Or a diaphram fuel pump. Just need a vacuum line piped in at the carburetor. But then this is crude.
I ordered the check valve today so it will be in Monday. Im going to try and get some fuel made over the weekend. But I think Cody is right about the steam being super heated and this thing is actually working now.
I really wish I had a damn good milling machine so I could accurately drill a vent hole at an angle, pointing towards the reaction to see if the steam flow could procharge the gasifier. I would worry that it would cause a whole other set of problems like a runaway gasifier.
Just use a hand drill choke up on that bit and only extend it out 1/4 to 3/8 an inch. Start it straight down and then once you have cut the tip in you can angle it if you have good vice holding it in place.
I was thinking of doing that too. But like you I was afraid to break the bit. But it dove right through the pipe. So next time I would not be afraid to angle it.
Another thought I had was to not drill in the pipe but rather in the very end at the top. Like through the weld and through the spacer piece. The hole I drilled is 80 thou. but I think you could go 100 thou but no more than an 1/8 inch hole.
You may not even need to drill a hole. You could just cut the spacer at the top so there is a slot. Then just dont weld it there. MIght be possible to put a peice of aluminum or brass rod in there; then just pull it out when done welding. Dont let it cool otherwise you will have to drill it out.
Going back to Matt’s original nozzle with the wicking. That failed because the wick got hard and obstructed the flow of water. I am still thinking about using something similar in my nozzle shown in the saw mill gasifier video. I have quite a bit more space between the nozzle and the surround and would still like to keep that area from being a reservoir or trying to fine tune the water flow so I’m not pumping water out of the thing. I have ceramic fiber blanket. It is looser than the woven gasketing Matt used and will take the heat without any problem. I have it lining the interior of the fire tube/ heat riser in my rocket mass heater without it breaking down. I thinking that if I had that saturated with water it could only gas off steam. What do you guys think about that.
The wick is not needed. I think my flow issues were mostly the tank and have solved that with the pick up tube. The way you feed this type of nozzle the water is always connected so surface tenstion at the end of a tube cant form anywhere so that issue is also solved.
You will just need to tune your steam jet and may need to add a check valve like am going to do to keep from back feeding to tank. I know it is doing this as the water left in the tank after a run is boiling in there. It never did that before. Hot yes but to a boil no.
OK then. I’ll weld the nozzle in tomorrow without any wick. Thanks.
Yeah you dont want anything in there eventually anything in there will degrade and end up clogging it up. Best to keep in clean, no chips or anything before you weld clean it good prior to welding.
Ok check valve was a key missing part. This did stabalize flow. The water in the tank is also boiling off and venting out the vent hole. I bumped up the amps on the inverters charger to 30 amps and that thing ran for 3 hours it consumed the full water tank I had 5.75 liters in it to start the run and it drank the entire thing. I added more but by this time it the hopper was cashed. How much is boiling off versus how much it is consuming I dont know. But I will be modifying the tank and adding a vent tube to redirect that steam to the nozzle as well so its not wasted and vented off to atmosphere. Ill post video tonight after I get it all editted. This one is shaky but I was really trying to document this thing as I went.
Net fuel consumption per kW/hour is 1.45 lbs. Total kW/hours produced per 10 lbs of charcoal was 6.9 for todays run. Thats nearly 3 kW more than earlier test this year prior to building this new nozzle.
I ordered a bunch of check valves to try. I tried the simplest one first made of plastic as it is the most compact and I dont have a lot of room. But it distorted by the end of the run. So I installed the aluminum one in its place. See link bellow.
That is awesome. Makes me glad I posted that dumb napkin drawing to put interest in the idea.
So it seems like the reaction almost can’t be steam crashed like it can with just water drip. How’s the nozzle itself holding up, any signs of being eaten away?
I dont know. I bet it will last a while besides the water cooling it it has more mass that alone should help make it more robust. But will need to test further to really know. I wouldnt expect it to detierate with only the few hours it has on it yet.
Yeah I had also thought of this, it was just put on the back burner and you sort of re sparked the idea and I have the time so gave it a whirl. Im pretty burned out with development, failure after failure while I go broke trying these new things. This one here is a winner and I think its a pretty major breakthrough.
I think because we are injecting this steam at an elivated temp is making it process way more efficiently and why we are not experiencing that.
I think everyone has thought of this when seeing a water cooled nozzle, I just didn’t like the idea of requiring a radiator to cool the water back down.
Another thing too is it takes quite a while for everthing to get up to temp for the nozzle to really start processing the steam to super heated steam. I bet if I were to do an immediant refuel the next hopper would get even better results.
Video is up
Hi Matt
I have a grin from ear to ear, as i kinda mentioned this benefit in earlier post.
I have this stainless coil on my first series of gasifiers and i keep on finding ways on how to make it better/more efficient.
I am sure you will find your own ways to make it even better.
There is science behind it, in simple terms , water needs 4 energy units/mass to convert or adsorb/release as where as air has 1 unit/mass.
I tend to try keeping the nozzle tip close to the desired temperature in the “hot zone”
Anyhow, i enjoy reading about your progress making.
I lost the bookmarks on a crashed computer but a while back I had some short video’s of some guys with a gasifier that fed produced steam into the reaction and turned the flare from blue to white. Maybe I dreamed it. I think it was something Troy Martz may have been involved in. Also I think it was an offshoot of a GEK design. Anybody remember that? Anyway It kept me thinking about ways to generate steam for the purpose without a lot of infrastructure. Matt’s way seems to fit the bill.
Tom it was a YouTube channel named Off Grid Pro
Looks identical to Koen’s water coil.
When I make the revision to the water tank Ill pull the nozzle for inspection as I will need to weld in the inlet tube for the steam from water tank.
This really is incredible.
Ok pulled the unit in today and installed the vent redirect and inspected the nozzle.
The nozzle looks the same as it did the day I installed it. You can see before and after I hit it with the wire wheel.
But I also discovered something new. Not that I have never white ash form but just not like this and not even sure if that is what this stuff is. Thats only what I dug out there is more in there but not sure how much more. I may have got most of it, maybe not. The nice thing is this machine is designed expell that stuff with its slide grate clean out system.
