I'm a small producer of 100 to 150 taps. I have a small reverse osmosis system to concentrate my sap before boiling it down. I was using a wood stove and small pans but recently I bought a 3 burner natural gas set up that I want to use to boil my concentrated sap down on. On full open flame each burner produces 100,000 BTU for a total of 300,000 BTU.

I am going to fabricate a 5' x 2' stainless steel pan for it. Not sure yet if I am going to go with a flat pan or a raised flue pan. Either way I go though the worry I have is if I go too thin of stainless steel I think I may melt or warp the pan severely from the high intensity heat from the burners. I'm not sure exactly how many BTU's a regular wood fired evaporator can put out but I have a feeling it isn't near as hot as these gas burners will go. Especially since this pan will be sitting directly on the flame from the burners.

Does anybody know if there is a math formula to figure out what gauge of steel I should use for how hot the flame is. I know the norm is guys are making the pans out of 20 and 22 gauge 304 stainless steel but I am thinking I should go with 16 gauge or so to make sure I don't melt or warp the steel.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you

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