Bayou Classic Burner - LP to NG

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bbbrew

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I finally piped Natural gas out to the garage this weekend and tried out my new savings (ie. no more trips for LP fill up - yippy).

But I was getting incomplete combustion (ie yellow flame tips).

I drilled the orifice out to 7/64" diameter which seemed to be O.K. and completely removed the restriction disk. There was a nice blue flame at the exit of the burner but 3" above alot of yellow and the keg got covered with black soot.

I broke out the o2 tank and put it right into the intake of the burner and walla, complete blue flame. Any suggestions from you guys on what to try?

Can I drill out radially in the burner housing at the orifice connection to try and get some more static inlet area for air input (and % o2)?

Thanks,
BB
 
I tried this again in the garage tonight. I noticed that the humidity was about 10% this evening. Yesterday in the garage during brew day, I had alot of condensation on the garage windows. Now I'm wondering if the amount of moisture might be creating the air / fuel ratio problems also.

I might have to re-think my exhaust system. Any comments?
 
Okay, so you opened up the orifice, but did you reduce the pressure coming from the regulator? LPG has an operating pressure at the burner of 11" Water Column, and NG has an operating pressure of 3.5" WC. Unless you are familiar with Boyle's Law of pressure, here's the short answer: reduce the pressure coming in to the burner and the flame will clean right up. I should ask, did you just come off the gas pipe into your burner, or did you use the regulator from the LP tank to feed it? Propane flows at a rate of 3X the Natural Gas (11" vs 3.5") therefore the size of A propane orifice is 2/3 smaller than the orifice for NG.
 
Because the brew stand is in the back of a 28' garage and the burners are tucked under the cart, opening or closing the door or windows isn't really going to help the air exchange in that local area. I even put a box fan just under the cart to try and move some air though there but it didn't change the flame. However putting the oxygen line directly into the air intake greatly changed things. And it didn't take much of the flow on brew day to make that flame all blue.

To answer the piping question, I utilized the existing LP lines (boil and HLT), drilled the orifice at the opening of the burner (0.109), teed that back to the 1/2 black pipe with a quick connect fitting. And that's it.
 
Mindenman-would it help if i keep the supply line as large as possible from the black pipe to the orifice - say 3/8 id? This way there wouldn't be a pressure rise in the 3 feet before it gets to the orifice. Right now i had to conger up something just to make it work. Not to many hardware stores open at 9 pm on a Saturday night.

What do you think about opening, by drilling some radial holes, around the burner flange where the orifice is mounted? This would increase the potential air / o2 intake area for mixing?

Thanks, BB
 

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