In message ,
"Dave Liquorice" wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2003 09:43:52 +0000, Tony wrote:

My heating oil supplier here in Cumbria is promoting something they
call "Cleanburn" heating oil. It's claimed to be upto 13% more
efficient

And how much more expensive is it than bog standard 28sec?


Anyone been to Magna in Rotherham? I worked there until a round of job
cuts about a year ago (actually, looking at the date, exactly a year ago
today) as a technician.

Magna has (I assume it's still open!) an exhibit called the "fire
tornado". I believe there's one in Bristol and one in Belfast, but ours
was the most reliable of the three - they're very sensitive to cross
drafts. A pool of kerosene is lit, and a tornado of flame created by
four tangential fans is drawn up into the ceiling by a huge exhaust fan.
As you can imagine, this creates absolutely tons of fine soot and, Magna
being what it is, this gets into all the sensitive computer and video
equipment and completely wrecks it.

We spent ages experimenting with various grades of kerosene / paraffin
and found very little difference between them in terms of deposits of
soot. I couldn't tell you about energy released - the thing is just
bloomin' hot. In the end we admitted defeat and spent thousands piping
clean filtered air directly to the projectors which we sat in enclosed
boxes. Given that there were nine video projectors in that area with a
combined original cost of well over 100k this was money well spent, and
we went back to using the cheapest fuel :-)

Hwyl!

M.

--
Martin Angove: http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/
Don't fight technology, live with it: http://www.livtech.co.uk/
.... A trampoline is for cunning stunts, a truncheon for apprehending criminals