Has anyone done this?

I hope to start working on a burner soon, Automation to follow then I'll try to fit it in place of the gas burner.

My concerns are:

Auto ignition of the wvo.
(does pre-heating and proper automizing assure ignition?)

Timing issues of the combustion air, oil flow, automizing air to.
(I'm guessing to ignite the combustion air needs to be delayed???)

I should keep my mouth shut as I have no experiance in this, but, I believe that auto ignition is a problem with WVO. I am very interest in your project however as I would like to heat my water and house with WVO. I haven't had any time to do anything yet but I was thinking along the lines of using Murphy's plans to build a boiler to heat the house and use a Heat Exchanger to get hot water. My house is large enough to use all the heat, (I believe it was 70,000 to something over 100,000 BTU's that Murphy's heater puts out. I bought his plans months ago and haven't had the time to work on it or keep up so I don't know if anyone has had any luck on an igniter for WVO.
A friend of mine has a friend with a WEO heater and the igniter on that had a much larger transformer (I think he said 24 KV, vs. 14 KV on a fuel oil burner) for the igniter. Sorry if I am way off on this as it was casual conversation and I haven't looked at it myself yet.
3 years of WVO and once again the heater is "next summer I am going to build". Time flies and nothing seems to get done. Maybe I need to prioritize better LOL.

quote:

Auto ignition of the wvo.
(does pre-heating and proper automizing assure ignition?)

After 50/50 blend with hot 180 F WVO/kerosene mix my friend couldn't get it to ignite or burn in a fuel oil burner. I don't believe he did anything to change orfices or pressures or fuel/air mix however.

How about using a propane pilot if ignition is a problem.
That might make for some complex logic circuit unless the pilot was always on. I'd like to keep it simple as possible.

Or, a glow plug plus spark???

quote:

How about using a propane pilot if ignition is a problem.
That might make for some complex logic circuit unless the pilot was always on. I'd like to keep it simple as possible.

An "always-on" pilot light with a Coleman propane bottle feeding it has always been my plan. I figure the amount of heat I'm getting for the cost savings and the simplicity more than justifies the cost of a few refilled bottles of propane to keep the pilot going 100%. I'm been slowly building a unit based on this sketch I did on and off (mostly off ) for 9 months now.