Enhancing Natural Gas Burning in Tandoor

Maybe step up in technology by a few thousand years and buy a good used natural gas burning cooking stove?

Sir you can't get equivalent taste ..believe me

cooking in dirt just has flavor adders a BBQ can't match

I can confirm this! Real Tandoors produce a really nice charred character similar to how the 900 deg ovens used to cook trendy pizzas do. A BBQ would hit what...600 deg max? It really is't the same.

Yea I know. High mercury content bituminous coal and dirt just gives food that old world flavor that can't be matched by modern appliance technology..

I prefer my heavy metals as a rock and roll band, I already have enough lead in my ass .... thank you

You can't tell what you haven't done...

We call them Barbecue grills here and they are on wheels mostly....

Venturi tube mixes the air and gas and distributes it in the burner....

Wrong.

That's a Yuppie BBQuer.

Real men cook with wood.

To enhance combustion increase gas and oxygen flow and add some sort of control system to better regulate the temperature.

However, a major element to the flavour (be it cooking in a tandoor or a common BBQ grill) will be the fuel used. Cooking with gas will produce a different flavour than cooking with coal, and different woods will produce different (be it smoky) flavours. Same with different gasses and gas mixtures.

There's cooking fast, cooking convenient and there's cooking with an eye for flavour.

increasing combustion

Cooking with gasoline results in food that's cooked fast and lasts longer, longer that is because no one will eat it.

Oxygen is too dangerous to use in such ovens without a huge amount of technical control.

Even having such cylinders near to such a fire can be a problem.....a leak could spell disaster.

Many do not give Oxygen the respect it needs....

It has a tendency under slightly wrong conditions to explode.

Its far safer mixed with nitrogen and CO2 and a few other gases, as in "AIR"!!!

Oxygen, alone, is my personal take on probably the single most dangerous gas around and has over many years killed many people....even using the wrong lubricant alone on the valves has killed many over the years....

Read here:-oxygen-gas-risks

Some of us spend our lives trying to avoid "Oxidizers", Oxygen is the worst of the lot, though we do of course need relatively small amounts to live.....

There are many websites explaining this "conundrum"....

Be careful, be safe. Use air!

I umm'd and ahh'd before posting the word "oxygen", I was originally going to say natural air or atmosphere.

I sure didn't intend to imply that pure oxygen should be added, only atmospheric air flow should be increased to ensure the gas air mixture was balanced correctly for combustion when increasing the gas flow.

Like adding gasoline or a strong oxidiser, it is dangerous and hence not recommended unless you want your BBQ to potentially turn into a bomb or a cannon.

I understand, but you have to be more careful here, Oxygen for welding is available everywhere.....what if someone had tried it as you wrote?

I can buy such cylinders without any signature, just using cash.....an Oxygen Cylinder tied to a gas cylinder with a small piece of Dynamite or home made explosives between them or on the valves, even black powder and you have a huge bomb!!!

Enough to bring a large building down....with two full size, fully filled gas cylinders.

The terrorists haven't found that out yet!!!

So well done, Andy - now they all know! And (sorry for saying this, will prob'ly regret it, but can't hold it in) why the fek do you always have to be so partonizing?

Thank you for saying it.

I didn't realise that I was for you being patronizing! It was certainly not my intention....possibly you read more into my post than I intended.

You also know that I have a strong sense of safety for "our readers" at all times....that NEVER varies.

It was meant to be simply the truth. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Oxygen is REALLY dangerous". Especially in amateur fingers.....

I was lucky enough to be instructed by professionals on the subject a very long time ago....the element hasn't changed as far as I am aware....

How would you have answered that post? Please be so kind as to show me how it can be done better!

Thanks in advance. I am always willing to learn.

You have made our tame Vulture happier at least I see.....thats a good start!!

Speaking as a military defence contractor this post would have been better off sent as a private message rather than posted on an open forum.

That might have helped one person.....

So I don't agree.....

We help ALL here.....

In my opinion post #13 was enough to get that point across.

We obviously differ in our opinions.....big 'effing deal!!!

Now if you had accepted my thoughts in #13 and said something like "OK Andy, I see your point!", that would have made a further post totally unnecessary.....but you didn't!!

What you said was "I umm'd and ahh'd before posting the word "oxygen", I was originally going to say natural air or atmosphere."

That was a bad decision......yours.

I won't lose any sleep over it.......but if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen!!

Have a great day.

This is interesting.

That is a photo of the mixer, and it is adjustable. What is the gas source/pressure?

What does the burner look like and how are the products of combustion expelled?

Does it heat rocks or lumps of iron or a refractory or all of them...

More cool photos please.

So this is what I was searching for, as you can see this inclined traditional tandoor (Afgan model here in Pakistan we have them vertical dug straight into ground) has a hole at the bottom for air to enter aiding burning of coal.wood at the pit of tandoor

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I think it's unlikely that the air and gas are mixed before the jet - especially as the pipework leading to the burner will get very hot so there is a high probability of combustion within the pipework. More likely that they are mixed after the gas jet (as for welding, or like a Bunsen burner), so two pipes must be run down to the burner (possibly concentric).

They're obviously not mixed at the flame jet in the working model pictured. Fuel and air mix at that gap.

A combustable mixture is produced at that gap and sent down to the bits I'd like to see photos of.

There must be a lighting procedure....

Hi John,

I would say that it depends upon the gas as to when they are mixed and/or burnt, I am sure you would agree.....

But for gas for cooking and generally heating, which I believe is what we are talking about here surely:-

if you look at any gas cooker, you will find that the gas and the air are mixed well before the burner. As you mentioned, the gas comes through a jet, but well before the burning point!

Even if heat is transmitted back, the fresh gas(es) and the air supply are cooling things down in many systems.....unless a liquid is involved that needs to converted to a gas, like paraffin for example, which has to be heated strongly to turn into a burnable gas.....or atomized as with oil in an oil heating system.....basically also turning it into a gas!!

The easiest way to explain this mixing with normal gas for say cooking is to my mind the Bunsen Burner:-

Bunsen_burner

Which demonstrates how the gas is passed through a small orifice, causes a slight vacuum and takes air with it, mixes it in the long tube and burns it at the top!! The air supply is even variable...

i hope this was helpful for the Tandoori Oven, though I personally believe that charcoal gives a better taste, as some have said already....

For acetylene, to premix it with Oxygen would maybe cause a major explosion, which is why both have to be released from the jet together.

But with air mixing with say Propane (not Acetylene!), as long as the ratio is correct,it can usually travel some distance without a big problem....though a jet must always be in use for the burnable gas alone as a "block" for any possible "flashback"!

The shorter the pipe run is, is probably better even then.....though I was unable to supply any code as to how far is allowed/possible! But under a meter I would consider OK at a guess....

Have a great day!! And no Gassing!!

You are right, what is fed to the burner is air-gas mixture & not the gas alone! This is why I said additional air duct was absent in this particular model. Regarding ignition process, it was ignited conventionally by something similar to olympic torch

Yes, but where was the fuelair mixture ignited? In the oven somewhere or at the mixer?

Is there an exhaust flue?

Are there any heat storage masses in the oven or are those chapatis being directly toasted by a flame and the hot exhaust gases?

What is the the gas source? Can you guess the pressure at the mixer? eg can you hear it hissing or droning when it is lit or turned on?..stuff like that aka observations.

Photos, aka photos. Please.

The flue gases & heat from flame itself is the source for baking. Gas pressures in conventional tandoors never exceed 1.3bar (CH4). Flame intensity is controlled by ball valve installed prior to this venturi which throttles gas feed ...shown in picture

I hear no hissing sound at all

Take a look at this link"how to build a gas fired tandoor", http://www.ehow.com/how_12098976_build-own-gas-tandoor.html See if it's what your looking for?

That's just sticking a regular teracotta pot on a normal restaurant gas ring. Doesn't describe the pictured model.

Well DON'T add oxygen.