So at last the weather cooperated and allowed me to test my brick furnace out. It was neither cold nor ferociously windy at last!
This furnace can be easily modified to burn coal, or take an insert of Kaowool and burn propane. I can even put a cast iron sheet over it, pile some brick on top, then put a cover on it... and voila! A pizza oven! ;D
The I-beam laying in the top makes a perfect spot to set the cast iron skillet on for incinerating plastic of e-scrap. I used a crappy skillet I dug up that was all cracked first. And then tossed it in after I was done since it was literally falling apart by that point. The wood fire, with only the natural drafting, hit temps so hot it MELTED a corner of the broken skillet! To melt cast iron, it was easily well over 2000F!! With my blower attached, I suspect it could hit 2500F or higher. But I don't really want to do that with a wood fire, since embers will end up shooting out the top from the intense airflow. As it is, it's perfect for all the incinerating and low-temp melts I want to do.
Then the Kaowool insert will handle smelting and refining, as well as copper melting. I made a little sand-cast aluminum bar to test it out in a melt pipe (an iron pipe plugged with furnace cement on one end. I incinerated some LEDs in the skillet, since the clear plastic burns off nicely with little smoke. Worked great, as you'll see in the pics. I also did some tiny chips today, and it ashed them completely! Not a trace of carbon remaining! So everything looks good for the first stage of processing my roughly 30-40 lbs of various chips I've saved up.
I expect the thick PROMs will give me trouble, though, given how thick they are and my early small-scale incineration test over a campfire, demonstrating they form an insulating layer of ash that can be tricky to knock off while they're roasting. I'll probably have to let the fire die down, take the pan off, do a partial crush, and then put the pan back up and stoke the fire as many times as needed to totally ash them.
This furnace can be easily modified to burn coal, or take an insert of Kaowool and burn propane. I can even put a cast iron sheet over it, pile some brick on top, then put a cover on it... and voila! A pizza oven! ;D
The I-beam laying in the top makes a perfect spot to set the cast iron skillet on for incinerating plastic of e-scrap. I used a crappy skillet I dug up that was all cracked first. And then tossed it in after I was done since it was literally falling apart by that point. The wood fire, with only the natural drafting, hit temps so hot it MELTED a corner of the broken skillet! To melt cast iron, it was easily well over 2000F!! With my blower attached, I suspect it could hit 2500F or higher. But I don't really want to do that with a wood fire, since embers will end up shooting out the top from the intense airflow. As it is, it's perfect for all the incinerating and low-temp melts I want to do.
Then the Kaowool insert will handle smelting and refining, as well as copper melting. I made a little sand-cast aluminum bar to test it out in a melt pipe (an iron pipe plugged with furnace cement on one end. I incinerated some LEDs in the skillet, since the clear plastic burns off nicely with little smoke. Worked great, as you'll see in the pics. I also did some tiny chips today, and it ashed them completely! Not a trace of carbon remaining! So everything looks good for the first stage of processing my roughly 30-40 lbs of various chips I've saved up.
I expect the thick PROMs will give me trouble, though, given how thick they are and my early small-scale incineration test over a campfire, demonstrating they form an insulating layer of ash that can be tricky to knock off while they're roasting. I'll probably have to let the fire die down, take the pan off, do a partial crush, and then put the pan back up and stoke the fire as many times as needed to totally ash them.
