Laughing Stock Farm, Freeport, Maine

Oil Use

This is the best part.  When the thermostat calls for heat, the burner turns on and heats the water in the hot water loop.  That's pretty much it.  Once the oil is cleaned and heated, the system works like any other heating system.  Our system heats water that is circulated throughout the greenhouse where unit heaters extract that heat and blow it into the greenhouse where it's needed.  

There are also waste oil fired hot air furnaces.  We hope to install at least one of these by next winter.  Clean Burn and other waste oil burner manufacturers who have experience with UCO report that hot air furnaces combust the UCO more easily because the combustion chamber is 300F to 400F hotter in a furnace than in a hot water boiler.

The way No. 2 oil burners work is that oil is pumped at high pressure through a nozzle which causes the oil to spray in a fine mist (atomize) inside the combustion chamber.  Air from a burner blower is mixed with the atomized fuel and a spark ignites the mixture.

Basic waste oil burners add compressed air to assist in the atomization.  The better waste oil burners also heat the oil to about 150F before atomization.  The Clean Burn burner also fires into a ceramic cylinder inside the combustion chamber.  This ceramic radiates heat back at the flame to keep the waste oil, or in our case the UCO, hot while it completely combusts.  The Clean Burn burner also uses a positive displacement pump to meter 2.5 gallons/hour to the burner regardless of the UCO temperature or viscosity.  Note the meter pump suction strainer which is the last filter before the burner.  This system burns UCO in a blue/white flame with yellow edges and produces no residue, very little ash, and no smoke once it is adjusted properly.

UL Certification

Send mail to lisa@laughingstockfarm.com with questions or comments about our farm

Send to ralph@rturner.com with questions or comments about our energy project. 

Copyright 2008, Laughing Stock Farm
Last modified: February 01, 2008