Matt,
The only cooling I can see is from the cyclone. There is about 100 F degrees drop in temperature when I measure the exterior skin of the cyclone from the inlet to the bottom where the lower cone transition starts. I have not seen any condensation because my gas temp is probably 350F or hotter. Not sure how to measure gas temp.
Yes I totally agree about intorducing atmosphere into the gas stream. Ive played with this as well. A flare with no air introduced I think would be the way to go when tuning. A venturi pump air mixture will be too inconsistant to base any thing of from. That is what I was talking about earlier in this thread when I had my first blowers intorducing air into the gas stream giving false readings.
Here is another sequence of flare shots while âburning down a poundâ (actually 1.25 lbs) of pellets.
I made these using a valve and a regulator (and a flow meter and a manometer) to try to âbalanceâ the air flow with equal pressure and vacuum. It is tricky to do on my setup because the ejector pulls 3x more water than the pressure side can push. Anyways, I got my pellet burner going with a nice bed of charcoal, and burned it until the flare went out. Then I added 1.25 lbs of pellets and took a series of photos using my camera phone. I burned it âwide openâ as soon as it would maintain a flare (at about 3-4 minutes) and after a few minutes more the flare color started changing so, I shut down the ejector and pushed the gas through from the nozzles. Then I repeated the process a couple more times, to see if I could come up with some settings that are optimal.
âpullingâ is drawing the gas from the grate using the ejector⌠combustion air is mixed sooner with gas, burning more of pencil tip flame
âpushingâ is feeding the intake side only with air (2700 SCFH, or about 45 CFM)
To help judge the size of the flare, the ejector pipe is 1-1/2" ID, and there is a piece of angle iron protruding 3" into the flare.
Photo 1 - 4 minutes into new fuel⌠pulling (with flash)
Photo 2 - 6 minutes into new fuel⌠pulling (with flash)
Photo 3 - 8 minutes into new fuel⌠pulling
Photo 4 - 8 minutes into new fuel⌠pushing (no ejector vacuum)
Photo 5 - 9 minutes into new fuel⌠kind of in between⌠mixed air flow and breezy
Photo 6 - 10 minutes into new fuel⌠pulling
Photo 7 - 10 minutes into new fuel⌠pushing (no ejector vacuum)
Photo 8 - 11 minutes into new fuel⌠pushing (no ejector vacuum)
Photo 9 - 13 minutes into new fuel⌠pushing (no ejector vacuum)
Photo10 - 13 minutes into new fuel⌠pulling
At about 14 minutes, the flame was really spectacular, showing some gas trails, almost like streamers where the mixing was not uniform (or something?) It was short - just before the flare went out for good, and I got one photo that did not really show the beauty of what I saw. I checked the burn chamber and saw that the char bed was not uniform, there was a void where air was being sucked through the grate area.
So what would you consider the optimal color? The blue or the later the whitish colors?
I should have the JD project rapped up tomarrow, so I will finnally have my very own Vulcan Gasifier lol. Cant wait to play with it. Hopefully that condensor will work as planned. The idea of it is to get the gas as dense as possible so its easier for the engine to suck the goodies in and make more power.
I have no way to tell which color of gas is best for running an engine, except stay away from the early red stuff. I do not have the luxury of a large fuel reservoir, so your unit would probably hold these colors longer. Just a guess, but I am thinking that the thickness of the fuel bed above the char bed has some bearing on the gas that is generated.
Yup all the above. I tuned our test running our fan at about 10 Amps. Just guessing that this would be close to the pull of a small engine. Most of the time I was getting a blue purple flare after I had it tuned in. It would change to a white fluffy color here and there. I think this is from it bridging a little here and there.
I wasnât sure where to put this, I didnât want to create a new topic for this. But this guy is doing some pretty impressive stuff performing thermo cracking of the what he calls bio crude. Ill refrain from expressing my first thoughts were when I launched his video. But by the end of the video I was blown away at what this guy is doing.
