Thought some of you would like to read this resource....

http://www.coen.com/i_html/white_liquidfuel.html

I'm working on some furnace burner things for WVO and such.

Will be experimenting to find the physical thresholds for burning WVO/WMO type materials without preheating or minimal. May prove to not be practical, but with WMO oil burners in the >$3k range there is room to work.

Ideally, the end result would be a rather simple retrofit for standard oil burners.

We'll see... BTW, anyone with experience in this area, please PM me for discussion. Maybe there is already something economical out there?

- JC

I just got a standard Beckett-powered oil-fired water heater to play with, and will have to delve into the fun and games of firing one on WVO and so forth. Please keep us (or me if it's a PM type discussion for some reason) in the loop on what you figure out.

of course, the altfuelfurnace yahoogroup list is a good one for some of these topics.

quote:

Originally posted by JCBiodiesel:
....Ideally, the end result would be a rather simple retrofit for standard oil burners.

We'll see...<snip>... Maybe there is already something economical out there?

there is several kits for sale on Ebay to retrofit a Becket style burner for UMO and WVO.

They moslty use a preheater just before the injector to thin the waste oil with heat so it automizes well enough for the standard burner to combust it.

No clue if they do as they say they do.

Thanks for the replies.

From what I've read, extended heat for WVO is not good for it. The Lanair and others I've looked at heat and almost boil the oil in a separate tank area to thin it.

I'm not sure I like the idea of a boiling vat of oil in my basement That's an obvious exaggeration, but you get the point.

Atomization seems to be the main point. There are key sizes of drops that are optimal, air injection, steam atomization, and oil/water encapsulation techniques that are possible.

I believe I can work up a system that is less expensive and preheats less, which is part of the research I'm working on.

I've been reading lots on the yahoo group for some time. They have *tons* of info. I spend quite a bit of time sorting through my inbox...

I'd love to produce some kits if I find the "magic bullet." May not happen, I'm still in the research phase for now.

I don't have any problem innovating, but I don't want to be dumb and repeat someone else's work

- JC

I've heard that the Lanair doesnt' do well with oil, by the way. I'd love to hear otherwise. the Piedmont Biofuels coop has one but hasn't been able to get it to run, though there were multiple physical problems with it that might explain that besides the WVO issue. We've heard from multiple sources though that Lanair is particularly not compatible. NOt sure if that's true.

I tried the wvo and did not have good results. Now I am making biodiesel and am running it in a forced air oil furnace. It is working very well so far. I have a Becket oil gun and all I did was incress the PSI as far as it could go. I think its about 150 PSI. I then lowered the nozle size from a.60GPH @90 degrees hollow pattern to a .40GPH @ 70 degrees hollow pattern and closed up the air about 30% less than it was when iran #2 fuel oil.

Hi all.

It's been a few days since I posted on this thread.

I've been trying to "catch up" on what other members have done in the WVO/WMO furnace areas.

Right now I've been reading with great interest about Murphy's and Fabricator's furnace and boiler.

Other items of interest.

The siphon nozzle with air supply and minimally heated WVO.

Micro atomization of unheated WVO using chemicals or electromechanical means (ultrasonic, air infiltration, even just saw a recent thread about an electromagnetic field).

The main problem is viscosity (duh!) and atomizing the cold oil. The pressures required for such are quite high and not practical without "help."

The Babington type nozzles are quite interesting, but aren't well suited for direct replacement in a standard oil furnace.

Oil preheater vats are an option, but temp mgt and fluid levels can be an issue. Then there is the issue of the oil already between the vat and the nozzle.

Then there is the GARN idea. Start it up once, heat a large volume of water, then shut down the furnace and run off the stored BTUs for 24hrs. This is not a new idea- it's used for solar heat storage.

Since a WVO burner can preheat its own oil once started, it is primarily the startup that is an issue.

I've also thought about a bypass/recirculation circuit from the nozzle to a preheating vat. This would be intermittent heat, and would require xx minutes delay from the time the system calls for heat until the furnace ignition system is ignited. This could be a fixed delay, or an oil temp sensing interlock.

But that may cause "fail" reports if placed in the wrong location. Most likely between the thermostat call for heat and dependent upon the boiler aquastat also calling for heat (boiler).

Anyways, I'm listing these here if anyone wants to comment on any of the above.

All input is welcome and wanted.

- JC

quote:

Originally posted by JCBiodiesel:
....Since a WVO burner can preheat its own oil once started, it is primarily the startup that is an issue. ...

The ones I saw on Ebay do just this.... well do half of it. They preheat the oil with a hight wattage heater just before the injector.

What is missing from that is then allowing the flame created to preheat oil from that point forward. There for no more of that high wattage is needed WHILE THE HEATER IS BURNING.

What is complicated though is controlling the temprature of the oil being heated by the flame. For example if you use a metal tube that is in the flame that oil is pumped thru to preheat it, that tube will get hoter and hoter and with each temprature rise the oil leaving it will get thinner and thinner... which in turn makes the oil flow faster thru what ever meters the oil volume (carborator jet size??) burnes hotter now and hotter making the tube the oil is traveling thru hotter and hotter... which makes the oil thinner and thinnner..

As you can see you end up with a run away thing. You need a way to mantain the oil at ONE temprature. My bet this is why no one uses the flame to preheat the oil.

One way to do this??? would be with coolant system like in a car. Thermostate and all. The thermostat opens and closes in order to keep the coolant at a constant temp. Run the flame thru this radiator (heat exchanger is what you got now) and let the coolant via another heat exchanger give its controlled set temprature heat to the WVO.

Or.... as has been done in the Military tent heater thread by Imakebiodiesel. He uses a Perostalic/Doseing pump... these do not care the viscosity of the oil... they pump a measured amount no matter what. Would still think though you want to not over heat the oil so you need someway to controll the temprature of the oil. Precise temp control is needed less though with the use of a Perostolic pump I would think

There is a commercially manufactured (Airtronics) Babington style burner used reliably by our military since 1995, the same burner was available as a direct replacement for standard oil furnace burners in Europe, This links to a past discussion of it, unfortunatly the company never responded to any emails.

There is a newer Yahoo discussion group called altfuelbabington (HERE) that has a lot about converting standard Becket style furnace burners over to something like the Airtronics burner, several folks have successfully done this apparently.

The only semi-reliable veg conversions of standard home type oil burners that I have read about, other than the Airtronics Babington design, require adding lots of heat and converting them from a pressure burner over to a syphon style burner, even these have cold burner light off reliability problems burning veg.

Researching commercial used motor oil waste oil burners I find they all are syphon style burners with considerable heat added. Both the local auto repair shops in my small town heat with commercial waste oil burners, as do many local farmers. I looked over the manuals for a couple of these, they both were adding 600 watts of electric heat indirectly to both the fuel and syphon air lines even for burning the much easier igniting used motor oil, veg needs even more heat than motor oil.

I tried converting a pressure burner to veg, added lots of heat (up to a 1000 watts, boiling veg causes flameouts due to vapor), let the ignition spark run full time, fiddled with pump pressures, never got anything reliable, finally gave up and built a veg drip heater ( I wanted battery powered operation anyway) (discussion here).

There are folks on altfuelfurnace that say they have made reliable veg conversions but there burners look like frankenburners, it may be possible if you don't mind non-startups, flameouts, nozzle blockage, etc, just don't expect reliable automatic operation at a flip a switch and then forget it.

There are MANY (most) big commercial oil burning boilers (highrise buildings, ships) that burn heavy oil reliably, most use steam atomization in special designed burners. Do a general web search for "heavy oil boilers/burners" or similar words, you will find tons of info about what it takes to get them to burn reliably.

There is also a good bit of info on the net about oil fired hobby steam boat boilers (25-28 ft boats) that atomize with steam, these burners don't cycle on/off, they burn continuously and are manually ignited using diesel or kerosine. They do use some noval home-built burner atomizer designs though.

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

quote:

Originally posted by Tim c cook:
... There are folks on altfuelfurnace that say they have made reliable conversions...

don't know if this is one of those guys or This guy from AFF who got it down to a reasonable sized thing.... Their kits makes since. It is basiacaly an electric preheater for the oil. One sellers kit is a machined part you install a heater into (included in kit) while another seller is more homebrewed version.

No clue if either one actually works as they claim.