[Stoves] Lots of smoke after a few minutes of clean burning

ajheggie at gmail.com ajheggie at gmail.com
Sun May 8 03:18:31 CDT 2016


[Default] On Sat, 7 May 2016 20:04:21 -0400,Julien Winter
<winter.julien at gmail.com> wrote:

>Dear Mango;
>
>One cause of a clean burn, followed by smoke, is if the flaming pyrolysis
>reaches the grate before it has passed through all the fuel.  When this
>happens, you end up with a bottom-lit updraft gasifier, with a charcoal
>fire at the bottom.  The syngas exiting the fuel bed is rich in tars,
>relatively low in reactive H2 and CO, so is very hard to ignite, even with
>a pilot flame.


Julien I have found when this happens the smoke has a bluish tinge and
as you say becomes almost impossible to re light. This is presumably
because the  pyrolysis offgas has become diluted by the combustion
products of water and CO2.

If the smoke given of is white with a yellow tinge  it can be a simple
flameout because the flame holding has been lost. I used to see this
when I had too long a flame. 

However Mango describes the flame that gradually diminishes before it
is lost.

So what colour is the smoke Mango?

Andrew




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