I need ideas on fixing an old Taylors 68 pressure kerosene heater I have. It needs a kerosene tank and I have two ideas (I bought it w/out a tank). Heresy I know, but I am considering putting a gravity feed kero tank 2-3 feet or more above the unit. Anyone done this? Will it work? My 2nd thought is to take an old, OR a new, pressure tank from an el cheapo pressure stove and adapt this as the heaters tank. The stove runs on your run-of-the-mill primus kero burners. Nothing fancy. It will be placed in my sailboat when fixed. Your thoughts.
As your Taylors is described as a pressure heater, it will need pressure - which will be far greater than any gravity feed you could supply it. It is the pressure from compressed air that forces the fuel through the vapourisor where it is turned to a gas to be forced through the jet - all under pressure. I'm afraid gravity will not supply the 'goods'! That is - unless I have mis-understood the working of a Taylors!! Which I confess I have never used. It would appear there are gravity fed Taylors too from what I can discover on the net. But it looks like a new 1.5 gal. tank with pump is in excess of £400!! ETA: There's a bit of banter over here: http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?216818-Taylors-068-heater-handbook
I follow on the pressure issue, thanks! I can adapt another pressure tank to serve the purpose; I'm pretty handy.
I suspect that the Taylor is similar to the Force 10 that is/was popular over here. Maybe this will help: http://www.go2marine.com/docs/8/3/1/0/83101F-mi.shtml
Well, I dunno, Derek. Theoretically speaking, there must be a height for the tank above the heater which would provide 30psi at the base of the vapouriser. It's probably now way beyond any Physics I have left in me to calculate the necessary height but I'm guessing if a 760mm tall column of mercury provides 1 atmosphere of pressure (~15psi), then a ~1.5m column would provide 2 atmospheres (~30psi). Now simply multiply that by the number of times mercury is denser than fuel and you'll get the height of the fuel column needed... Edit: I've just checked the densities of mercury and kerosene which were as I recalled them from school - 13.5g/cm3 and 0.8g/cm3 respectively. Thus mercury is ~17 times denser than kerosene, so multiplying this by 1.5m suggests a column of kerosene about 25 metres tall would provide the required 30psi at the base of the vapouriser. It'll be a bit more if the fuel is petrol/gasoline. Now, that shouldn't be too difficult to achieve in practice, should it...
The density of both transformer oil ~0.9 g/cm^3 and kerosene ~0.8 g/cm^3 are indelibly printed in my memory. In a past life I used to regularly check them using density bottles. So taking kerosene to be 0.8 g/cm^3 the tank would have to be set at approximately 25 meters... PS. Seems we were doing the same calculation and I crossed with your edit David...
At Sea level, at 1013.25millibars, a column of air one square inch in area will weigh 14.7lbs. - one atmosphere. That column of air will be the weight of the atmosphere for its entire thickness or height. Also remember, that as height increases, pressure from the column of air above decreases. So any air pressure required at Sea level (or in our living environment) above 14.7psi has to be forced pressure by virtue of a pump and pressure vessel. 14.7psi is a measure based upon a comparison to a complete vacuum. http://www.faatest.com/books/FLT/Chapter17/AtmosphericPressure.htm http://www.algebra.com/algebra/homework/logarithm/logarithm.faq.question.470925.html But that's air. Liquids are denser.
Derek - the simplest approximation for change in atmospheric pressure with height is 1hPa for every 10m. This is a gross approximation and only holds "reasonably" good upto 1000m. If you want an accurate figure it becomes a very complex equation as air temperature makes a bit difference and this of course also changes with height.
Does operating a lamp become problematic the higher above sea level you attempt to use the lamp? I would imagine perhaps there wouldn't be much of a noticeable difference the first few thousand feet you went above sea level. I'm guessing there would become a point that the lamp starts to struggle to have enough oxygen to burn correctly.
You're still going to need approximately 2 atmospheres of pressure inside the tank - whatever an 'atmosphere' happens to be at that height. And yes, the lamp will progressively struggle with increasing height due to lack of oxygen. At the same time, you'll progressively care less and less about how the lantern's performing, due to the same want...
30 psi is about 70 feet head (69.2) so your 25 meters is about right. We used height as a pressure measurement all the time in the water industry since most water is gravity fed and differences in ground height dictated pressure. ::Neil::
There are people in the world that live at some extreme heights. What I didn't explain properly, or not at all, in my previous post was, I wondered was there a point (altitude) that it would be useless to try and use say a Tilley - supposing you could live there without coughing up red froth
I should imagine that a standard Tilley would run noticibly less well by 10,000ft... For wick lamps they sell chimney extenders for when they are to be used at altitude. On a pressure lamp the solution is really a smaller jet and/or a larger air intake and you don't generally have that option with a Tilley. The highest I've been without a plane is 7,690ft and even at that height you have "less energy". I'm sure you would get used to it but I'm not sure I'd want to...
Yes, but since kero is less dense than water, you'd need to multiply your 70' by 1.2 i.e.1.0/0.8 - so that would be around 84' of kero. Even nearer to 25 metres...
I'll pop in here and mention that the Force 10 heaters had a small fuel tank that you pumped up; very much like hollow-wire systems (Gloria et. al.) Depending on the expected volume, maybe a used propane tank could be fitted out to support the heater.
From what I can see in the photo, the burner looks suspiciously like a Primus or Optimus regulated burner. Perhaps the heater could fit on a stove fount? I have also seen cylindrical, even upright Primus stove burner founts with the burner fitting on a tube coming from the side of the fount. That should provide ample capacity and run-time.
We tried to keep kero out of the water mains. For some strange reason the customers didn't like it. ::Neil::
