Babington water heater V2

I think I have got the burner working quite well now. The main problem is the heat exchanger. The instant hot water heat exchanger that I am using tends to get clogged up so I am looking for somthing more robust. Any ideas? Please let me know.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Babington

[Redkrabby]

Hi MrMrbirrell,

Nice set up you have there! What is the stuff made off that is clogging up your instant hot water heat exchanger? I have made a heat exchanger from a piece of thick wall black pipe inside a bigger pipe so there is approx. 1cm space around the inner pipe and the one outside. I welded a in and outlet on the outside pipe for water connections. I did a small test with my vertical Babington and it looks that the water is very hot in no time at all. Have to do a longer test for sure.

[MrMbirrell]

Hi Redkrabby,

The stuff that is blocking my heat exchanger is tar like - I think it is from when the Babington is first starting up.

I like the idea of an inner pipe. I am thinking of trying it - I will insulate the outer pipe with that turbo bandage insulation tape and maybe thread the entire length of the inner pipe just to give it more surface area to the flame. It would be easy to take appart and clean too.

[Redkrabby]

@tompreaney

That will work just fine, but you still lose a lot of heat in the chimney. Also you can not circulate a lot of water with a 6 mm copper pipe. I think a bigger heat exchanger is needed for doing something useful with the generated heat.

regards,

Marcel.

[Redkrabby]

@MrMbirrell

Yep...it is probably half burned oil. I had the same problem with my horizontal burner. The burner is probably running to rich. Normally in a instant hot water heater the flame is not touching the heat exchanger. The water that you circulate through it is cooling the exchanger also. So not all the oil gets hot enough to change to fumes that will burn easy. Else you would get dry carbon build up. I noticed that when you get the burner really hot the only thing you get is white ash.

[tompreaney]

I am thinking of wrapping coils of copper pipe (6mm - easy to bend) on the outside of a thick shelled tube (75mm internal diameter and 5 to 10mm thick) inside of which will be flame tube of the Babington Burner. By doing it this way it will eliminate any clogging problem.