Furnace Diesel Burner Suitability

[Gundog48]

I've been thinking about switching from solid fuel to a hybrid coke/gas system, until I acquired and old furnace burner for free. It would appear to burn diesel and will be fairly easy to mount, if a bit heavy. It was switched previously by a thermostat and has a 3-pin plug which should mean that I could wire it up to a foot pedal or simple switch to operate it which would be great. 

My biggest concern is the size. It's rated at 54-120KW. From what I can gather, this is significantly more power than I've seen from most forge gas burners. Has anyone tried anything similar or have any advice on using something like this/its viability? 

I'm thinking it might just be easier to sell and buy a gas burner! 

[ThomasPowers]

So the lower setting is about 10 pounds of oil an hour?  Sounds rather excessive for a forge.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

3 hours ago, Gundog48 said:

I'm thinking it might just be easier to sell and buy a gas burner! 

I'm thinking you are right, unless you are planing to forge large ships anchors.

[Dan Bance]

23 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

So the lower setting is about 10 pounds of oil an hour?  Sounds rather excessive for a forge.

That's about 1.5 gallons per hour.  I run my forge at .5 gallons per hour (which is probably still excessive).  Liquid fuels are difficult to make a satisfying forge with.  And you need to run them lean until the forge comes up to temp or they can smoke like crazy.  But, once you've got a viable forge built, they're kinda nice.  On the other hand, I could have bought a lot of propane for what I spent building my current forge (and I still want to change some things).  A lot of trial and error went into it.