High Pressure LP regulator?

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The Pol

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OKAY, so I have the typical 55K BTU burner for my brewing rig. I want more power! CAN I take this cast iron burner and simply place a 10PSI regulator on it (currently 5 PSI) and get more power? If so, it is a much more cost effective solution than buying a new burner. I need to be able to heat my water quicker.
 
as long as you can adjust the air/fuel mix for a clean burn, it should work. I have a 10PSI regulator on my 55K BTU burner, but the orifice may be a different diameter.

I have a feeling it will supply more gas that your burner can cleanly mix, which means CO production and sooting. At the most, you might squeeze another 5-10K BTU out of it before the mix is too unbalanced. You might be safer with a larger burner.
 
I'm a gas safety engineer, always fiddling with this type of stuff.

By upping the pressure, it is actually possible to reduce the BTU output of your burner, while increasing input. Not only will you have incomplete combustion, hign CO levels and sooting; there is a chance depending on the design of the burner that the flames can lift to a point of extinguishing and merely discharge propane. Although, that would be an extreme circumstance.
However, it may be possible by playing with different orfice sizes and primary air opening settings/modifications. This chart shows the relationship between orifice size and pressure for a given burner. More power only comes if you have the ability to draw the required air at the required rate. You need 25 times the amount of air as you do propane for complete combustion.http://www.joppaglass.com/burner/highp_chart.html
 
On second look, I have (2) burners... one came with a 10psi regulator, one came with a 5psi regulator... I USED to use the one with the 10psi reg... then I bought another fryer and started using the 5psi reg. without really realizing it. It seemed like the 10psi burner would boil water faster than the 5psi burner, I may do a test with like 2 gal of water starting at the same temp, throttle them both wide open and see how long it takes to boil that volume on each burner.

Basically I am really happy with my setup, it is really efficient and very accurate at holding temps. The only way that I can think of to improve my brew day is to reduce my time to heat water and boil. I will eventually save enough to possibly buy a 200k BTU burner. I love brewing, I hate waiting for water to boil. I will run the test today.
 
I will be very interested to see the results.
I recently purchased the big banjo burner and except for vastly improving the roiling boil, it doesn't seem to heat the water any faster.
 
My 5PSI burner took 5.5 minutes to boil 1 gallon of tap water.... my 10PSI burner took 4 minutes to heat the same volume of water. It is also very easy to see the larger ammount of flame produced by the 10PSI burner. Now I just have to fit the 10PSI burner into the 5PSI stand, as the current one wont fit in my rig....
 
OK then, where is a good place to get a high pressure reg? I ordered one ages ago from Agri-Supply that was supposed to be high pressure, but now that I am *finally* putting my stand together I actually looked at it and it is marked 5PSI. Doh!
 
I did a search yesterday using Google, and they are available all over the place... NOW you have to read the above though where it states that you cannot just plug a higher press. regulator into any burner, it may not make any more heat, but waste more fuel. I was lucky in that I had (2) burners, one that came with a crappy 5PSI regulator and one that came with a 10PSI regulator and a much nicer burner. The 10 PSI works noticeably faster.

How fast can you ppl with 150-250k BTU burners boil a gallon? For me it is all about saving time, without wasting too much gas!
 
It's ben 15 years since I took a college physics class. I wonder at what point adding more heat becomes highly inefficient due to the conductivity of the pot and specific heat of the wort.
Physics geeks... does this become a limiting factor?
 
I'm assuming that as long as the flame is blue and I'm not blowing out any flame I'm not wasting gas. Is this the case?

I moved from a 10 to 15 psi regulator. Lost fine tuning control but man it roars!
 
Hagen said:
It's ben 15 years since I took a college physics class. I wonder at what point adding more heat becomes highly inefficient due to the conductivity of the pot and specific heat of the wort.
Physics geeks... does this become a limiting factor?

A faster time to boil always almost means lower eff. Yes there is a point of diminishing return, which varies with all burners, pots, loads, and ambient conditions. Basically if you have flame rolling out the sides of your kettle, you are loosing a lot of heat. Make sure the flame burns bright blue and the pot is above the area where the inner cone of the flame collapses. Yellow-tipping is ok with propane. You should have minimal soot on the pot when all done. I know this is hard with wind. A wind screen will promote better combustion as well as simply hold heat in the kettle. In our setup I'll bet these things are only ~20% efficient at raising wort temperature anyway, burning clean. That's why I use my hot water heater (95% eff.) to get to 120deg, electric stove (50% eff.) to get to mash or sparge temp (150/170), and then the big boy to boil my 7-9 gal.
 
The Pol said:
How fast can you ppl with 150-250k BTU burners boil a gallon? For me it is all about saving time, without wasting too much gas!

210k btu rated Banjo(w/stock 30psi), upgraded to 60psi reg, 40 gal alum pot, last batch: 27.5 gal from ~155` to boil in < 45 min.
 
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