Coal that won't burn!

[blackrose]

I've been offered a deal on a large amount of coal which was being used to heat the boiler of a steam engine. The guy selling it says it was burning too hot for his use so he wants to get rid of it.

 

He gave me a bag to try out in my solid fuel stove but I have difficulty lighting it.

 

My usual method of lighting the fire is to put down a layer of coal, burn some wood kindling on top and as soon as the kindling has burned down I put some more coal on top. With most coal the embers of the kindling lights the coal, but with this stuff when I do that it just doesn't burn and the only time I have managed to get it alight is when I've added it to a raging wood fire. Then it burned well and as the guy said, it was very hot. The problem is that I don't always have enough lumps of wood of the right size to get a good wood fire going.

 

This stuff is irregular in shape (not in nuggets), and it's very hard and looks like some sort of anthracite. It says smokeless on the bags and it does seem to be smokeless. Does anyone have experience with similar fuels and know the best way to light it?

Edited September 20, 2010 by blackrose

[Sir Nibble]

I've been offered a deal on a large amount of coal which was being used to heat the boiler of a steam engine. The guy selling it says it was burning too hot for his use so he wants to get rid of it.

 

He gave me a bag to try out in my solid fuel stove but I have difficulty lighting it.

 

My usual method of lighting the fire is to put down a layer of coal, burn some wood kindling on top and as soon as the kindling has burned down I put some more coal on top. With most coal the embers of the kindling light the coal, but with this stuff when I do that it just doesn't burn and the only time I have managed to get it alight is when I've added it to a raging wood fire. Then it burned well and as the guy said, it was very hot. The problem is that I don't always have enough lumps of wood of the right size to get a good wood fire going.

 

This stuff is irregular in shape (not in nuggets), and it's very hard and looks like some sort of anthracite. It says smokeless on the bags and it does seem to be smokeless. Does anyone have experience with similar fuels and know the best way to light it.

Don't use it. If you give it enough air to burn properly you risk burning through your fire bars and your boat will be unbearably hot. If you don't give it enough air to burn properly it will foul the flue with unburned crud. Been there, done that.

[blackrose]

Don't use it. If you give it enough air to burn properly you risk burning through your fire bars and your boat will be unbearably hot. If you don't give it enough air to burn properly it will foul the flue with unburned crud. Been there, done that.

 

I don't think it's too hot to be unusable, but I was coming to the conclusion not to buy it, mainly because I can see myself getting quite frustrated trying to light it easily on a cold night, so I just wondered if there was some trick to lighting this stuff?

Edited September 20, 2010 by blackrose

[bottle]

I think your first two sentences sum it up, steam boiler, too hot.

 

I am with Sir nibble on this.

 

ps. I wonder if Daniel would be interested.

[blackrose]

I think your first two sentences sum it up, steam boiler, too hot.

 

I am with Sir nibble on this.

 

ps. I wonder if Daniel would be interested.

 

How do they light steam boilers - is it the same as a stove?

[bottle]

Usaully an oily rag, kindling then small amounts of coal and lots of air.

 

It may light quicker and burn easier if it was in smaller lumps.

Edited September 20, 2010 by bottle

[Proper Job]

I had some steam coal given to me many years ago.

 

Same thing - couldn't get it to burn. Even breaking it up in to small lumps and mixing it with 'modern' smokeless fuel wouldn't work. The steam coal would just work its way to the bottom of the grate unburnt.

 

I think Bones had a similar game last winter with a few lumps she had been given.

[Keeping Up]

I bought some anthracite a few years ago and couldn't get it to light. When I asked the person I'd bought it from, he replied that the only way to light it was to use a coal fire. He was right; if you lit a coal fire you could then keep adding anthracite to it. Similarly I found that it burned too hot for my needs, so when it was finished I didn't buy any more

[blackrose]

Thanks all. I'll try breking a few lumps up to see if it catches any easier and perhaps mix it with some other coal.

[Sir Nibble]

Seriously, this stuff is the rocket fuel of coals. If you do not burn it really hot then large quantities of it go up the flue unburned and sticks to the inside choking the flue. I have no experience of it happening (phew) but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was a risk of a chimney fire waiting to happen.

[blackrose]

Seriously, this stuff is the rocket fuel of coals. If you do not burn it really hot then large quantities of it go up the flue unburned and sticks to the inside choking the flue. I have no experience of it happening (phew) but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was a risk of a chimney fire waiting to happen.

 

 

When I said it burned hot it's no hotter than something like Excel which I use on a regular basis.

[Sir Nibble]

When I said it burned hot it's no hotter than something like Excel which I use on a regular basis.

I had some welsh steam coal, it burned hot, if you gave it it's head and opened the air vent it was like a forge. Starve it of air and it throws up unburned clag. This also coincides with my experience of steam engines. Steam coal is not a premium product because it's shiny but for it's very high calorific value. I guess there's steam coal and "steam coal".

 

Perhaps it's being sold because it's not proper steam coal so the engine owner can't use it after all. A failed cost saving measure?

[n.b.Goldie]

I too have tried this stuff, courtesy of Leighton Buzzard Narrow Guage Railway, and can confirm that the chimney flue gets a good deal of crud in it if the fire is not 'given its head'. Strange stuff inside the flue, it looked for all the world as if a spider had tried to weave a web inside it. Gave it a good sweep and not bothered with 'steam coal' since.

 

Ditchdabbler

[NB Alnwick]

I had some welsh steam coal, it burned hot, if you gave it it's head and opened the air vent it was like a forge. Starve it of air and it throws up unburned clag. This also coincides with my experience of steam engines. Steam coal is not a premium product because it's shiny but for it's very high calorific value. I guess there's steam coal and "steam coal".

 

Perhaps it's being sold because it's not proper steam coal so the engine owner can't use it after all. A failed cost saving measure?

 

I think you are spot on! The days of decent steam coal from British Pits have all but gone and what is still available is not necessarily suitable for all applications. Even 20 years ago when good quality steam coal was available from pits like Calverton in Nottinghamshire and the last Scottish deep mine at the Longannet & Castlebridge complex we were getting unusually high sulphur content which made the exhaust extremely unhealthy - especially when lighting up. As a result we moved to imported products from China, Russia, Poland and South America. The imported products were analysed chemically before shipping to ascertain calorific value, ash content and the presence of harmful content such as sulphur and chlorine. Some of it was very good but most was, at best, variable. Compared with most domestic coal products, steam coal generally requires considerably more heat and air in order to burn cleanly. Even more so if the product is of poor quality. Some varieties of steam coal can include an unusually high level of volatile bituminous content and if this is not burned at a very high temperature with plenty of air, the exhaust will leave substantial tar and soot deposits. Modern power stations have their own laboratories and carry out thorough analysis of on samples from each delivery of fuel in order to determine the ideal settings for extracting maximum heat with minimum pollution - so they have something of an advantage over the rest of us!

 

None of this means that the fuel cannot be used satisfactorily - try blending it with another easier burning product such as coke, processed ovoids or you could try Anthracite if what you have is a very bituminous coal or even ordinary bituminous house coal if what you have appears to be very hard, clean and shiny.

[blackrose]

I had some welsh steam coal, it burned hot, if you gave it it's head and opened the air vent it was like a forge. Starve it of air and it throws up unburned clag. This also coincides with my experience of steam engines. Steam coal is not a premium product because it's shiny but for it's very high calorific value. I guess there's steam coal and "steam coal".

 

Perhaps it's being sold because it's not proper steam coal so the engine owner can't use it after all. A failed cost saving measure?

 

He said he was selling it because it burned too fiercely - but it doesn't seem that bad to me, I just find it harder to light than nuts.

 

I've bought a few bags of Stoveglow and some Barge nuts and I'll use a small amount to get the fire going and then put this steam coal on top.

 

The one thing I have noticed about it is that it tends to burn down and goes out before it's fully burned away, meaning you're left with lots of unburned lumps. I just leave them in to start the next fire, but perhaps I'm not giving it enough air.

[FORTUNATA]

Sometimes fire lighting isn't as easy as it looks. I've had instances where my fire has just gone out due to lack of air. If the wood falls in such a way as air is cut off, it just goes out. Or sometimes the wood just won't stay alight till the stove gets hot enough.

Lately I've been using just wood as an experiment because it's (1) free and (2) cleaner than coal.

Some types of coal I find don't burn but just glow. Smokeless I find performs really badly and I wind up reusing much of it.

To light a fire, I usually place a square bit on the grille, put a firelighter on top, light the firelighter and gradually place thinner strips of wood on top to draw up the flame. It usually takes about 20 minutes or so till the fire starts to get hot.

 

I've been offered a deal on a large amount of coal which was being used to heat the boiler of a steam engine. The guy selling it says it was burning too hot for his use so he wants to get rid of it.

 

He gave me a bag to try out in my solid fuel stove but I have difficulty lighting it.

 

My usual method of lighting the fire is to put down a layer of coal, burn some wood kindling on top and as soon as the kindling has burned down I put some more coal on top. With most coal the embers of the kindling lights the coal, but with this stuff when I do that it just doesn't burn and the only time I have managed to get it alight is when I've added it to a raging wood fire. Then it burned well and as the guy said, it was very hot. The problem is that I don't always have enough lumps of wood of the right size to get a good wood fire going.

 

This stuff is irregular in shape (not in nuggets), and it's very hard and looks like some sort of anthracite. It says smokeless on the bags and it does seem to be smokeless. Does anyone have experience with similar fuels and know the best way to light it?

[blackrose]

Sometimes fire lighting isn't as easy as it looks. I've had instances where my fire has just gone out due to lack of air. If the wood falls in such a way as air is cut off, it just goes out. Or sometimes the wood just won't stay alight till the stove gets hot enough.

Lately I've been using just wood as an experiment because it's (1) free and (2) cleaner than coal.

Some types of coal I find don't burn but just glow. Smokeless I find performs really badly and I wind up reusing much of it.

To light a fire, I usually place a square bit on the grille, put a firelighter on top, light the firelighter and gradually place thinner strips of wood on top to draw up the flame. It usually takes about 20 minutes or so till the fire starts to get hot.

 

This will be my 9th winter on boats so I've had plenty of experience lighting fires with wood & coal. However, this anthracite seems particularly difficult to light. I haven't used much of this type of stuff before so it probably just takes getting used to.

[DHutch]

We can and have burnt anthracite, which this sounds like it is, presumably hard and glassy in appearance? However when we do we burn it 60/40 with a good columbian bituminous house coal (60% house coal) and have to be very careful to avoid generating too much clinker. This might be the best thing, for the man with the coal, to do with it! Light it with mainly the house coal.

However, it is a very hard clean heat, and doesnt have enough volatiles to make good steam in our boiler.

We are now burning 'best(only) welsh steam coal' from the mine at Foss Y Fan bought mail order from this man www.the-coalman.co.uk/

This can be lit directly using the normal paper and sticks method, but it does need to get hot, so so not skim on the wood.



Daniel

[Alan Saunders]

For many years (~20?) we heated our cottage and cooked on a multifuel central heating boiler. With a thirty foot, 9" diameter insulated flue (Isokearns inside a brick chimney connected by 3ft of double-wall, insulated stainless steel flue) this worked well with most fuels from unseasoned ash to anthracite. Even anthracite was easy to light but it would go out if burnt with minimum air and produced coke(not slag),(and go out) if burnt fast (e.g. for cooking). As well as the manual controls found on the Squirrel etc. (primary and secondary air) the Thermorossi Bosky also had a mechanical thermostat on the primary air control, a thermostat that activated the circulator to prevent local boiling (which erodes the boiler) and a thermostat to inhibit circulation when the boiler temperature was low (to avoid condensation). The flue damper would not be relevant to most boats.

 

With a six foot uninsulated flue above my Sqirrel I find anthracite difficult to light. For ordinary 'house coal' I light half a fire-lighter and carefully build a cairn of coal over it. Anthracite requires a matrix of a dozen ~6x1x1" wood sticks with the coals carefully placed on top. To obtain sufficient draught it is necessary to heat the chimney. If not using much dry wood a whole firelighter placed behind the cairn will create additional draught and heat the chimney - try it.

 

Last time I looked Anthracite had the best calorific value, lowest ash and is 'smokeless'. Back in the post-war rationing period (195?) my Uncle, a 'BR Shunter', obtained 'Steam Coal' for the 'Parkray' in their Prefab'. It came in 9" lumps and, after broken into smaller pieces, confirmed its ability to burn 'very hot'.

 

Alan

[sociable_hermit]

Usaully an oily rag, kindling then small amounts of coal and lots of air.

 

It may light quicker and burn easier if it was in smaller lumps.

Hmmm.. definitely NOT "lots of air" where I work. Steam loco boilers are particularly vulnerable to damage caused by cold spots where too much air is being dragged up through the grate in the early stages of lighting up, so the dampers are always kept closed until everything is nice and hot. However once the boiler has steam the blower will be turned on gently, and this creates an artificial draw on the fire. The main aim is to stop smoke and flames licking back out into the cab when you open the firehole doors, but it does aid steam-raising too.

 

Different railways have different techniques. We clean the grate, line the firebox with coal, throw in paraffin-soaked rags, light them with a long taper (6' length of wood with a burning rag on the end), pile pallet wood over the top, then another layer of coal. Fill in any holes after about an hour. Turn on the blower when the pressure gauge starts to move. Go underneath and empty the ashpan once the fire is well alight and even, with no holes (normally at about the 2 hour mark). Off shed about 3 hours after lighting up. I wouldn't open the dampers until then. Once the back damper is open it stays open, to prevent clinker from forming during the day.

 

This doesn't really help with lighting a boat stove, though. It's a whole different ball game. For example, coal is supposed to be broken up with a coal pick until it's roughly the size of a man's fist. In practice on our bigger engines if a 'tombstone' will fit through the door it's going in!

 

One thing I'm confused about is that the coal you've been given is "smokeless". Steam coal is 'hard' or 'soft' but it's never smokeless to the best of my knowledge. Smokeless fuels are generally blended with other stuff which either doesn't burn so well with a forced draught or else leaves lots of debris behind (ash / clinker). Was it from a road loco or a model engineering club?

[FORTUNATA]

I've come to see that wood is free, wood is plentiful and wood is clean. The only snag is you have to keep putting it in. Last night I was enjoying a good episode of Columbo but would have to pop out of bed every few minutes to stick a bit more wood in.

Lately I've had problems with coal that doesn't kindle. The large, chunky stuff is very dirty but burns well. The clean, small stuff I find to be crap.

[GSer]

I've given up with the chunky coal and (mostly) i'll only burn well seasoned logs or small processed coal 'briquettes'. Dead fall logs off the forest floor burn very dirtily giving a deposit of flaky ash in the chimney, raw chunky coal is awful and never to be repeated.

 

Small briquettes burn well and are easily lit using basic fire starting practices using a clean grate, dry kindling and just a few 'nuggets' 5 or 6 to start with adding more once it's got going. It works for me anyway

[Chrissyboy]

Hmmm.. definitely NOT "lots of air" where I work. Steam loco boilers are particularly vulnerable to damage caused by cold spots where too much air is being dragged up through the grate in the early stages of lighting up, so the dampers are always kept closed until everything is nice and hot. However once the boiler has steam the blower will be turned on gently, and this creates an artificial draw on the fire. The main aim is to stop smoke and flames licking back out into the cab when you open the firehole doors, but it does aid steam-raising too.

 

Different railways have different techniques. We clean the grate, line the firebox with coal, throw in paraffin-soaked rags, light them with a long taper (6' length of wood with a burning rag on the end), pile pallet wood over the top, then another layer of coal. Fill in any holes after about an hour. Turn on the blower when the pressure gauge starts to move. Go underneath and empty the ashpan once the fire is well alight and even, with no holes (normally at about the 2 hour mark). Off shed about 3 hours after lighting up. I wouldn't open the dampers until then. Once the back damper is open it stays open, to prevent clinker from forming during the day.

 

This doesn't really help with lighting a boat stove, though. It's a whole different ball game. For example, coal is supposed to be broken up with a coal pick until it's roughly the size of a man's fist. In practice on our bigger engines if a 'tombstone' will fit through the door it's going in!

 

One thing I'm confused about is that the coal you've been given is "smokeless". Steam coal is 'hard' or 'soft' but it's never smokeless to the best of my knowledge. Smokeless fuels are generally blended with other stuff which either doesn't burn so well with a forced draught or else leaves lots of debris behind (ash / clinker). Was it from a road loco or a model engineering club?

 

I recently bought some briquettes made from compressed sawdust. They burn very hot, are easy to light and leave little ash.

 

Chris

[larkshall]

I've had fun with this stuff in a workshop stove, open fire,and a pot bellied stove.

 

Firstly I blend it, ie light the fires with kindling and say coalite, then when well alight swap to this boiler coal. It works as OP found out.

 

The heat is terrific and on an open fire it did manage to partially melt grate bars after being alight for 24 hrs. Probably because there is less draught control than on a pot belly or other enclosed stove.

 

I have also lit a fire with charcoal briquettes then added the boiler coal again ok (why charcoal, busted bag came my way).

 

I now blend it 50/50 with normal smokeless in a big coal bucket and use the mix as normal. (Got 3 tonnes to get rid of).

 

It does not work in a forge, stick to coke !!!!!.

[Keeping Up]

I recently bought some briquettes made from compressed sawdust. They burn very hot, are easy to light and leave little ash.

 

Chris

 

Watch out for those, once they are burning they lose their structural integrity. I opened the door to look at the fire once, an a heap of burning sawdust tumbled out.