The outside holes seem to plug up, Steve. That may have been because of the way it was sitting on the Tee. I’m going to open those holes up some and raise that cap to see if it works better. I’m also going to try the flute nozzle again with the hole spaced differently and on this base the reactor area is a few inches wider in diameter so so much heat won’t be right at the perimeter. I’m still figuring out how this stuff is suppose to work. I will say that neither the cap or the flute seem to suffer much as opposed to just the pipe nozzle.
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Hi Tom , in the photo you put up you mention that the one on the left is now in and you wondered how long it would last , my guess would be a little longer but only just .
Will you will be using the nozzle horizontally ? if so then you would be better off making it vertical and allowing the slag build up to help protect the metal , you may even get a few runs out of it then , the drilled out holes in the pipe cap should also work better .
Dave
Dave
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Hopefully, Dave. The catch is that I’m still trying to keep this design using only off-the-shelf building supplies so that it could be built by people with minimal skills. Even the Hexaloy sleeves fall outside those parameters. That’s why I really hope that the pipe cap will work in this application.
Hoping you see this Dave. The hexaloy sleeve came today. The inside diameter is just a hair too small to slide over a 3/4 pipe nipple. I’m going to grind the nipple so it will slide but just wondering if you had to do the same or if they came in different sizes. In the guys E bay picture he shows 6 of them. I figured that was too good to be true for the price but I was a little disappointed to only get one, anyway. I’m going to pull the hopper again tomorrow and replace what’s in there with this one.
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Hi Tom Great news getting your single Hexaloy nozzle today , yeah i have been caught out in the past with photo’s but if u look closer on the ad it asks Quantity
Ok Tom what i did was instead of fitting the 3/4 pipe inside the nozzle and risk the pipe expanding and breaking the Hexaloy i placed mine inside a 1 inch pipe nipple that i turned out the one side so it was a plug fit nice and snug , if you dont have a lathe to turn out a few thou you can always use a small grinding wheel till you can slide the Hexaloy in side the nipple .
Bruce Southerland also found these smaller 3/4 fitting nozzles that i have yet to test out but feel they will also work great and you do indeed get 3 for the price and they will screw right into your 3/4 galv pipe fitting
(3) Baker Hughes Tungsten Carbide Nozzle 015-226-815/SP-15 | eBay .
I need to order another couple of the Hexaloy mine has been inside the gasifier since end since Aug 2018 and still intact apart from where i chipped a bit off when cleaning .
Dave
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Thanks Dave. I’d be pretty happy to get three years out of a nozzle since I’m currently getting a few hours. I don’t have a lathe any longer but I’m sure I could grind out a one inch nipple a little with some of the stones I have. So what happens to the nipple with the sleeve inside it. Does it still melt away? This gasifier is still kind of a PITA to change out nozzles on because I have to chip out some of the clay to pull the hopper. I’m going to build one that is designed pretty much for nozzle experimentation. Couldn’t do it on this because welding will be necessary.
Been messing with that hexaloy sleeve Dave. It’s actual dimensions are 1 and 7/16 OD and 15/16 ID, so it will fit inside a 1 and 1/2 pipe and I have plenty of that but no threaded nipples. It will take a trip to the box store to make that happen. The reactor in the homestead unit is only 8 in Dia. I’m thinking that cramming all that nozzles material in there with what I would need for fittings to get it on the existing 3/4 inlet would not be optimal. I think I’ll stick another fluted nozzle in there and save the hexaloy for the larger one I’m going to slap together.
I am liking the idea of those screw in nozzles you posted. Might take some trickery to get the boobed banker to cut loose some coinage for those though.
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Hi Tom , on the Mazda b200 post number 92 i put up a photo of some reducers and a pipe nipple with male ends , that is what i used in my barrel if memory is correct i got one of the reducers that was as close to the 1" 7/16 or 36.5 mm and had it ground /turned out to a tight fit for the Hexaloy i then put the male ended nipple connector through the bottom of my drum and screwed the reducer onto that tightening onto the barrel and there its stayed now since 2018 .
Hope that gives you a better picture of how i did it been so long i had to really think how i did it 
Dave
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I’ll check that out Dave. I didn’t know your nozzle was vertical. Definitely makes more sense.
Making a nozzle out of a piece of fire brick.
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Hi Tom , pleaseeeee don’t let me spoil your fun but … the fire brick will melt , well it did for me anyway ! look at my fire brick with a small piece tungsten carbide in it , this is not the Hexaloy one but a real carbide one and boy it was heavy as about 1 inch od and just under 1/2 in dia and 3/4 in length from memory
I guess it will depend on how your going to use it . this one of mine was put in horizontally as a test ,and ran it a few times so maybe 12 hours in all no water drip or egr .
Anyway please carry on playing its great fun and a eureka moment when you finally get something that works for you .
Dave
I’m kind of wondering if a smaller hole would work better. There should be more velocity to push the burning further away from the nozzle and into the char bed. I think someone, maybe Koen, tried small nozzles.
I have used a 10mm tig nozzle at one stage a few years ago and some that were just around 15mm in both horizontal and vertical ( pointing upwards ) and i didn’t seem to notice much apart from after a few runs it was getting harder to start , Max Gassman said that the velocity of the blast was causing a hollow cavern type effect above the nozzle , as i always had to poke a wire up before lighting to get charcoal to drop down .
Dave
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This is the same fire brick I used in my Rocket Mass heater Dave. Because that is a six inch system and the run though the heat storage bed is right at the maximum for this system I usually run it with a duct fan pulling air through the burn tunnel and at the point where it turns to the heat riser temps get to steel melting range. This is very hard brick. Of course the proof will be in the pudding. Another crappy, rainy day here. Don’t really feel like going out in it and sucking the char out of the gasifier so I can pull it apart to change nozzles, but I may. I’ll run it with just the fire brick and if that breaks down I’ll stick the hexaloy sleeve in it allowing it to protrude enough that the worst of the heat is a ways away from the brick. I’m getting sick of dicking with it and want to move on to something else. This is the last thing I will build no weld. Trying to maintain that and use of box store components has wasted too much of an old man’s time.
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I think Max was right. The question is whether the smaller nozzle would last longer because the majority of the heat would be in the cavern and further away from the nozzle.
Hi Tom , i know what you mean , past 2 days we have had a artic blast coming over Australia , yesterday morning we woke to patches of snow on the ground and a whole heap up on the roof , and of course it sat there slowly melting all morning and seeping through the fine cracks in the mortar on the valleys and through the roof and into the house 
no problem with rain just this sitting snow .
If you do decide to run your fire brick for short runs of say 1 or 2 hours i am sure it will be ok , my brick was the softer type and was run a few times at around 4 hours really working hard
Anyway i need power as we have no sun on the solar and i really am running battery’s low as i do not want to go outside right now , least we been told we should be back to up to 14 deg C today so can do a run later when it warms up .
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Hi Sean i have also run a boron carbide nozzle that was around a 12mm hole size and that also is still in 1 piece and just removed to allow me to try the Hexoly tube a few years ago , so as far as i concerned both are real winners for me i have hundreds and i really do mean hundreds of hours on both and with little or no water drip or egr at all apart from when playing around now and again .
so for me any size up to 1 inch id seems to work fine for me when used in my updraft vertical positioned nozzle gasifier .
Dave
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I’m curious about the vertical nozzle Dave. What keeps it from clogging after you shut it down? I can see how having the hottest part of the reaction above the tip of the nozzle would be better than around it or right along side it.
Hi Tom , what we have decided happens is that the blast from the nozzle creates a sort of dome above the nozzle on shut down , so once cooled all the smaller bits of charcoal become a structure of sorts and so the only other clogging up that might occur would be from a build up of slag that may build up around the nozzle over time .
what i tend to do is run a small bar up through the nozzle and poke away any slag build up and to collapse the dome back down on top of the nozzle and allowing for instant relighting again as with new charcoal .
Dave
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OK all you Flautists. Since you are having so much success with this nozzle and it meets all the criteria of this project, I’m settling on it. In the pictures you will see that I stuck an old 1 inch union in the side of the bucket. This allows me to pull this nozzle back out for inspection without pulling the hopper off. I’ll just seal the nozzle with some RTV. This area the nozzle is in is about 9 inches in diameter. What I need to know is how many holes, spaced where on the pipe and how big in diameter.
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