Which propane burner is more efficient?

B

barnett25

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Sep 18, 2008
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I am looking into building a propane forge. I am trying to decide between buying an atmospheric forge, or building a forge with a blown burner.
I have always seen people say that blown forges use less propane than atmospheric because blown forges run at about 1-4psi, while atmospheric run at 10+psi.

However I don't think that PSI tells the whole story. Atmospheric burners use a very small gas outlet orifice, while blown burners use a very large orifice.
So unless my understanding is incorrect, the PSI that the burners operate may not correspond at all with how much gas they actually burn in a given amount of time.

Has anyone actually compared the fuel usage between these two different types of burners to know if there really is a large difference in efficiency?
 
You are correct, psi doesn't tell the whole story.
I have both, the blown forge uses about 1.5 gallons of LP an hour and the venturi uses about .5 gallons of LP an hour. The blown forge has on orifice at all, but the venturi has one and its very small.
Flow rate has to do both with orifice size and PSI.
Flow rate determines how much gas you will use per hour.
Thanks,
Del
 
That's really interesting. That is the exact opposite of what you usually find people saying about the efficiency of these two burners.

If that is the case then my decision is even more difficult.
Do I go with a venturi design that will not allow for automatic temp control later on, and is harder to tune (from what I've heard)?
Or do I go with the blown design that can be automated, is easy to tune, but may use 3 times the fuel?
 
Couple of notes to make your decision harder :)

- Forges wear out.

- Many bladesmiths (and even more blacksmiths) acquire multiple forges.
 
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