I fired-up the Keystone a bit ago - going after a nice clean shoulder season burn. Haven't used the stove much since installing the new SS catalyst combustor, but tonight gives me a bit more experience with it.
Worked the stove top up to about 220 degrees with a mix of seasoned pine and a few sticks of oak for a little extra kick. At 220 deg's, I engaged the combustor and within less than a minute, it's glowing orange. From an internal temperature of just south of 500 degrees inside the stove to who knows what temp the actual combustor is burning. It's hot enough to glow orange and I can see how going from 500 degrees to over 1000 degreees (my guess) on the combustor would cause a lot of thermal shock to a ceramic catalyst in a short period of time.
My old ceramic combustor would go orange pretty fast too.
How quickly does your cat go orange on engaging it? Does it turn to orange slowly or within a minute? It's funny that there is so much smoke upon start-up and on reload, if you are up to light-off temps, I can't see how you could prevent the cat from getting super hot/orange and in doing so causing thermal shock - which I interpret as intense thermal expansion - sort of like throwing a hot glass into freezing cold water - expect something to break.
It's amazing to me how these catalyst combustors hold-up.
Bill
Worked the stove top up to about 220 degrees with a mix of seasoned pine and a few sticks of oak for a little extra kick. At 220 deg's, I engaged the combustor and within less than a minute, it's glowing orange. From an internal temperature of just south of 500 degrees inside the stove to who knows what temp the actual combustor is burning. It's hot enough to glow orange and I can see how going from 500 degrees to over 1000 degreees (my guess) on the combustor would cause a lot of thermal shock to a ceramic catalyst in a short period of time.
My old ceramic combustor would go orange pretty fast too.
How quickly does your cat go orange on engaging it? Does it turn to orange slowly or within a minute? It's funny that there is so much smoke upon start-up and on reload, if you are up to light-off temps, I can't see how you could prevent the cat from getting super hot/orange and in doing so causing thermal shock - which I interpret as intense thermal expansion - sort of like throwing a hot glass into freezing cold water - expect something to break.
It's amazing to me how these catalyst combustors hold-up.
Bill