Greetings. Here's part 3 of the project to make my Military Boiling Vessel picnic ready for some action. You will remember that I had sourced one of china's finest 12v immersion heaters along with the appropriate sized Taps and Dies to make an adapter to fit it where once there was a tea tap. Why shouldn't the china heater be up to it? No reason...that's where all the worlds needs come from now. Before starting to make heater fit boiler I was thinking it would be wise to at least put 12v into it and see what happens.
My intention is not to risk connecting large current draws to my motor vehikle, I'll be hoping a battery may hold enough amps to supply hot snacks on a picnic mission. A 10amp hour motor sickle battery was put on trickle charge overnight.. Exciting stuff! Let's do the maths....First convert Watts to Amps. Immersion heater 12v 125w. Amps equals Watts/Volts. Then lets expect 1 hour of juice available from this 10 Amp electrity storage cell...at best!!!!!!
Wires connected...let the test begin. I have in the test jug 500mls of cold water.. Oh, there's heat transferring from heater to water.......must be it's throwing off bubbles...Beer thermometer doing a very steady count up of Celsius.....At the 40 minute mark the bubbling was slowing....Could mean 2 things. No juice left in the battery or the heater has max'd out...Temperature at end of first test 73.7 degree. Hot enough for food apparently. H&S in the catering world suggest serving at 63 degree..
Let's get that battery back on charge overnight and start where we left off. Set the water temperature to 73.0 degree and see if this little immersion heater has any more go in it.
So, that's exactly what happened. Temperature rose in the second test to 91 degree. Wow! That once again took all the available juice in the battery.
Bigger battery needed then, and also some sort of thermostatic controller set maybe at say 68 degree.?..
Next job keep a look out for a free car battery....and secondly source a temperature controller.
Keep looking in for updates on The Military Boiling Vessel. Stay safe...Alb over and out.
