Gasification Arches

[USinCA]

Hi All,

Let me introduce myself. I moved to In-laws farm in Ontario in 2017, from Wyoming. In 2018 I tapped 13 trees, boiled on a steam table tray over a block fire pit, and got hooked. 32 taps in 2019, 63L bottled. 53 taps(buckets) this year, ~55L bottled (we started late).
I grew up a farmer, but I'm a mechanical engineer by trade in the conveyor/ bulk material handling industry. I enjoyed thermodynamics in college, but rarely use any of the acquired knowledge now. Like many of you, i am always tinkering with my setup, and trying to make it more efficient (on a budget of course). I had 4 steam table pans over a homemade block arch with siphons and a float box for this year, we could make about 2 gallons of syrup in a 10-11 hour boil.

We could do around 300 taps in hard maple and 1000+ silver in the woods around our house, and we would like to keep expanding over the next few years, so we are now looking at 2x6 evaporators.

One issue i have noticed on my little rig, is that the boil slows down considerably as soot builds up on the pans. I've added a fan under the grate and let some air bypass the grate to keep the burn as clean as possible, but soot is always an issue.
For those with gasification arches, (force 5, intens-o-fire etc) how much soot buildup do you see on your pans? Would you have a comparison between the amount of soot buildup on a gasifier vs any other type of arch?

I realize the evaporators named above are much larger than a 2x6, but I would like to build my own, and I have a few ideas (no guarantee that they're good ideas, just ideas :rolleyes:)

[ennismaple]

We get a small amount of soot buildup under each pan every boil. The front pan is drained and swapped out with it's identical twin every day. When we clean off the sugar sand we also pressure wash off the soot. The flues get brushed out when the front pan is off. There's more soot buildup on the flues than the front pan. A long boil for us is now 6 hours so we don't see a noticeable difference in boiling rate.

What wood are you burning? We're burning almost exclusively hardwood with the odd bit of basswood thrown in. It throws no sparks and almost no smoke, other than when you initially re-fill the fire box.

[mol1jb]

Welcome,

2 years ago I undertook what you are about to, building a 2x6 gasification arch. Here is the thread on my build, it may help in yours:
http://mapletrader.com/community/showthread.php?30942-2x6-Raised-flue-Arch-build

The results from that build? It runs very well, usually around 40gph and up depending on how hard we push it. Absolutely no smoke visible at the stack, even after a reload. How much soot do I get on the pans? There is some. Hard to quantify it but I never seem to notice any major decline in boil rate.

Here is the only pic I have of the AOF manifold outside of the arch:
21402

Let me know if you have questions about my build or anything else.

[Robert K]

I built my own evaporator 7 years ago and had used a research project on maple evaporator efficiency along with many tips from others of this site (nod to 802 maple) . I believe the research project was called something like the thunderbolt project. Harry Acheson or something close to that was 1 of the authors. Do I get soot, yes, but minimal. My boil rate is excellent when running AUF and AOF with a ratio of 1/3 under 2/3 over. It only rolls coal when using wet or poor wood and usually only just after firing, otherwise clean out the stack. My AOF looks similar except I didn’t preheat, which is on my list to change.
Hope that helps

[Wolfcreek Maple]

We run a 2x6 air tight with auf and aof soot build up is not an issue , I believe regular firings and seasoned wood are also keys to helping with soot build up.Before we modified our arch we just used auf and it wasn't air tight soot wasn't a problem then either because of seasoned wood and timed firings IMO. As Robert K says ours also only "rolls coal" just after firing but cleans up quickly.