quote:

Originally posted by Yair-BHFC:

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy:
...If anyone has ever ordered plans like this before and didnt like something about them, please speak up now. I will consider all comments. Good and Bad..

Your specialized parts should be VERYdetailed, and please consider 220V instead of 110V.
Thanks

Don't freak out! Its not that bad. No flux capacitors.. Just a few odd-ball things. I've included details and photos as well as sources to purchase.

No Problemo

Well, I've been working on the plans for 4 days now.. all day long.

I have 38 pages full of text, diagrams, cad drawings and photos. I'm almost half way done.

I'm going to be really interested in hearing comments on how good my plans are.

My PhotoShop, Visio and AutoCad are working over-time.

at 38 pages for half way id say the comments are gonna be - get to the point dude! brief is good

Hmmm on the other hand detail is where the devil is and it's good to know what you are doing and how to do it. And when trying to write an idiots guide you have to allow for the limitless ingenuity of fools. You go murph. If you want a proof reader who is not too comptent at fabrication but fluid with language I'll help.

If I can follow how to make it then anyone remotely technical can. My fabrication skills are limited so if I can follow how its done anyone else should be able to.

I'm trying to make the plans as complete as I can. You have to keep in mind that I am trying to describe how to build this thing without any actual photos of the process.
There are pipe fittings that get modified drilled and welded to other pipe fittings.. all kinds of little crap like that. I am drawing lots of diagrams and including all kinds of information.

I figure it this way... If its too much, it wont hurt. But if its too little, it could cause a problem.

Better safe than sorry.

Here is a page sample. Text is hard to read because I had to convert it to a JPG file.

Comments?

That looks great!

Murphy -- You are right about used engine oil being hard to get to burn clean. I fired up my old syphon style gun burner today for the first time, burns veg great but it won't burn engine oil or even a 50/50 mix of veg/engine without smoking a LOT.

I was a bit surprised that it did not take nearly as much preheating of the veg as I had expected from reading the altfuelfurnace forum. I had the pre-heat set way too high initially (around 500 watts of continuous pre-heat, don't know the temp yet) and did experiance boiling/outgassing in the pre-heating chamber, this caused the flame to pulse on/off as first liquid, then vapor, was fogging out of the burner nozzle (may have still had a small amount of regular fueloil in the preheat chamber). This unit has the standard fueloil furnace burner style electric spark ignition and it is designed to run all the time so the flame reignited whenever there was adiquate fuel fogging from the burner nozzle. I dropped the preheat wattage down in incraments and finaly got a nice continuous burn (about 250 watts of continuous pre-heat), plenty of burner heat output (burnt the silver paint of the outside of the propane tank burn chamber in just a few minutes), fairly short flame (no fire shooting out of the top of the burn tank anyway) and absolutely NO smoke. I could turn the fuel cutoff solenoid valve on/off and get a perfect instantanious cut off of the flame, it re-ignited effortlessly and cleanly every time, did not even get a puff of smoke when it ignited.

NOT EVEN CLOSE WITH USED ENGINE OIL -- I again initially had the oil heated way too hot, got lots of outgassing and flameouts. With this high preheat the oil burns without smoke, but with a VERY long flame, whenever it actually burnt, just could not get it to burn continuously due to the outgassing going on in the per-heat chamber. I turned down the preheat to about half of the heat used for the veg (100-125 watts) and finally did get a continuous burn but it was very smokey and put out very little heat.

I had placed a needle valve in the burner fuel supply line in the hopes that I could use it to throttle the size of the flame, sort of worked but not reliably, I found that if I cut the engine oil fuel completely off and then back on using this valve I could get a clean burn for a couple seconds when first turning the fuel on. This burner unit has a built-in fuel pressure regulator to feed fuel to the syphon-style burner nozzle, I assumed it was a "demand" type regulater since it was feeding a syphon-style nozzle but it turns out to be a standard pressure regulater that it set to a very low pressure (1/2-1 pound ?, fuel barely dribbles out of the fuel hose to the burner nozzle when it is disconnected), turning the fuel off/on allows the pressure to build up a bit when off, this slightly higher pressure seems to be needed to get the used engine oil to fog efficiently out of this burners nozzle, unfortunatly there does not appear to be any practical way to adjust the regulators output pressure ?
Even if I could reset the pressure to get a clean burn with the engine oil the flame is so long that I get about 2 foot of fire shooting out of the flue pipe opening in the top of the propane tank burn chamber, not exactly what I was expecting.

This old oil-o-matic burner does fine with vegoil so it will do for now. I will do a bit more testing burning engine oil but it does not look practical in this specific burner but this was only the very first testing.

I will simply place a small fan behind the smooth burn chamber tank and blow air over it for now, not as efficient as all the little fins but It will be interesting to see how it does, I can always add the fins, could even make up a water jacket for the tank rather than using it to directly heat air.

Tim, what type of a regulator does it have? How is the WMO being fed? By raising or lowering the fuel supply (with constant level), you can change fuel pressure and the length of the flame. What about changing the atomizing air pressure? Did that shorten the flame?

Tim,

Long flame = lack of combustion air.

or

Long flame = to much fuel.


WVO is only 130,000 - 140,000 btu's per gallon.
WMO is up around 190,000.

Same volume of fuel will create 50% more combustion.

There is a big difference with my burner also.. when I burn WMO, I have to turn up my combustion air.

with WVO flame length is about 14 inches.
with WMO flame length is about 24 inches if I dont turn up the air supply.

Either way, I get ZERO smoke out my chimney.. if it wasnt for the wave of heat, you would not even know it was running.

canolafunola -- This burner unit is an old Williams commercially manufactured fueloil furnace burner, they have not been made since the early 70's. This burner is not a drip-style burner, it is a gun type burner using a syphon style burner nozzle. It uses an actual rotary fuel oil pump driven by the blower motor and also a vane-type air pump, both pumps are built into the same housing. The fuel pump is similar in concept to a modern suntec fuel pump, it can be configured with a fuel return line back to the fuel tank or for a single supply line only.
The regulator is a standard diaphragm design but the body is a custon cast aluminum housing made to these burners so is not easily replacable by any other style regulator.

The air pressure is not yet easily tweekable as in the factory configuration it is controlled by a simple pinhole as the pumps air intake so it is not yet adjustable. I eventually intend to replace this input with another needle valve but have not gotten to it yet, wanted to get it burning before making any extreme mods.
I will start another discussion about this burner and will add pictures eventually.

Murphy -- Long flame --
I have tweeked both the additional flame retention air and the fuel amount, nothing helped. I can not yet tweek the atomizing air and I Increased the flame retention air (from squrle cage blower), this did not seem to help the flame length or the smoke but it did keep the flame from relighting after a fuel shutdown and restart. Tried adjusting the fuel during this restart period and it never would relight. I reduced the fuel retention air and got it burning again, adjusting the fuel amount with the fuel needle valve made a bit of differance in the flame size but once the flame dropped back inside the burner tank it still created huge amounts of white smoke (yes, way excess in fuel, could even smell it). Lots of testing to go on here yet but I suspect it has to do with the larger size holes in this burners syphon nozzle. It has three large 1/32 inch holes.there are likely producing oil droplets that are too large to atomize the cooler preheated engine oil well, the veg wants to be heated considerably warmer (twice as warm) than the engine oil so it should atomize better even if the different type of oil droplets are all the same size. Can't do much about the nozzle hole size since there are no parts available for this burner except scavenging other old burners. This nozzle says it flows 1.4 G.H based on fuel oil, from testing it flows a LOT less than this on thick oil, need to burn it more to get an actual burn rate.

BTU -- I have not seen these numbers, everything I read on the used oil burner web sites say used engine oil is the same as fueloil at 140,000 btu/Gallon, veg is usually shown as 120,000 btu/gallon although this depends on just what type oil it is EnergyLogic website BTU tabkle is here).
There is also a differance in used engine oil, my oil is mostly from farm tractors and my truck so it is mostly thick oil, 15W-40 or 15W- 50 type oil. modern cars use mostly much thinner 5W-20 oil, these different weight oil will have quite a differance in thickness that will directly affect flow and atomization even when warm.

Flame length -- I currently have the complete heater raised up on a work platform a couple feet so I can't see down the flue outlet yet, I will set this down tomorrow and hopefully I can tell the actual (estimated) flame length. I don't yet know just how long the veg flame is but it stays entirely inside the burner tank, used engine oil shoots flame a couple feet out of the flue outlet when burning with no smoke (wont due this for more than a couple seconds), any time the used engine oil flame is contained inside the burner tank I get LOTS of white smoke indicating way too much fuel. Simply turning down the fuel needle valve does not eliminate any of the smoke but it does reduce the amount of flame. Lots of testing and tweeking to try on this unit yet, unfortunatly I need to use it for house heat shortly so may have to live burning veg for this winter and tweek it later

When you refere to "combustion" air is this the small high pressure orifice oil atomizing air or is this the excess air from the squirl cage blower.

Burning veg in this burner also eliminates all the smoke, just that same shimmering hot air look directly out of the top of the burner tank flue outlet, it sure is not adjusted for burning used engine oil yet, may never do it well enough due to the nozzle hole size?

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy:
Well, I've been working on the plans for 4 days now.. all day long.

I have 38 pages full of text, diagrams, cad drawings and photos. I'm almost half way done.

I'm going to be really interested in hearing comments on how good my plans are.

My PhotoShop, Visio and AutoCad are working over-time.

"THE LORD AND THE DEVIL ARE IN THE SMALL DETAILS..."

Hey Murphey
In this case - MORE IS BETTER,
So please keep up with very detailed info.
I have the time and patience.
Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by Yair-BHFC:

"THE LORD AND THE DEVIL ARE IN THE SMALL DETAILS..."

Hey Murphey
In this case - MORE IS BETTER,
So please keep up with very detailed info.
I have the time and patience.
Thanks

I'm done.. The plans are basically finished. I just have to go to the shop and take photos of the unit now.

I've never ordered plans or anything like that before but I can say this, I think mine are very complete and very descriptive.

Tim,


Fuel oil 140,000
Veg oil 130,000
Biodiesel 118,000
Hydraulic oil 160,000
Motor Oil 160,000 to 200,000

In my burner, I can tell the difference between 2 different fuels at just 10,000 btu's difference. Its amazing. The fuel energy content is directly related to temperature rise of the circulated room air. (all other setting equal)

I bet your smoke problem is because you need a blower that can produce not more volume, but more static pressure to push the volume.

What I mean is that if you have a 1/10 HP fan and a 10HP fan, but they are both only capable of producing 10 inches of pressure, the 10HP fan will not push any more air through a 1 inch hole than the 1/10 HP fan will.. Am I making sense here?

If you have a retention head with restrictor holes on it, try going to a higher pressure.

Let me tell you, the difference in the amount of extra combustion air I need to burn veg oil and motor oil is HUGE. I can almost turn off the fan when burning veg oil.. (which is 8% oxygen by weight by the way).. but when I burn motor oil, I have to open the fan restrictor plate almost all the way. All other setting being equal of course.

Oops.. i almost forgot.

Combustion air is excess air injected.

Atomization air is what makes the fuel spray into a mist.

Tim, is your Williams burner the Oil-O-Matic? If so I think it is described in a book I have and I'll look it up. I think it is a gun style burner? Does it use a siphon nozzle? Are replacement nozzles available? What is the p/n of the nozzle? You will want to be able to vary the atomizing air pressure as well as fuel pressure so you can adjust it to the higher visicosity fuels.

FYI Here is a link to an exc HAGO writeup on the different types of nozzles. Nozzle guide.PDF

Murphy, is your burner from garbage a gun type burner?

quote:

Let me tell you, the difference in the amount of extra combustion air I need to burn veg oil and motor oil is HUGE. I can almost turn off the fan when burning veg oil.. (which is 8% oxygen by weight by the way).. but when I burn motor oil, I have to open the fan restrictor plate almost all the way. All other setting being equal of course.

Hey Murphy, can you provide the source of this?

"8% oxygen by weight in veg oil"

Since the smoke is white it is vaporized fuel so I likely do need a lot more combustion air. The air retention head is not restrictive, it should pass plenty of air. The blower likely does not make a lot of pressure as it is only about 5 inches in diameter, it is turning 3450 though ?
Main problem is that the burner will not light from the existing spark ignition once I open the blower intake up over about a forth of the way. I don't currently have an access door in the burn chamber tank so can't easilly use a torch to light the flame. I will remove the burn tank and see if I can get it to light in open air. Way early in the testing yet.

canola -- Yep, oil-o-matic --

I have been researching all the different gun burner designs for several years but just now getting around to building something. Next burner will be for process heat, start with a becket and modify the gun to a more modern style syphon nozzle than the oil-o-matic is using. There are no parts available for the oil-o-matic as far as I know, I just got it free and hoped it would work with heavy oil by adding a oil preheat chamber between the fuel regulator and the actual burner, sorta works, for veg anyway.

This is a picture of an oil-o-matic currently on ebay.

f5ae_3.JPG (12 Kb, 50 downloads)

quote:

Originally posted by canolafunola:
Hey Murphy, can you provide the source of this?
"8% oxygen by weight in veg oil"

Dang I hate it when people call me on facts like this when I forget where I found them.

Anyhow, here is one link.. this one says 10% to 12% oxygen.. But I thought I read 8% somewhere for veg oil and 11% for biodiesel.
Hmm..

http://pepei.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?S...3&VERSION_NUM=1&p=17

Anyhow, I have read this type of thing in several places.