Well...I took the little black pieces left over from my Acid/Chlorox mess and placed them in a crucible. I purchased some 4 inch black pipe and made a totally enclosed "holder" for the crucible. Then I started up some charcoal and placed it in the old home made forge I had in my garage. Suspended the crucible holder into the forge and filled the remainder with charcoal. Next, I connected a blow dryer (from a flea market) to the air supply pipe and turned it on (no heat, low fan setting). Did all the work outside in my driveway for safety reasons.
Things were heating up nicely until the thermal overload on the blow dryer detected too much heat and shut the dryer down. Now I know why it was being sold at the flea market. After it cooled a little, I turned it back on and it worked fine for about 3 minutes. Another cool down period and I turned the heat setting from cool to hot and left the fan speed on high. This time it tripped out after less than 30 seconds. I wish I could remember who was selling this thing because I would let them know what I thought of their sales ethics. No one ever mentioned there was a problem with it, but they had to know there was.
I grabbed a second blow dryer and continued firing the forge. I switched the fan speed to high and the heat really began to build up. The "holder" got red hot, and then the bottom actually started to turn almost yellow. I lifted the lid off the holder and saw the flux inside the crucible hadn't completely melted. Put the lid back on and continued with the heating, adding fresh charcoal as the ones in the forge burned down. After about an hour of subjecting things to this heat, I once again lifted off the lid. To my surprise there was a puddle in the bottom of the crucible, but the flux stuck to the sides (from a previous melt) was still intact. The heat in this little forge had done something to the crucible whereby it was "stuck" to the bottom half of the holder. A little prying broke it loose.
I then set the holder down on a piece of refractory brick and set the crucible directly on the burning charcoal. Soon, the entire crucible was glowing red, and this time when I pulled it out, the little lumps on the side from the previous melt had flowed back down and into the bottom of the crucible. I poured the contents into a cast iron conical mold and covered it to allow it to cool undisturbed. Later, I dumped out the cool cone. I then broke off the flux. It had a nice shiny gold color in some areas, but looked silvery in other areas. I suspect some lead may have been in the flux I used, so I'll try to dissolve the lead before further processing the cone.
I have learned several things from this experience. 1. NEVER trust the sellers at a flea market when you buy something that cannot be tested on the spot. 2. In my pyrolyzer design, I was going to place the chips to be incinerated in a pyroceram Corning ware dish, and put that dish into the upper chamber of my pyrolyzer. I doubt there will be enough heat to properly pyrolyze the chips inside the dish, so I'll most likely just put the chips inside the upper unit without the dish. 3. I thought I would need a speed control for the blow dryer. Wrong. I do not need to control the temperature down to a few degrees. The two speeds of the blow dryer will be sufficient for my pyrolyzer. 4. If anything, I will need still more air supplied to the combustion chamber, so I'll be adding a second blow dryer to the design.
Yesterday, I went out and bought two very inexpensive blow dryers for my newest pyrolyzer design. They are identical and each has 2 fan speeds. So, in essence, I will have a grand total of 6 different air flow speeds going into the pyrolyzer when it is finished. They can both be off, or on low speed, or both on high speed for the maximum air delivery (or any combination of speeds). The pyrolyzer is coming close to completion and I hope to post pictures of it at that time. As with most newly designed things, a lot of thought went into this, but there are still some minor issues to work out.
