Oil drum Evaporator

[Lugnut]

Last spring I joined SAPS (students attempting to produce syrup) club. The club was run by my SS teacher Mr.Bruinix. I found I loved maple products and started tapping at my house. That year my dad and I used a turkey fryer and spent hours boiling our syrup, we decided we needed to go bigger if we were going to keep sugaring. So this year we decided to build an evaporator from an old oil drum we had laying around. We have started boiling with it this year and now have around a 12 to 13 gph boiling rate. I attached some pictures of it.

Kyle

www.photobucket.com/lilnut124

[Brian Ryther]

Lugnut,
That is one of the best home made evaps I have seen. I bet with a little fine tuning you could push 30 - 40 gph. My only sugestion, from experence, would be to put insulation between your base stack and the back of the pan. You will find that the back of the pan will burn sap and darken your syrup. Nice work!

[Pete S]

Hey, wonderful job!

Just need to ask as I have an oil barrel "waiting" in my back yard, and hope to get it together for nex year;

1.) Why did you "cut away" the rear lower portion of the tank? Most I've been just leave it.

2.)By cutting this out,..........did you use the "back end" of the barrel to re-weld the back of the fire box shut? Also did you salvage the cut off sides to close the thing off?

3.) Couldn't tell,...........how did you come up the flue design,.......as I like that too.

4.) Is the combustion air for the fire box ONLY come from your blower?

5.) Does the combustion air enter "under" the fire?

Thanks!

Pete

[Lugnut]

Pete,

we cut away the lower portion of the tank to lighten it for moving

yes we reused the back for the rear of the fire box and the rear of the arch.

no we did not use the sides

the flue was made out of scrap metal laying around. it is just 4 sides going up to a 8in chrome piece of pipe off a kenworth exaust that we use to hold the stack .

yes the cumbustion air only comes from the blower.

yes, the blower pibe with multipule holes drilled in it comes in under the grate and travels the full length of the fire box to disperse the air evanly around under the fire.

Kyle

[davey]

I agree, that is a really nice evaporator. Great job.

[captaincpfd]

you did a excellent job building your evaporator!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good luck and have a great year!!!!!!!!!!

[Clan Delaney]

I've said it before... I need to learn how to weld.

Or I could get the kids to learn. That would be easier.

Very nice job there. More proof that you don't need stainless steel to make maple syrup. But it is shiny.

[Lugnut]

The pan is made from an old stainless playground slide. I made the pan as big as i could (2'x4')with the metal we had then we built the arch to fit. I need to brick this thing up the sides get HOT!
Thanks
Greg

[Pete S]

...........holy cow,..........you wait till you brick'er up! We have just a small metal box with a commercial baking pan on it, and a Nesco tub for preheat.

I had the same issue,............and this needed to be near zero budget, so I found some "common" brick.

The difference is night and day! Not only can you stand along side of the evaporator,............but our heat to the pan/boil rate just jumped!

Worth the effort and money!

get'er bricked!

[buxtonboiler]

Awesome! I am thinking about an oil tank evaporator and yours is great. Looks like some awesome craftsmanship and design.

[SevenCreeksSap]

I know this is an old thread but am wondering if Lugnut is still active on this site. I've looked at most of the threads for my oil tank build and like this one. Little more work welding but now I've got all year. Wondering if this setup is still in use and how it works. What are the pan measurements? I think I found my (borrowed) design.

[logboy]

I'm looking at building one too. His build photos have given me a lot of new ideas.

[Lugnut]

We used this through most of 2011 but we sold the setup to build a new one. Gave away 1200gal of sap in late sping after selling rig. The new evaporator is a 2x6 with a raised flue rear pan and will have forced air under and over the fire