Hello John, great effort Mate. We are having similar issues here over the ditch. Pellets the size that you have are small compared to what we can get here in OZ. Ours are around 2" dia X 3" to 4" long I haven't got around to trying them yet as I will need to quarter them and then cut them down. I have seen a few tests on Heidi's with less than satisfactory results much the same as your attempt. I have been toying with the idea of converting my 5" gauge Simplex to either gas or oil as the Welsh anthracite supplies are drying up here and the coal we are getting from other Aussie suppliers is really hit and miss leading to poor steaming, oh how I miss the char we used to use. One thing I have found with compressed sawdust products is that they do produce a lot of ash, maybe if you rake the fire to get that ash into the pan before adding more pellets might improve primary airflow. I have also found these products tend to like secondary air it should help reduce the smoke. Maybe if you went back to the company that supplied you with your findings they could provide you with a bit more info on their product and maybe a few more Kg's to play with. The above comments are only based on my limited observations of similar experiments over here, unfortunately no one has come up with a good solution yet. Keep at it Mate!
One thing I hadn't appreciated until I tried to fire up my loco last Sunday was that these "torrefied pellets" contained some very tarry volatile components. I did try to run the loco on anthracite after my short trial of the pellets and the results were not good. I put that down to the overlay grate reducing the primary air. However, last Sunday, wanting to run the loco again, I thought I ought to put a brush through the fire tubes and then I discovered that the 4 lowest tubes of the 16 were blocked, seriously blocked! I have never had to hammer the brush through a tube ever before! I had to resort to pushing a small rod followed by larger rods followed by the brush (a 12 gauge shotgun cleaning brush) and still could not clean one of the tubes back to it's normal diameter! When I tried to fire up the loco later that day I discovered that the electric blower would not rotate as it was seriously gummed up and nothing short of the use of a blow torch would free it up long enough for me to get it to rotate on the battery. So overall, it was a bit of a disaster and I won't try that form of combustive material in the loco again. The video does show a copious amount of white vapour being emitted and I suspect that this was the gummy tarry products of combustion. When cold, this black tar was almost brittle in nature and it needed some heat to get it to release and "flow" away. As an addendum to this video I would like to add that our club has inadvertently bought 2 tons of rubbish coal i.e. the quality of the coal was misrepresented by the agent in Timaru. It burns with a dense yellow dirty white pall of smoke, so acrid as to be a serious air pollutant and I believe dangerous to health. As an experiment I used a 6 foot long extension to my chimney to guide the "clag" away from the public whilst in the station during coal up. At least this removes the discomfort felt by waiting passengers and myself while we wait for the fire to recover prior to making the next trip. I have vague memories that this was a technique used during the age of steam in the UK to try to keep covered stations free of the intense smoke pollution caused by coaling up in the station which was frowned upon, so this may be what we can do to mitigate the discomfort caused as we try to use up this rubbish coal. Another problem with this coal is the amount of unburnable material leaving copious "clinker" on the grate after just an hours running. So, be careful what you buy, 2 tons will take a lot of getting through!
@@johnantliff Thanks for the reply John, I have had similar problems with my Simplex. I was using cypress pine as light up wood and the loco became a very slow steamer. It turned out that the pine was giving off pine tar which had coated all heating surfaces with a black sticky tar residue. My tubes are only 5/8" ID. I used a product from Bunnings (local hardware store) it is a small sachet used for cleaning full size home fire flues just throw the sachet on what's left of your fire at the end of a run, it worked miracles with a black smoke pawl emitting from the stack and th loco was back to her old self. In relation to poor coal, my club in its infinite wisdom has mixed several different types of coal. On refilling the bunker on one play day and using the new load on my fire it basically went out and would not reignite. I took the remainder home and threw it in a pile on my open fireplace only to see it next morning basically untouched by the existing fire, it must be a new type of eco coal that emits no emissions of any type! I investigated the supply of small pellets like you used and there is a variety now available in OZ some used mixed hard and soft wood sawdust others only hardwood. I think the problem you have highlighted is what they use for binders that clearly leads to blocked and coated tubes. A bit more investigation from the manufacturers will be needed. I can't wait until i CAN FIRE UP MY 7 1/4" loco, there has to be an answer to our dilemma
No, from what I can remember, it was a fairly neutral smell. Neither acrid and choking like from burning coal or fragrant from burning wood. If I didn't know better I would have described it as a "vapour" not smoke!
Why is the electric blower still on when obviously there is enough steam pressure as it looks like the safeties are lifting, to run the engines steam blower system
I usually remove the electric blower when there is 25 psi or more of steam indicated on the gauge however I was talking to some people close by and did not keep my eye on the gauge. Steam pressure will climb quite quickly once the water in the boiler starts to boil - indicated by the water level in boiler glass "bouncing" up and down due to bubbles of steam interfering with the meniscus level. These steam pressure gauges tend to stick at the zero point from cold and will suddenly spring to a reading of 10 to 15 psi. However that is not what happened here, it was just that I wasn't keeping my eye on the progress being made. Your observation about the safeties lifting is not right, they were not lifting, merely "feathering" i.e. allowing a small amount of water vapour to pass through the valve due to machining tolerances and heat distortion in the valve body - see @ 29:47 for the first relief valve blow off.
My guess is that, because the pellets have little more than half the calorific value of coal, you will be firing twice as much. And because wood burns away much quicker than coal you will need even more again. So probably at least 3 shovels of pellets compared with one shovel of coal. Also wood smoke tends to sting the eyes, I wonder if you experienced that?. Now , I have just read your concluding remarks. So this experiment was a complete flop. I wonder if you will persevere.
Spot on Derek - 3 times as much over the same time period would be about right probably requiring a mechanical stoker. Time will tell if we will be "allowed" to burn coal in the near future and whether coal will still be available! The real problem with these pellets as a fuel is the tar content - I have never seen anything quite so bituminous as this stuff!
Hello John, great effort Mate. We are having similar issues here over the ditch. Pellets the size that you have are small compared to what we can get here in OZ. Ours are around 2" dia X 3" to 4" long I haven't got around to trying them yet as I will need to quarter them and then cut them down. I have seen a few tests on Heidi's with less than satisfactory results much the same as your attempt. I have been toying with the idea of converting my 5" gauge Simplex to either gas or oil as the Welsh anthracite supplies are drying up here and the coal we are getting from other Aussie suppliers is really hit and miss leading to poor steaming, oh how I miss the char we used to use. One thing I have found with compressed sawdust products is that they do produce a lot of ash, maybe if you rake the fire to get that ash into the pan before adding more pellets might improve primary airflow. I have also found these products tend to like secondary air it should help reduce the smoke. Maybe if you went back to the company that supplied you with your findings they could provide you with a bit more info on their product and maybe a few more Kg's to play with. The above comments are only based on my limited observations of similar experiments over here, unfortunately no one has come up with a good solution yet. Keep at it Mate!
One thing I hadn't appreciated until I tried to fire up my loco last Sunday was that these "torrefied pellets" contained some very tarry volatile components. I did try to run the loco on anthracite after my short trial of the pellets and the results were not good. I put that down to the overlay grate reducing the primary air. However, last Sunday, wanting to run the loco again, I thought I ought to put a brush through the fire tubes and then I discovered that the 4 lowest tubes of the 16 were blocked, seriously blocked! I have never had to hammer the brush through a tube ever before! I had to resort to pushing a small rod followed by larger rods followed by the brush (a 12 gauge shotgun cleaning brush) and still could not clean one of the tubes back to it's normal diameter! When I tried to fire up the loco later that day I discovered that the electric blower would not rotate as it was seriously gummed up and nothing short of the use of a blow torch would free it up long enough for me to get it to rotate on the battery. So overall, it was a bit of a disaster and I won't try that form of combustive material in the loco again. The video does show a copious amount of white vapour being emitted and I suspect that this was the gummy tarry products of combustion. When cold, this black tar was almost brittle in nature and it needed some heat to get it to release and "flow" away.
As an addendum to this video I would like to add that our club has inadvertently bought 2 tons of rubbish coal i.e. the quality of the coal was misrepresented by the agent in Timaru. It burns with a dense yellow dirty white pall of smoke, so acrid as to be a serious air pollutant and I believe dangerous to health. As an experiment I used a 6 foot long extension to my chimney to guide the "clag" away from the public whilst in the station during coal up. At least this removes the discomfort felt by waiting passengers and myself while we wait for the fire to recover prior to making the next trip. I have vague memories that this was a technique used during the age of steam in the UK to try to keep covered stations free of the intense smoke pollution caused by coaling up in the station which was frowned upon, so this may be what we can do to mitigate the discomfort caused as we try to use up this rubbish coal. Another problem with this coal is the amount of unburnable material leaving copious "clinker" on the grate after just an hours running.
So, be careful what you buy, 2 tons will take a lot of getting through!
@@johnantliff Thanks for the reply John, I have had similar problems with my Simplex. I was using cypress pine as light up wood and the loco became a very slow steamer. It turned out that the pine was giving off pine tar which had coated all heating surfaces with a black sticky tar residue. My tubes are only 5/8" ID. I used a product from Bunnings (local hardware store) it is a small sachet used for cleaning full size home fire flues just throw the sachet on what's left of your fire at the end of a run, it worked miracles with a black smoke pawl emitting from the stack and th loco was back to her old self. In relation to poor coal, my club in its infinite wisdom has mixed several different types of coal. On refilling the bunker on one play day and using the new load on my fire it basically went out and would not reignite. I took the remainder home and threw it in a pile on my open fireplace only to see it next morning basically untouched by the existing fire, it must be a new type of eco coal that emits no emissions of any type! I investigated the supply of small pellets like you used and there is a variety now available in OZ some used mixed hard and soft wood sawdust others only hardwood. I think the problem you have highlighted is what they use for binders that clearly leads to blocked and coated tubes. A bit more investigation from the manufacturers will be needed. I can't wait until i CAN FIRE UP MY 7 1/4" loco, there has to be an answer to our dilemma
Very interesting, quite smoky does it smell like normal wood burning? I suddenly have a craving for licorice rope and don't know why....
No, from what I can remember, it was a fairly neutral smell. Neither acrid and choking like from burning coal or fragrant from burning wood. If I didn't know better I would have described it as a "vapour" not smoke!
Why is the electric blower still on when obviously there is enough steam pressure as it looks like the safeties are lifting, to run the engines steam blower system
I usually remove the electric blower when there is 25 psi or more of steam indicated on the gauge however I was talking to some people close by and did not keep my eye on the gauge. Steam pressure will climb quite quickly once the water in the boiler starts to boil - indicated by the water level in boiler glass "bouncing" up and down due to bubbles of steam interfering with the meniscus level. These steam pressure gauges tend to stick at the zero point from cold and will suddenly spring to a reading of 10 to 15 psi. However that is not what happened here, it was just that I wasn't keeping my eye on the progress being made. Your observation about the safeties lifting is not right, they were not lifting, merely "feathering" i.e. allowing a small amount of water vapour to pass through the valve due to machining tolerances and heat distortion in the valve body - see @ 29:47 for the first relief valve blow off.
My guess is that, because the pellets have little more than half the calorific value of coal, you will be firing twice as much. And because wood burns away much quicker than coal you will need even more again. So probably at least 3 shovels of pellets compared with one shovel of coal. Also wood smoke tends to sting the eyes, I wonder if you experienced that?. Now , I have just read your concluding remarks. So this experiment was a complete flop. I wonder if you will persevere.
Spot on Derek - 3 times as much over the same time period would be about right probably requiring a mechanical stoker. Time will tell if we will be "allowed" to burn coal in the near future and whether coal will still be available! The real problem with these pellets as a fuel is the tar content - I have never seen anything quite so bituminous as this stuff!