Harry3 - Pump problem - Is the pump stock or did you make any of the modifications to it that I have posted, are you using the internal fuel screen that goes in the pump, I ordered the factory fuel screen designed for waste motor oil from Patriot Supply, it has much larger openings than the stock fueloil screen but they are still smaller than the space between the gear teeth so the pump won't jamb up on hard bits.

Are you using the "nozzle" outlet of the pump as the output or are you using the "guage" fitting as the output. For our use it works best to plug the nozzle outlet and use the guage fitting as the outlet. The nozzle outlet requires that the pump make enough pressure to move the internal pressure plunger back against it's spring before any oil flows from the nozzle outlet, the plunger also restricts the flow from the nozzle outlet to only a small amount. The guage fitting will output the max flow that the gears can move from "0" pressure up to the point that the internal pressure regulating plunger is set to start bypassing oil back to the input of the pump.

I have had the same problem occasionaly, it has always been because oil/fats had solidified someplace on the intake side of the pump gears, since the pump does not make any suction at low speed it does not clear even small layers of solidified grease if they are on the input side of the gears, this is the reason I recommend drilling the 1/4 inch oil inlet hole through the gear cover, this allows oil directly into the gears rather than having to flow through the original tiny 1/16 X 3/16 inch rectangular entry channel that is in the side of the gear cover, this tiny side channel clogs very easily with even tiny amounts of solidified grease.

I also made up a 15 watt electric heater block that uses the pump cover's bolts to hold it against the outside of the pump cover, this, and a 65 watt heater in my indoor supply tank, has allowed me to reliably keep even heavily hydrogenated oil warm enough to stay liquid into the input of the pump gears.

When you opened up the pump did you take the actual internal pump stack apart, you will likely have to do this to be sure the input channel to the gears is not plugged if you are still using the small rectangular input on the side of the gear cover as the oil input to the gears.

I dought the problem is worn gears, I just put a pressure guage on the output of my very worn out "J" model fuel metering pump, with the output plugged it is still capable of producing around 15 pounds pressure when being turned at about 4 sec/rev, at 2/sec/rev it pushed the needle on the 30 pound guage well past the 30 pound point and had the needle heading for even higher pressure. The gears do leak a tiny bit as the pressure did leak off over maybe 30 seconds once I stopped turning the pump.

From my experiance your pump symptoms indicate some sort of plug-up problem on the input side of the gears rather than the pressure output side unless the pressure regulator is somehow stuck open, this is not likely though.

Furnace nozzle testing --

The first test with the furnace burner nozzle ran for a couple days but the nozzle eventually plugged up, expected that. These furnace burner nozzles can be disassembled although the manufacturers web page says no to do it because the factory assembles these to some precision alignment, I don't exactly believe that because there is no way to adjust the nozzle insert in any way that I can see, for this use it doesn't matter. I disassembled the nozzle, cleaned it and it's filter screen, reassembled it WITHOUT the screw-in insert or the screw-on fuel screen. Fired up the stove and almost immediately plugged the nozzle again, cleaned it again and this time put the fuel screen back on the nozzle. I plugged the nozzle a couple more times over a half hour, cleaned out the tiny oriface with a pin each time and washed out the inside with solvent, I finally got it clean and it has been burning reliably now for 3 days.

I added a 30 pound guage to the drip supply tube coming from the fuel metering pump while the burner was out but before I had the nozzle cleaning problem. I am not yet sure just how a clean nozzle will react when lighting a cold stove. When I applied fuel to the cold nozzle in the cold stove the fuel supply pressure would build up to about 15 pounds but NO fuel was coming from the nozzle, at some point the nozzle would start squirting a high pressure stream, this would cause the pressure to drop to around 5 pounds where the nozzle would again stop squirting, the pressure would again rise to around 15 pounds and it would squirt again? This may be normal when using a tiny opening for the drip oriface, don't know til I do more testing. A tiny nozzle opening may require a slightly different startup procedure than what I have been using with a large drip otiface opening?

The squirt/stop situation went away almost immediatly once I lit the start-up fuel in the bowl, the nozzle started squirting a thin stream that never stopped once a bit of heat got to the nozzle (the nozzle did shift the angle of the squirted stream a few times til it shifted to the spray mode). It DID take longer for the solid stream to shift to a spray, took maybe 7-8 minutes of time before the spray happened. I had removed the internal section from the fuel nozzle and I assume this is the reason for the extra couple of minutes needed to reach the spray condition, don't realy know yet, may just have been a realy cold stove. Once the nozzle started spraying reliably the fuel pressure dropped and stabilized at someplace between 1 1/2 to 4 pounds pressure depending on how fast the pump was being turned, The pressure fluctuates just a tiny bit around the stabilized point by something like plus/minus 1/8 pound, the pressure fluctuation rate is over maybe a half second period.

It looks like the 1.65 gallon/hr nozzle that I am using is too large for the fuel flow rate that I am normally burning, The nozzle produces the spray as long as I feed it enough fuel, once I drop the pump speed down to close to my normal fuel feed speed the nozzle stops spraying and sputters out droplets, these droplets are still smaller than the drops from the 3/16 hole in the drilled pipe cap outlet but nothing close to being as fine as the spray. I will install a smaller flow furnace nozzle as soon as I get someplace to buy a metal in-line vehicle type fuel filter to put in the fuel line, I have clogged the 1.65 G/H nozzle without the filter so I would likely clog a .5 G/H nozzle unless I add some sort of filtering to the fuel, should have this done sometime this week.

I will also add a couple inches of length to the drip tube to get the nozzle closer to the bowl and the heat, hopefully this will help with vaporization in the fuel line and nozzle. Once the nozzle begins producing an actual spray of fuel I have NOT had any problem with the nozzle plugging up so the heat is apparently NOT carbonizing the fuel inside the nozzle or the fuel line.

Another future test will be to bring the fuel feed steel tube horizontally throught the side of the burner tank over to a "T", the nozzle will be place downward from the center outlet and the opposite opening in-line with the fuel inlet tube will have a plug in it. The horizontal tube should be heated much more thoroughly by the burner, the plug in the "T" will allow the tube to be cleaned out with a length of rod or cable if need be.

I am thinking this line of testing will lead to using the much deeper 6 inch deep dog pail rather than the 2 1/2 inch deep dog food bowl as the burner bowl. By placing the nozzle down into the top 2-3 inches of the top of the pail it should stay much hotter to produce good vaporization inside the nozzle even at low heat, maybe.

Hopefully the extra depth of the pail will allow more of the fuel to burn while it is suspended in the air, this should reduce the amount of crud stuck to the surface of the burner bowl. I will place air holes around the lower section of the pail but leave the upper section around the nozzle solid to reflect heat, much testing to do on this yet.

Another thing I will test shortly is using pressurized air through the burner bowl air holes by adding a 12 volt automotive cab heater type squirl cage blower.

The one thing I am seeing while testing all the verious burner configurations is that I can get a clean burn with the flue damper closed down a good bit when the bowl is newly cleaned but I need to open up the flue a bit over the life of the burn to keep bright yellow flames. The more the flue is opened up the more of the heat is lost up the chimney, by adding a blower to the input I am hoping I can keep the flue damper closed a good bit and still introduce enough air into the burner to allow a clean burn.

It is easy to know when the burner has adequate air, there is an obvious "sizzle" coming from the burner bowl, I suspect this is the fuel boiling/vaporizing as it hits the bottom of the hot burner bowl, as long as I hear the "sizzle" the burner flames are bright yellow/white.

I am now just starting the 4th day of a continuous burn using the 1.65 g/h nozzle. It has not gotten above freezing here for several days so I have been burning enough fuel through the stove to keep the nozzle hot enough to keep spraying. I have kept the flue damper completely open for this test and the burner has continuously sizzled and produced bright yellow/white flames with only a very flat thin 1/16 inch thick layer of glowing crud over the entire bottom of the burner bowl (no "volcano cone" like I see with the bigger fuel drops). The nozzle does have a golf ball sized lump of crud formed around it but it is still spraying fuel the same as it did originally.

This is a picture of the pump cover heater.

complete_heater_and_cord.JPG (49 KB, 40 downloads)

Tim– both my pumps have your mods done to them. I have not been using any filter at all. I use the gauge fitting for output. Yes I did take the internal pump stack apart when I cleaned it all.
I also believe that the problem was on the intake side, I think the heaver fat kept building up on the bottom of my barrel, mostly the pump would shut down shortly after poring some more cubbies into the 30 gallon barrel thus stirring up the fat. I only have 1/4" copper line on the input.
For heating my house like this for the first year I call it a big success, with some changes to come for next year. I think I will put a steal 55 gallon barrel next to the heater, the pump on the floor very close to the heater with a bigger input line and maybe an inline filter that could be easily changed and all this would be kept very warm from the heater. I may even prefilter the oil a little better.

Sounds like you have done all the basics to the pump, the larger input line can't hurt. I added a hydraulic supply tank type screw-on in-tank screen inside my supply tank (these are cheap at surpluscenter.com). The outlet from the supply tank is directly in the bottom of the tank. The tank has a 2 inch bung in it's bottom, I modified a 2 inch to 3/4 inch pipe reducer by screwing a 3/4 to 1/4 inch pipe reducer into the large one and then ran a 1/4 inch pipe tap down into the 3/4 inch pipe reducer from the large diameter side, this allowed me to screw a 6 inch pipe nipple into the reducer from the large diameter side, the tank screen fitting screws onto the end of this pipe nipple. This creates a standpipe in the bottom of the tank that has the tank screen on the end of it. This has helped considerably to stop the plugging of the outlet from the tank and also allows a lot of crud to settle below the standpipe. I empty the tank during the summer and pressure wash all the crud out of the bottom, I usually get through an entire winter without needing to clean the tank but last winter I was pouring unfiltered oil directly out of settled cubies and had to clean out the tank once during the winter due to excess sediment.

I also welded a 3/4 inch pipe horizontally a couple inches off the bottom, and completely through, the supply tank. I can slide one or two cartridge heaters (220 volt heaters powered by 110) into either end of this pipe depending on the type of oil I am using and the temp around the tank, helps a lot to remelt hydrogenated oils if the stove goes out and the house cools to 60 deg f or below. I should have also welded in a large diameter drain fitting for a ball valve drain (1 inch pipe should be big enough, I hope), this would allow flushing crud and water out of the bottom of the tank during the winter without having to completely drain the tank and haul it outside for cleaning. I intend to add this feature before next winter.

Hi Tim,

It must be getting a little chilly over at your house. What's on the horizon for the Mark XXI vaporizing oil burner?? Can't wait to see the newest development/research.

Been following the thread and development with great interest.


Finest regards,

troy

Nothing new concerning the drip heater other than I have not yet gotten around to adding a forced air blower to the bottom air input. I ran out of veg late last winter and burned a hundred or so gallons of diesel using top air only. The stove burns veg much better than it does diesel, the diesel burns more smokey than veg, no idea why? I never did get the stove to burn nearly as clean with only bottom air. Using the ventelated burner bowl and support can with top air works the best so far.

Probably won't do much stove testing this winter as I am in Arizona for most of the winter, I will be back in IL shortly for a couple weeks to fully winterize the house to let it go cold so may burn the stove a bit, apparently it has been cooler than normal in IL the last few weeks, bummer, it has been in the high 90's in southern AZ, almost too hot to work outside, last few days has dropped to mid 80's.

Been working on adding radiator water heat to a truck bed mounted 100 gallon fuel tank to allow running on veg for the upcoming cool weather round trip to Illinois.

Rather than doing stove testing over this winter I hope to be doing testing concerning development of a solar powered Organic Renkine Cycle electrity generation system.

I have been heating for 3 weeks and plan on burning all winter. I will post any good revisions that can make things better.