Hotter ? oil or gas ?

Gimpy Greg

I get the feeling from reading some posts that oil works
better than gas in steam boilers. This takes me back 25 yrs. when I worked in a combustion depatment in a steel mill.When reheat furnaces had to be switched from #6 oil to gas(a mixture of coke oven gas and natural gas mixed with air to maintain the 500 BTU/cu.ft. of the coke gas) the mill jockeys complained that the furnaces did not perform as well.The gas vs. oil burners supposedly had the same BTU input.I remember being told by a combustion engineer that a gas flame had a natural reflectance therefore the steel would not heat as fast with gas. How do you techs feel about this? Does oil work better ? why ? How about an
engineers explanation why or whynot ? At that time I just ordered the parts for HVAC and burner valves and controls
for equipment that ran on 25HZ or 60HZ current, blast furnace gas @ 74 BTU/cu.ft., coke oven gas @ 500 BTU/cu.ft.
natural gas @ 1000 BTU/cu.ft. and a little propane and coal tar,#2 oil and #6 oil.I didn't do any real work like you guys. Regards, Greg