucked up the combustion chamber? My
plans for the heat exchanger is a horizontal three pass fire tube boiler. I am still debating whether I want to run the system at low pressure, 15 psi or at atmospheric pressure. I like the safety feature of 0 pressure, but low pressure has some positive design features too. I would appreciate any thoughts and suggestion on this. I have enjoyed reading the posts here and have gleaned a lot of information, but if I can save reinventing something or some of the trial and error that would be great.
kent