What if you filled your owb with some type of oil rather than h20? The heat storage of oil is better than water would this relate to burning less wood
Oil filled boiler?
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that might not be a good idea,
if your safteys fail the end result would be disaterous.
being in the heating trade, I have seen video footage of boilers and water heaters exploding and they can clear the whole house down to the foundation.
If you filled it with oil. ..... I don't wanna say, but It don't paint a pretty picture in my mind.
the Watts company put together a saftey video back in the 50's. I think, very eductional footage.
there are manyways your safteys could fail. Low water, mechanical failure of saftey valve, bad installation. inproper wiring of limits. faulty limit contacts.
would you want your relief valve to pop off at 190 degrees and pour oil in the vapor state in you living enviroment.
oil vapor is exposive. thats how oil burners work.
creative Idea. but if you use lava rock in your storage tanks may be a better soulution.,, just an idea, the lava rock may be too acidic tho.
do reserch on how people stored heat in the 70's, they used to have a room filled with lava rock to contain warm air.
Cast Iron is a good way to store thermal mass.
if your safteys fail the end result would be disaterous.
being in the heating trade, I have seen video footage of boilers and water heaters exploding and they can clear the whole house down to the foundation.
If you filled it with oil. ..... I don't wanna say, but It don't paint a pretty picture in my mind.
the Watts company put together a saftey video back in the 50's. I think, very eductional footage.
there are manyways your safteys could fail. Low water, mechanical failure of saftey valve, bad installation. inproper wiring of limits. faulty limit contacts.
would you want your relief valve to pop off at 190 degrees and pour oil in the vapor state in you living enviroment.
oil vapor is exposive. thats how oil burners work.
creative Idea. but if you use lava rock in your storage tanks may be a better soulution.,, just an idea, the lava rock may be too acidic tho.
do reserch on how people stored heat in the 70's, they used to have a room filled with lava rock to contain warm air.
Cast Iron is a good way to store thermal mass.
What if the boiler developed a crack allowing oil to leak into the burn area? I am not sure but I dont think the thermal properties of oil are all that great when it comes to giving the heat back up and it probably takes more energy to heat it too.
I and others here on this group have, individually and collectively, done more than a little looking into what materials hold the most heat per unit of space or weight, and the beauty of water is not only that it is abundant and affordable, but also, if you really dig into the engineering data, it holds/ moves more BTU per pound or gallon than just about anything else you can normally get your hands on. I don't have the data at hand but verified pretty carefully a few months ago, when I was first brainstorming my heat storage, that water holds/ transfers more BTUs per unit than oil does.
the one way to get more heat storage than water will allow is to get a lot more complex with "phase change"- certain materials, like paraffin (candle wax) absorb a huge amount of BTUs when they melt, and release a similarly huge amount when they re-solidify (the amount of heat absorbed/ released at the change in phase between solid and liquid is way more than just the change in degrees that the material would usually gain or release when going across the temperature that happens to be the melting point, if it wasn't melting or re-hardening). Certain chemical salts do the same thing. But then you have to chase down a variant of paraffin or some other chemical that happens to "do its thing" on going from solid to liquid at a temperature that is actually useful to you (within the temperature range when you want to pull the heat out). And you have to engineer some way to evenly and efficiently put heat into the solid mass to melt it "on the way up." Normal paraffin melts at about 120, which is lower than where you really want to pull heat out. Some specialized paraffins change around 150 or 160, which is closer to useful, but there's still a lot to design/ build to make it a useful heat store.
Long story short, there's a reason water is SO widely used to move or store heat, and it isn't just because it is cheap and abundant.
the one way to get more heat storage than water will allow is to get a lot more complex with "phase change"- certain materials, like paraffin (candle wax) absorb a huge amount of BTUs when they melt, and release a similarly huge amount when they re-solidify (the amount of heat absorbed/ released at the change in phase between solid and liquid is way more than just the change in degrees that the material would usually gain or release when going across the temperature that happens to be the melting point, if it wasn't melting or re-hardening). Certain chemical salts do the same thing. But then you have to chase down a variant of paraffin or some other chemical that happens to "do its thing" on going from solid to liquid at a temperature that is actually useful to you (within the temperature range when you want to pull the heat out). And you have to engineer some way to evenly and efficiently put heat into the solid mass to melt it "on the way up." Normal paraffin melts at about 120, which is lower than where you really want to pull heat out. Some specialized paraffins change around 150 or 160, which is closer to useful, but there's still a lot to design/ build to make it a useful heat store.
Long story short, there's a reason water is SO widely used to move or store heat, and it isn't just because it is cheap and abundant.
The only problem I see is the pumps. Not sure how well they would pump oil?? Other than that I like the idea.
BrownianHeatingTech
Minister of Fire
Water holds far more heat than oil.
Oils are used for heat transfer when the temperature exceeds the boiling point of water.
Joe
Oils are used for heat transfer when the temperature exceeds the boiling point of water.
Joe
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