Home furnace oil burner as power source?

[oldnewprobs]

So that's the whole topic: if I got used oil burner from a home boiler/furnace, could I use it to run a melting foundry on home oil/diesel?

If I filter and pre heat, think it could run on waste oil as well? Possibly just with a larger jet orifice?

 

I'm gonna try it regardless

[Charles R. Stevens]

Exercise some google-fu, do a site search of IFI for oil burner, furnace burner etc. then search for oil burner forge or melting furnace in general. If nothing else you will see what not to do.

[Jimw3326]

I'd be wary of used oil, a lot of it is synthetic which is designed not to burn.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Also used oil has a lot of contaminants in it, not something I would like to inhale.

[oldnewprobs]

All of this will be done outdoors with a short chimney to keep fumes away from me. Yes I've googled it and watched some stuff, but some sources are clearly wrong, and some are very vague, I was hoping to find a breathing human with some experience who might want share what they've done that's similar.

 

My biggest concern using a furnace burner with waste oil is clogging it ever 15 seconds, so if I do use that as my starting point I will start with fuel oil or diesel instead of filtered waste oil, but ultimately I want my furnace to run on waste oil

[Buzzkill]

We have a commercial boiler at work for in-floor heat.  It will run on everything between kerosene and 90 weight oil.  We do run the used oil through a filter before it goes into the supply tank.  So far (several years) we have never had any trouble with fouling/clogging of the fuel system.  We have the system serviced once a year to remove the ash buildup in the combustion chamber and to make sure it is functioning correctly.  Those systems burn hot, so a lot of the byproducts people worry about are destroyed at the higher temperatures.  Still, the exhaust stack is 10 feet higher than the roof of the building that houses it.

If you filter the waste oil to remove particulates, and use a separator to get rid of the water if that's a concern, I don't think you'll have much of a problem with the burner clogging frequently - if it was designed to burn lightweight oils up to gear oils.  If it was designed strictly to run on heating oil it might be a different story.

[oldnewprobs]

thats good to know, might be able to just get the nozzle for one of those etc.  regardless even if hte thing doesn't really work, i'll have a blower assembly with igniter to start from at least.