Boil Off Maple Rama

[oneoldsap]

Leader was running their 11.5" MaxFlue Pan against everybody elses 7" raised flue Pans ! They were actually able to keep up , I was impressed ! WH Supply was pretty impressive too , they looked like they'd brought a knife to a gun fight ! It's good to know that the Cream will still rise to the top !

[MorrillMaple]

the cdl evaporator only billowed smoke as they fired and a few mins after when they were in forced draft mode but within 5 minutes after firing they were in gasification mode whis is what is nice about the intenso-fire they can go forced air or gasification. and after firing it wasn't smoking as you couldnt even see any smoke out the stack.

[Dennis H.]

The pics of the tanks on the trailer also shows something interesting. It looks like the smoke stacks on the different evaps were also of different heights!!
Would this not effect how the would run??

Did anyone get any pics on the evaps them selves?

[802maple]

Draft is effected in a negative way with to long a stack as they should be running positive pressure like a oil fired evaporator.

One thing that verified a suspicion of mine was that deeper flues are not that much of an advantage. Maybe in certain applications but not in a extemely hot and efficient evaporator. I have always felt that if the BTU's were there it didn't make that much difference with the deeper flues. One probably can go to shallow of a flue, but if your sap is achieving boiling temperature with a 7 inch, it will not get any hotter and thus evaporate any faster. The churning of the surface is what is releasing the steam and if the surface is violently moving it just can't boil any higher of a temperature.

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

the reason I was told about the diff. stack heights was if you are running forced air there is no need for the 2 or 2.5 x the evaporator length, the forced air makes up for it. 3 of the 5 had short stacks.

[802maple]

As long as you are getting out of your sugarhouse and creating positive pressure, all is good. as long as your positive pressure is coming from your secondary air.

[mapleack]

It was very interesting to watch. I'm pretty sure that CDL had a 9' flue pan on their rig. That would be a good reason for them evaporating the most. I had a pretty interesting discussion with Rejean, the force 5 inventor, who said he was being too conservative with wood loading and could've blown away the competition if he could do it over. All in all an interesting demonstration.

[Mark]

I hope they give it another try next year. I never had so much fun watching water boil in the rain!

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

[QUOTE=Mark;159756]I hope they give it another try next yearQUOTE]

I bet it will be a yearly thing now, All it would take is to have one manufacturer enter and the rest would have to..

[Rejean]

Hi Flat Lander,
Lapierre has indicated that we would LOVE to participate to other boil-offs!

It took me a while during the firing to get used to the wood provided... not bad, just way too dry for the combustion temps encountered in the force 5.

In the last 30 minutes (after adjusting to the dry wood), I calculated that we were evaporating at approx. 170 gals/hr! The combustion temp was steady at +2000 F!

We are ready for the second round...

As far as enhanced flue pans (+60% surface) are concerned, there seems to be no advantage.