Coal in the Eko?

[deerefanatic]

hey sting. Yes, I've been on the nepacrossroads forum alot digging around..........

I am reluctant to lay out huge money on a bituminous stoker because of the shaky political ground surrounding coal in general..... Especially bituminous.....

Anthracite is the cheapest to get into for equipment as anthracite stokers are fairly easy and inexpensive to get into used.... But the coal itself is more expensive.....

I got this email back from EKO today:

I do not recommend to burn with hard coal:such uncontrolled burning may lead
to explosions in boiler: primary and secondary air settings are for wood.
Remains from hard coal burning may clog the nozzle not saying about massive
amount of ash.

Not sure what he's getting at with the ash.... Coal is known for having less ash than wood..... Go figure... :~
As for the explosions, the heat storage should absorb heat out of the boiler when idling to prevent steam explosions... Plus pressure relief valves......

 

[Kemer]

I'm From NE PA and have burned coal a lot in the past.There is a lot of ash and what we call clunkers that will clog the nozzels.There also is what we call coal gas that can build up.The best you might be able to do is put a little bit of "rice coal"in with the coal bed to keep the fire going.I tryed it but not with good results.

 

[ihookem]

We all have at least 10k in our wood burners and now we all want to burn coal. I thought about using a chunk of coal to help keep it gassiifing, using the chunk of coal as a glow plug for when the coals die down. I don't know if it would work.

 

[DenaliChuck]

I've burned a lot of bit coal in a Vermont Castings Vigilant with grates designed to burn coal...way more ash in our local coal than in wood (like 10:1) along with lots of clinkers (un-burnable rocks). I'd imagine a clogged nozzle would be a somewhat common event. I've also had some goal gas explosions in the Vigilant that I never had when burning wood. If I were going to try it in my Tarm I'd be very cautious...but even with coal 10 miles away and only costing $50/ton, I'll still be burning wood that I have to get from 90 miles away.

 

[mrhaney]

its all about the quality of coal btu,ash,sulfur,with the eastern ky coal i burn my ash is like white flour you can sift thru your hand no clinkers and no flyash,im getting about 2 ,5 gal buckets of ash for every 25, 5 gal buckets of coal i burn,when i was burning west ky coal the ash was double that and i had golf ball size cinkers,with fly ash

 

[Tony H]

IMHO it seems to me if you intend to burn coal that installing ///////



























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If you intend to burn coal it would seem using a boiler made for that fuel would be more efficent and safer instead of using a wood boiler