Additional Heatshields on Hellfire Burner

[Sjorge3442]

I just upgraded my 5 gallon turkey fryer to a 10 gallon spike kettle and blichmann hellfire. The burner and kettle are both awesome, but I'm looking to fine tune a bit. I noticed on my first brew day that on the 3 sides of the burner without the burner heatahield, I'm getting a ton of heat coming up the side of the pot. Seems like a pretty decent amount of wasted energy.

I'm wondering if I can add 3 more heatshields to the burner to better direct the heat to the kettle instead of the heat sneaking around the side. Since blichmann wants $10 a piece for shields, I figured it diy the shields myself, I just want to make sure there is no concern with using them all the way around.

 

[day_trippr]

iirc the Blichmann shields extend the height of the windscreen up to the kettle bottom.
If you totally surround the kettle bottom with shields the only way out for exhaust heat will be down. Bad juju.

What size kettles are you using? How about just turning down the burner?

Cheers!

 

[Sjorge3442]

Using a 10 gallon spike kettle. It barley covers the burner, which is the reason for all the heat escaping up the sides. I already have the burner set to barely be on, however, it still seems like I'm wasting energy due to the pots size.

Your point of exhaust does make sense, but even with more shields, it would still exhaust up, it'll just be closer to the pot, thus more energy into the pot and not wasted, right?

 

[brick_haus]

I believe that the escaping heated air is what draws fresh air (therefore oxygen) into the burner. Reducing the flow might actually reduce efficiency.

 

[day_trippr]

That is correct. The air-fuel mixture inside the burner is too rich to burn (A Good Thing or it'd be spitting flame out the air damper) so combustion depends on make-up air coming up from below the burner. If you occlude the exhaust path sufficiently it can in turn starve the flame for air and cause the burn to turn rich, lowering output and thus wasting gas.

In my experience you need a good inch of space between the top of a windscreen and the bottom of a kettle. Again, working from memory, the Blichmann shields nearly close that gap to nothing, so surrounding the entire kettle bottom with shields is not likely to turn out well...

Cheers!