Nearly 900 degree stack temp! Carlin 100 CRD oil burner and original steel boiler.

MikeAmann

@EBEBRATT-Ed @STEVEusaPA
Thank you. Just what I thought you would say. Still worth asking the question.

I am all too familiar with "place to start", or as we call it in work, baseline settings.
The machines that I work on have recommended settings that will get you running.
Then you fine tune from there.
Unfortunately, other techs see these baseline settings as the final setting, and anything else is wrong.
Sometimes those settings run really well, other times.... dog crap.
And each machine, though all the same, have different personalities.

I have bought so many different nozzles that I now have quite a collection.
When I get the time, I will do a back-to-back analysis between a Delavan .65 hollow at 145psi, both 60 and 70 degrees.

EBEBRATT-Ed

I always thought Delevan nozzles were better just a feeling.

I had a school once with the "old style" Power Flame oil burners from the early 60s. These burners ran at 100 psi and used two or three nozzles depending on the burner size.

Anyhow they used "Steinen nozzle 90degree semi solid" I don't know if Steinen is still in business but at that time 30 years ago they had stopped making the 90 degree SS nozzle and those burners ran good with them.

The first time I serviced the burners I found out the Steinen nozzles were no longer available. Luckily I had not thrown the old ones away. I bought Hago 90 SS at the supply house....same thing they said.

Long story short the burners fired like crap with the Hagos so I cleaned the original nozzles put new strainers on them and the burners ran fine.

For three years the customer had no issues and I cleaned them every year.

Then I moved into the office and another tech took over. I first time he went there I pulled him aside and told him the issue. Whatever you do don't throw the nozzles out.......He did.


Customer called me mid winter burners all carboned up and end cone on burner burned off......parts no longer available for the burner.

Installed two new Carlins.........totally unnecessary.


If tose original nozzles had failed I was going to do a nozzle application test to see if I could make it work. Onced he burned up and warpd the end cones it was a no go.

PS Steinen is still in business but no longer make burner nozzles. They make industrial nozzles for mining and food processing

EdTheHeaterMan

Once upon a time...

Nearly 900 degree stack temp! Carlin 100 CRD oil burner and original steel boiler

.
Then there was @MikeAmann

And the boiler heated efficiently, and everyone lived happily ever after!

Great story Mike! Thanks for sharing the combustion readings from before and after. Great Job!

MikeAmann

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

Like I said above. The MFG recommendations mean nothing if another nozzle works better.

Nozzle application test Charlie Burkhardt's book "domestic and commercial oil burners" you can find old copies in used book stores.

I ordered that book. It looks like a good read. Thanks for the recommendation.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@MikeAmann The book is quite outdated. Probably last printed around 1970. I actually met Mr. Burkhardt somewhere back in the day when I was just starting.

But, there are a lot of things in that book that never change when It comes to burning oil. There are no Carlin 100s or Becket Afs in that book but a lot of older stuff

Steamhead

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

@MikeAmann The book is quite outdated. Probably last printed around 1970. I actually met Mr. Burkhardt somewhere back in the day when I was just starting.

Can't find it quickly, but IIRC my copy of this (black in color) does mention the "Carlin Flame-Retention Head", in the section on improved air-handling designs or something similar. 1970 would have been around the time flame-retention was first used.

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

But, there are a lot of things in that book that never change when It comes to burning oil. There are no Carlin 100s or Becket Afs in that book but a lot of older stuff

This!

MikeAmann

The "how we got to where we are now" explanations is worth the six bucks I paid for it.
1969 was the third printing.

You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been. Maya Angelou

EBEBRATT-Ed

@MikeAmann

Carlin had flame retention in the 60s (but if I am mistaken @Steamhead will comment) it was all with slow speed 1725 rpm motors. The burner I remember was a 400N2R but Carlin also had other flame retention burners. Before that was the "Shell Head" and Englehard Combustion also had something. It was the infancy of flame retention although you will see in that book that Iron Fireman Whirlpower had 3450 flame retention burners with pumps running 300 psi at the nozzle back into the late 50s. Charlie Schrade invented that burner. and as far as I am concerned Iron Fireman invented flame retention. They were way ahead of everyone else but those were commercial burners.

It took until the 70s for Beckett and Carlin to catch on with 3450 motors (noise was a big issue with some homeowners) and the noise issue was delt with somewhat by using different combustion chamber material to quit things down...Insulating fire brick instead of the old hard fire brick.

And it took them years longer to start boosting the oil pressure over 100 psi which I could never figure out why it took them that long

MikeAmann

UPDATE: July 2023
I finally had a chance to look into the combustion chamber to see how I made it through this past winter.

Here it is after the cleaning in October.


And this is after this past heating season, looking through the viewport. Looks cleaner to me.
.60x60A Delavan at 145 psi. And I can finally replace those dull electrodes.




The red and yellow colors on the target wall are lightening up and the soot at the bottom of the tubes is less. There is only what would amount to maybe a teaspoon of debris in the bottom of the combustion chamber.

For the upcoming heating season, I plan to swap in the new baffles, and test a .65x70A Delavan to try to get the CO2 a little higher (or O2 lower) and get the Xair closer to 31%. These new baffles should be slightly more restrictive (6 tongues vs 4), so that should lower the draft and force more heat to scrub the walls of the tubes for greater heat transfer to the water.

STEVEusaPA said:

Those combustion numbers are ok, but not great. Excess air is high, I think you’re underfired and possibly draft too high.

STEVEusaPA said:

I forget what nozzle you have in there, too tired to scroll...lol. Keep in mind, upping the pump pressure may have affected the spray pattern, too.
I think you're ok where you are, but if you insist:
Run your burner with the existing nozzle, and set it up for a 1 smoke. Switch it to the recommended nozzle type (same firing rate, different pattern). Fire it up and don't touch any air/draft settings.
Take a smoke test. If it's cleaner than 1, that's the right nozzle. Adjust for true zero smoke and see what the analyzer results are now. If it's worse than 1, put the other nozzle back in, and re-adjust for true zero smoke. This is just a small sampling of a nozzle substitution test.

EdTheHeaterMan said:

You want no more than -0.01 draft over the fire on a clean heat exchanger properly baffled.

I can always add a washer to the baro damper weight, if necessary.
But I really can't complain about 83.4% running efficiency on a 55 year old oil boiler of this type.
I mean really, how much room is left for improvement? Now it only takes about 10 minutes to heat the boiler water from 55 to 170. That will happen when you are able to keep an extra 450 degrees down in the heat exchanger, instead of just going up the chimney, wasted.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Your not going to get it much better than that. Big improvement

MikeAmann

UPDATE: 1 year later....
It's time to replace those dull electrodes.

And now for the new version 2.0 CNC laser-cut stainless steel baffles.


I had the local technical school help me with making a fixture to bend the tongues out without distorting the rest of the baffle. I am expecting these to be a little more restrictive than the baffles that are coming out (6 tongues vs 5). I am shooting for a stack temp of 400*F.
And I will be swapping the nozzle from a Delavan .60x60A to a .65x70A. 145 psi, so FR will be .77 GPH. I still have some extra air to use up.

This old boiler (1968) never came with a high-speed flame-retention burner. Carlin literature says 60 degree hollow or semi-solid nozzle, but since this burner will be firing into a combustion chamber that is most likely larger (wider) than what it would have been installed on decades later, I will be going to a 70 degree nozzle. The actual nameplate on the burner says 70 degree.

Last year's settings and combustion analysis:


I swapped the baffles out on Saturday night. There was no soot at all on the old baffles and nothing in the combustion chamber. I expected to do a little cleaning, but there was absolutely nothing there. This burner/boiler ran cleaner last year than it ever did in it's entire life.
Tonight I will do the electrodes, nozzle, screen, filter, and then a combustion analysis.

MikeAmann

The baffles did not work out as planned. I was going for a little more restrictive to lower the stack temperature, but I was so focused on making the tongues as big as possible, that I didn't realize that that was also making the open mouth larger - IOW, less restrictive and this actually made the stack temperature even higher. So I put the other baffles back in.
On the plus side though, changing to a the slightly larger nozzle had positive results on the combustion numbers. And then opening up the retention ring setting a bit improved the numbers even more.
This is where I plan to leave it for this heating season.

EBEBRATT-Ed

3:47 AM ?? Tell me @MikeAmann you wern't up all night working on this????LOL

SuperTech

Looks good to me Mike. Good job!

MikeAmann

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

3:47 AM ?? Tell me @MikeAmann you weren't up all night working on this????LOL

Actually, as I am getting better at this, the times are getting shorter.
But having a 2nd shift job still makes this a work-on-it-at-night task.

Now I have to take care of some chimney issues. Bricks are solid, but there is missing mortar at the top.
It's now too late in the year to start tearing down and rebuilding, so after I had a discussion with the masonry contractor yesterday, we agreed that filling in those gaps with the stuff in the tube is the best band-aid to get me through the winter without having further damage happen.
Then we can do a proper repair in the spring after this heating season.

Edit: this afternoon I found that Dad was aware of the problem and "fixed" it his way..... with asphalt crack filler. And he also completely covered the crown with the stuff. Now I have to deal with that mess.
I guess it will be a wire wheel on the angle grinder tomorrow.
I was just planning to use Dri-Lok on the crown. Now I will be heading to the sheet metal dept at the technical school to see if they can bend me up a crown cover from galvanized sheet metal. There is no time to have a custom stainless steel cover made. I plan to block the 2 unused flues and fit a proper cap to the boiler flue. Assuming that I can get all of this done, then I will waterproof with Siloxa-Tek 8500 concrete sealer.

MikeAmann

I forgot to mention that I replaced the oil pump last year when the old, tired pump wasn't stable above 120 psi. I wanted to run at 145# for better atomization. So when I loosened the cover bolts the other day, a whole bunch of black crap came out. ****? It was softened black paint; the same black paint as on the outside of the pump. The screen was almost completely covered. Apparently the inside of the pump is painted also.

MikeAmann

October 2024 Update:

I'm back…. and with a better camera! 👍️

To recap - NOV 2023 Boiler I swapped the baffles out on Saturday night. There was no soot at all on the old baffles and nothing in the combustion chamber. I expected to do a little cleaning, but there was absolutely nothing there. This burner/boiler ran cleaner last year than it ever did in it's entire life. Tonight I will do the electrodes, nozzle, screen, filter, and then a combustion analysis.

10/16/2024 Replaced oil tank filter and both oil pump screens & gaskets, oiled motors. There is a separate hot water heater.

10/17 Boiler - incredibly clean, no need to remove the top, blew compressed air down thru the baro damper opening with the shop vac in the viewport. NO soot at all. Looking at the bottom of the tubes thru the viewport, the crap from years past has disappeared. Electrodes were new last year. Only the very slightest of dust in the blower fan area. There was more dust on the outside. Only a little bit of carbon on the NLEA. It's running great, but I want to try for even better by going to an 80 degree nozzle because I am no longer running at 100 psi pump pressure - 145# with the new pump. Previous nozzle was a Delavan .65x70A (that I want to try in the water heater) - new is a HAGO .65x80H (also have a HAGO .65x80SS).

Cleaned everything, fired right up, sounds smooth & quiet, flame looks good. Retention ring still at 3/32" and I didn't touch any other adjustments. Air band closed and air shutter at 3.75

These settings fall right in line with Carlin's recommendations. I am at .77 firing rate.

Draft should still be -0.028" and I could add a washer to the weight if necessary. Let's see what the combustion analysis says.

EdTheHeaterMan

@MikeAmann Thanks for the update. This is all good stuff. However my experience with carlin CRD end cone and retention head is that the Hago 60°SS works best at keeping the retention head clean. As long as you are OK with taking that carbon off the head each year, and you are getting Soot Free operation for a year, then don't change anything.

My son just did a tune up on a Crown Boiler I installed 0ver 10 years ago.  It calls for a Monarch AR nozzle and he didn’t have one last year, Came back to a perfectly clean boiler however this is the first time he saw this in the past 4 years he has performed maintenance.

I advised him to  source some Monarch nozzles and see if that crud is missing next year. 

MikeAmann

My reasoning for going from 70 degree to 80 is that this Carlin burner was never installed on this particular (old, 1968) boiler from the factory. So besides a "good starting point", all bets are off when it comes to selecting the proper nozzle by the literature. I am in the middle of my own R&D nozzle application test and fine-tuning. I figure that the combustion chamber inside of this boiler is larger than what the newer units have, so I can try to spread the flame out a little more. Using Delavan nozzles in the past years, 2022-23 was a .60x60A nozzle and 2023-24 I used a .65x70A . Efficiency was increased, but I also opened up the retention ring setting a slight bit. If the CA numbers are worse, then I can try the HAGO .65x80SS nozzle before going back in the other direction (narrower).

Remember, 3 years ago when I first got my hands on it, I had an 880 degree stack temp, 67% efficiency, virtually non-existent baffles, 8 pounds of chunky crap in the combustion chamber all the way up to the bottom of the air tube, and a completely disgustingly filthy burner. After I service the water heater, I will do combustion analysis on both units.