HammerDance Posted March 4, 2022 Share Posted March 4, 2022 This may turn out to be a massive time-waster on minutiae, so be forewarned. Any idea if creating (or eliminating, if it turns out to be a negative) turbulence in your blowers’ air flow would have any noticeable effect on your burn, in a coal forge? Specifically, is there any sort of difference in oxygen diffusivity or saturation if the air is “forced” into your forge in a turbulated pattern, rather than just a straight shot? As an easy-to-digest example, the oil burner in your home furnace (if you use oil, of course) uses a flame retention head, which creates turbulence, and thereby creates the correct fuel/air mix for that application. Of course, there’s no fuel mix going on with a forge blower, but that’s the best example that I could come up with for an easy visual TL;DR - Maybe it’s just shower thoughts, but would creating turbulence in airflow give more control over the concentration of oxygen that’s fueling your burn? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted March 4, 2022 Share Posted March 4, 2022 Diffusivity? What happens to turbulence when it passes through a column of non linear voids, even a shallow one? Turbulence is nullified or maybe amplified to 100% and the flow becomes fully diffusificated. Seriously, if it mattered someone would've developed a correction centuries ago. Oil burners typically use a strong vortex not as a mixer but to lengthen the burn time. The flame spins in a tight screw pattern, so it's completely combusted BEFORE it can contact anything but the steel / iron heat exchanger. Oil flames are almost as chemically active as propane flame and they WILL eat fire brick, cast refractory and refractory blanket like candy. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HammerDance Posted March 4, 2022 Author Share Posted March 4, 2022 That’s sort of what I thought. I was putting some pieces together that I had on-hand, but one had a smooth interior bore, and the other looked like it would cause a bit of “disturbance” in the airflow (turbulence may have been a poor choice of words). I knew I was overthinking it as I was overthinking it, but my curiosity got the best of me. Thank you! ps - in hindsight, a better visual example would have probably been the flue baffle in a water heater, rather than an oil burner retention head. It hit me as soon as I hit “post”. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted March 4, 2022 Share Posted March 4, 2022 Your welcome and thank you right back. I'm taking a break between cleaning litter boxes and loading the SUV for a dump run. I loved your question it was well overthought and worth over-answering. There are much worse things to let get the best of you. A brown bear comes to mind, Of course overthinking your response to an aggressive brown bear would be a B A D thing. Turbulence is a good term but the important air blast factor to control the fire is volume. Either via pressure or restriction though lots of soft air is generally preferable, especially for charcoal. The deeper the coal the more pressure is required to maintain the flow. Too little is better than too much. Like puns? There are a number of us here who love to play puns. Gotta make the dump run, later. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted March 4, 2022 Share Posted March 4, 2022 You may have noticed that on forced air propane burners they suggest that the air pipe make a right angle bend to increase turbulence and so mix the propane and air better for a better burn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irondragon Forge ClayWorks Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 However on a solid fuel coal forge the fire grate will introduce some turbulence into the air flow. Whether it makes a difference or not is anybody's guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HammerDance Posted March 5, 2022 Author Share Posted March 5, 2022 I hadn’t dug too deep into propane burners, I think that’s still a bit too far beyond me. I also appear to have posted this in the wrong corner of the forum, originally, as it may have been better suited for the bellows/blowers section. I think I was looking at it as more of a science question, and thought it wouldn’t have a proper home in a more mechanical-leaning thread. Sorry, guys 25 minutes ago, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said: However on a solid fuel coal forge the fire grate will introduce some turbulence into the air flow. Whether it makes a difference or not is anybody's guess. I think I was sort of looking at it from a side-blast perspective, I should have been more specific. But when you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anvil Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 the answer is nope. A few things happen when you use a clinker ball and a 4" deep firepot similar to what you see with the rectangular firepot. The clinker ball is triangular shaped with the point down. the air is sent towards the sides of the firepot due to this shape, which are sloped. So the air is already directed around the sides and up to the top of your coal in the firepot. With no fire control, this automatically creates a fire the size and depth of the fire pot, which is what you want. The heat is radiated inwards making a constant heat throughout your coke, thus eliminating hot spots anywhere within the firepot. This design is pretty constant thru time with a few variations on clinker ball. I'm not a proponent of side blast nor a slotted grate and this is one of the reasons. Not to say they don't work and have their own strengths. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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