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Posted by BT Bill on April 21, 2008 at 09:41:19:
In Reply to: WWII Bureau Express boiler – what is this? posted by Tom on April 19, 2008 at 04:05:57:
: Can anyone help?
: I need to caption some pictures of a WWII Bureau Express boiler from the battleship USS Texas.
: I don't know much about boilrs, but have found out enough to caption to main picture. However I also have to caption a detail of the burner nozzle.
: Can anyone tell me what this red nozzle (burner, far right pic) is for? How was it used?
: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25707986@N04/2424223371/
Blast from the past! That is an early model same design of the Babcock and Wilcox, A type express 3 drum boilers on my old ship. I was on a Prairie class Tender built in the early '40's.
The oil gun or burner (we also called them burner barrels)....the red oil gun, if you loosen the T handle, swing it down, the red oil gun will slide out. You took them out to change the nozzles and for cleaning, then re-inserted a clean oil gun and lit it back off. The sprayer plates at the end of the oil gun also came in different sizes.
Changing them was a daily task, usually done on the midnight shift. Oil is supplied by the black line on the left. You closed the brass handle to the right (oil supply valve) to shut off that burner, removed the oil gun, replace it with a clean gun. Open the oil valve and light it back off and go to the next burner, till you have changed out all of them.
Before steam atomization came into use, the oil pump supplying the burners would travel through the piping, up to and inside the oil burner where it was sprayed in a fine mist (atomized) and burned.
Old Navy BT here, burnerman was a fun job...thanks for the pictures..please post more if you can and glad to help.