Electronic fuel/air controller

General Discussion
#1

Hi i have been interested by gasifiers for a few years now but have only lately found this place…gold mine of info

one thing that has puzzled me is why no one has adapted/developed/moddified something to electronically control the A/F ratio when running on wood gas biased on the output of an narrow band (0-1v) O2 sensor…well it did puzzle me until i found this

it looks like he might have it running on LPG/Propane in the video judging by the bottle in the camera shot… but the intake set up looks like it is designed for running on a gasifier…the other thing i notice is that he seem to have a somewhat slow acting servo on the fresh air butterfly judging by how slow the rich/lean lights were blinking.

lol now i just have to figure out how to replicate that effect (while being an electronic moron) without breaking the bank…getting custom electronic stuff like that tends to be a rather pricy

Callum

#2

Misunderstanding,

There may be some misunderstanding on how often the fuel/ air ratio has to be adjusted. One can drive hours with out having to touch the adjustment.

If one was using a stationary gasifier and it running unattended the automatic adjuster would be necessary.

A good comparison would be a vehicles with climate control vs one with heat and AC settings.

I will be making some videos showing how to use the fuel/air adjustment to bring a cold gasifier up to operating temperature quickly.

Here is a little clip showing how fast one can set the adjustment. This is with no fuel/air ratio gauge but only by the feel of the motor.

1 Like
#3

thank you Mr Keith…you confirmed what i was thinking

it is actually an unattended generator application that i was thinking of it for…

#4

I have found for major throttle swings (full on/full off) adjustment is not mandatory, but is needed for proper AFR. I tend to tweak my mixture depending on engine load.

#5

A self adjusting mixture control would make the vehicle easyier to use if it works properly…i like the idea for a truck…but it will be really needed on the genset i’m building

#6

The gek people have one. I am not sure exactly what they are using for sensors, but their board is based on the arduino which is an easier to use inexpensive robotics platform. You should at least be able to plug in a couple of things to measure pressure, temperature, etc, and maybe a fan speed control or grate shaker with it. You will need the hard data, with notes on what you did to correct the situation manually. Or else you will never be able to automate it.

#7

When I was in Berkeley (APL / GEK) in 2010 I think, Jim’s number one priority was the grate shaker. They were struggling to automate that. The rest of the system was pretty much automatic but some fine tuning was required on the air mix controls. Either way I was very impressed and I suppose that was one of the reasons Jim flew me out there. It is difficult to find off the shelf parts to do this but some exist. I tried to get Ben in on the Kansas thing but he was thinking more like multiple gatherings with an internet connection. I hope he will pop back in at some point as I think he was pretty close to having a decent automated system but Steve would know more about this. I don’t know who’s boats are floating yet as none of them return my calls … ML