If you going to run B100, there are a few changes to your residential oil burner you might want to consider before trying it.

1. bump up the nozzle 1 size, i.e., if you are running a .75. goto a .85.

2. Open the air vanes another 1/16" to 1/8"- varies, but watch after a warm-up and adjust out the smoke.

3. Increase the pump pressure from the standard hho pressure of 100psi to 150psi.

4. Finally, depending on how cold it is where the furnace is located, you might have to add a nozzle Beckett or Carlin pre-heater, about $35 from Patriot Supply to get the burner fire on a startup. I hate recommending these guys as they've jacked up the price of the Webster biodiesel pumps from originally $45 to $75, so if you can find the nozzle heater cheaper, let me know. These preheaters come with wiring instructions and are easy to install.

5. This final adjustment is a little trickier: sometime the fire eye, or sometimes called the cad cell safety cutout, shuts the oil burner down after 15-30 seconds. This is because biodiesel burns dimmer than hho. The cad cell interprets this as a no-flame status and shuts the system down. Fixes for this have been to clean the blast tube real well and spray with high temp silver paint OR move the cad cell forward, using a longer clip.


I'm burning 100% wvo in my forced hot air furnace going on 6 years now and heating it has never been more than 350 degrees. I've done some adjustments and now have that number down to 250 degrees. Someone erroneously posted earlier that the temperature to burn wvo had to be 500 degrees.

Jesse Parris
altfuelfurnace

Jesse,

Are you sure about the cad cell thing you said concerning the brightness of the flame?

It was my understanding that the brightness was not nearly as big a factor as the frequency wavelength the flame was giving off. I was told that fuel oil has a slightly different frequency light than vegetable oil.

Basically, a cadium sulfide cell is acting as an overly simplistic photo spectrometer.

I have only done a little research in this department but I have some experience with detecting light waves.

Anyhow, I was wondering what would happen if you mixed just 1% fuel oil into the mix.. It might be enough to shift the flame output frequency.

Then again, it could all be about brightness and I could be full of $hit.
I only did about 2 hours of reading about it.

I have also been burning b100 in my beckett all year and thus far the only changes I made was going from approx 80 psi to 150 psi on the pump, I already had a hollow cone 80 deg .075 in there and it has worked great, last week I replaced the chamber and blast tube( thank you Jesse for your help) but overall it's been pretty easy, I am still using the webster pump that has been on it for lord knows how long but am planning the webster bio pump when that fails.

Greaseburger

I was reading about commercial waste oil burners and ran across information about the "inov8" burner (HERE , and here) the last paragraph on both pages says they use an ultra-violet sensor due to it being much more sensitive to flame than the simple cadmium cell but does not respond to normal visable light .

I think this thread should be a sticky. Do you guys agree?

Mark

Jesse, would you be interested in writing this up as an article for biodieselcommunity.org? I always refer people to your altfuelfurnace list but it'd be nice to also have a web page as an introduction to the subject.

Jesse can you explain how to adjust the air vanes on my beckett Afg ?I am getting a little smoke and would like to adjust that out if possible.

quote:

Originally posted by girl mark:
I think this thread should be a sticky. Do you guys agree?

Mark

yep. good info, for sure.

I am just starting to use biodiesel for my construction equipment diesel fueld machines. I was also thinking of useing B100 for my home heating fuel. I was thinking of adapting a heat exchanger to the hot water part of my furnace,( I have baseboard heaters) to pre heat the B100 up to 140F to lower the viscosity allowing for a better burn. I made a methanol condenser for my Bio reactor and think that this would work for the furnace as well!
Has anyone tried this to preheat the Bio ?
Joe.D

I am trying to run two boilers with B100. I have had two Webster pumps fail in 8 months and that was on the first boiler I haven't even started the second. They are Beckett AFG's #1 is spec'd at 1.10 GPH @60degrees my tech guy has been skeptical and not much help the dilution has not even reached b100 yet. Any suggestions?

Just started ramping up production in anticipation of next year, have approx 200 gals in the tanks so far and another 100 to follow in the next few days

jlrjoz, go to the altfuelfurnace page on yahoo groups, search b100. You will need to replace the stock pump with a bio-pump from Webster. Pressure increase to 150 psi, a Becket noz. heater, and a hollow spray noz. (A). I use a .85, 80 deg., A noz. with good result in my Peerless boilers. The only problem to date has been with crud accumulating in the bottom of the air tube and on the turbulator. Approx. 6 weeks between failures due to crud accumulation in heating season. I have been replacing the noz. while cleaning the air tube. Another altfuelfurnace poster (Maurice) has noted that he has no crud problem, and sugested that my fuel is not completely reacted. I agree, but the cleaning time is less than the expense of the extra methanol for the complete reaction. I have also noted that the addition of some kero. (5%) to the mix greatly enhances ignition if your fuel is stored below about 50 deg. F.

Clay

Burning B100 2 seasons with following modifications:
1) Switched from a 1.10 7o degree Hollow Cone to a .85 70 degree Hollow Cone. This matches the gph of the original nozzle with the increase in pressure. I was told that if you have a 70 degree nozzle with the original equipment that you should stay with a 70 degree.
2) Webster Bio pump-increased pressure from 100# to 145#. Theory is finer mist, better ignition.
3) In line preheater installed behind nozzle.
4) Opened air setting a little and adjusted damper.
5) New electrodes installed and I going to put on a higher voltage(14000) transformer to help ignition.
6) Building a preheater before the pump that will heat fuel to 150 deg and hold a gal of bio.
Thought is that warmer the fuel the easier to ignite.
I had numerous no starts over the last 2 years and it has been caused by plugged nozzles(.85's to 1.10's). I remove, clean, reistall and then furnace runs again.

Planned preventative maintenance for this year:
1) Replace nozzles 1st of each month during heating season. $2.99 ea.
2) Replace filter 1st of each month during heating season. $1.99 ea.
3) Add the 1 gal preheater $35-40
4) Add the 14000 volt Transformer $50
I figure I'll have $5 a month for 6 months on nozzle and filter replacement for the year for my heating season(SE MN).
Maybe I won't need to replace nozzle and filter that often if the preheater & larger transformer work the way I think it will.

Gary

The spin on filters like the Garber seem to protect the nozzle longer.

I usually go with one or two sizes smaller nozzle but the same angle and pattern as the origional.

Pump pressure should be increased by 40 to 60 psi.

The nozzle line preheater makes a big improvement with biodiesel and helps HHO too.

The cad cell seems to be the most consistant problem. Partially due to slight differance in color but mostly because the biodiesel flame is less luminous.

Post purge of the combustion air seems to reduce nozzle coking a lot.

Just out of curiousity I tried B100 in my furnace yesterday, it would light ok, but then go the furnace would shut down after a few seconds. I feel that whatever sensor is supposed to detect the flame/heat isn't picking up on the flame from the B100.

As of yet I haven't changed anything, just swapped to a small container and fired it up. After it went out, each time (3 or 4 times) I would hit the reset, and away it would go again.

Any suggestions on what I should do or where to start? (I've been reading what I can tonight, and have subscribed to the yahoo furnace group. Hopefully I can find the info I need online soon.)

Mark

I don't want to bypass any safety features, I'm just wanting to know what is going on. I'm figuring the flame from the bio must not be hot enough for the flame sensor, and as such it shuts things back down.

If this is the case, I wonder if there are 'more sensitive' flame sensors that will sense the bio flame? I would rather do that then changing other things, be cause that would be the safest way. I'm also guessing that maybe going to a larger nozzle might do it, but then that would be creating a bigger 'fire' as well. (Though the plate on my furnace states I can go quite a bit larger on nozzle size anyway.)

The other thing I should do, since this was the first 'fire' for this year, is to run some regular petro through to make sure that everything is working okay anyway, before I try changing anything.

Another thing I've read is that a lot change there pumps to a higher pressure pump, I'm guessing this would also force more oil through the same nozzle, giving a larger flame, and I would assume also a finer spray? I haven't been able to get into the yahoo group as of yet, so I'm still looking the net for what answers I can find.

B100 is about as hot as HHO but it is less Luminous. Common ways to make the flame detector more sensitive is to spray the inside of the blast tube with shiny high temperature silver paint or move the Cad Cell forward.

Higher pressure almost always helps a B100 flame by making a finer mist. Usually larger nozzles don't help. You will probably need to tweek the combustion air if you change pressure.

Thanks for the information Ron, this is the sort of thing that I've been trying to find out. It's warmed back up the last couple days here, so I haven't done anything more with it yet, but will have to do some more investigating. The furnace I currently have is an older unit, I'm hoping to upgrade to something more efficient next year, so I thought that experimenting this year would be a good idea.

I'll have to take a look, are all the flame sensors a Cad Cell, or is there any other styles/types? I know this is a pretty basic furnace, with no circuit boards or anything that I have found, so it might be a pretty simple unit to work on. (I'm hoping anyway!!)

Mark

Most oil burners use a cad cell with the electronics in a box to the right of the ignition transformer. It's the box with the red reset button. Euro burners also use IR or UV sensors and even "flicker" detectors but they won't interface to standard US residential controls.

There are some alternate detectors on the US market but they too are not compatable with typical residential controls and they are very expensive.

Getting a good line of sight will usually solve the problem with a cad cell.

The electronic safety controls like the R7184U from Honeywell are also a bit more sensitive.