This was taken right after we first had a flammable gas, by the end of the night we had a white/pink flare and was consistent all night. One requirement from our customer was we had to have an auto ignitor for the flare tube. I tried a spark system that ran off an electronic relay for strobe flashers, but I could not get enough energy of it. So we then tried a glow plug of a 2002 Volkswagen Beetle. This does the trick!! So later I will set up a timer relay to turn this off and on while the blower is on.
Still much more tuning yet, but we are getting there and I hope to do a video as soon as I can.
The starter is a bit sticky, I am going to put some shims in it tomorrow morning. The belt we got with the accessory kit is also too loose and causing squealing when the alternator engages. So I will address this in the morning as well.
If it wasnt for these issues we could have ran the engine on gasoline to heat up the HGRS and see how it effected the flare. So hopefully we will get through some run time on the gasser tomorrow and then be able to run this test later in the day. But so far my customer is pretty happy now that we are at least able to run.
I have some updated code for the 02 sensor I will post this over in the manager section.
Yeah Koen, with the Arduino for some reason I feel this should be shared. If it were not for all the open source and the mass wealth of info on it I would not be able to learn what I have. So I will try and follow suit and share what I learn.
Yeah that thing looks like a liability. lol the glow plug is just one more step closer to an auto ignitor for the gasifier too. The automated controlled air system on the units is part of a much broader plan. Most other valves we would need for a self running system will be simply open or shut. So we can easily build valving operated with air cylinders and will be very cost effective. So for the new air system is working to perfection and really neat and compact set on this one. So later on we will simply open an intake air valve and the blower valve and then fire up the blower and glow plug and we should get a self firing system. Cant wait for this!!! Unfortunately I did not have time to try and repurpose the AC compressor for the pump. The Harbor Freight pumps work quite and well if it aint broke dont fix it. Im just not going to order the AC pumps with the engines in the future and this should save us a little in the build cost.
Yes this is what will be our basic platform for all systems 20 kW and larger, (on up to 50 kW). I will know for sure in the next couple of days what this machine can do with the 32 kW head that is on it.
Nice work you are doing!! Good to see something different!!
Here are a few short videos of the LS-1 machine. This one has had its challenges, I think we are almost through it all. I think we have the O2 sensor mixer figured out, the governor controller however, is not cooperating yet. One of the issues we had was is the hopper sensor was not working consistently. So I just went to simple flap and it works works great, should have just did this to start with. So now that things are consistent we can go further. The governor for some reason is shutting down, this thing is very sensitive. Tomorrow we have a fresh batch of fuel and I plan to run all day, hopefully this is just some tuning issues. Other than that the engine loves the woodgas and just pures away.
Alls I can say is that is way too long to be on an airplane!!
But yeah very interesting over, Rome is a pretty cool place and the Alps are awesome. The first day at the machine went great. We set it up in just a few hours, I left the char bed in it when we shipped so we just loaded it up with fuel and lit it. Flared off pretty quick and we just went to engine run and ran it the entire day.
Then things went not so good. When we tested here at home we were tough on the starter here. It broke there and we needed to get a replacement. You would think you could get a replacement in Italy? Nope had to order it from the US lol. This happened at a really bad time as we were getting ready to perform a gasoline run to clean the valves. Because we were running a completely different fuel density the machine needed some time to get re established. This did not happen of course as the starter was broke and we could not start it. Another issue we had is in all the excitement I left off the gas chiller unit. So condensing was happening much later in the filtering processes. Well sure enough we stuck a valve bad!! So I ended up running out of time there and they had a guy come to make some repairs after my departure. They have it all back together today and hopefully will be back up and running. Load testing is next and Im hoping for a video on this soon.
Ok many lessons learned, still awaiting final testing in Italy. I’m hopping we will have video of this thing with in the next week.
So we’ve taken everything we learned and on to the next. This new version is many months of design work, we could have done so many things more simpler. As much as I like the LS engine Ive decided to go with the much more versatile and adaptable 5.7 Vortec. The LS engine is just an awesome engine but it did present it challenges. Simplifying the exhaust for the HGRS was a big concern on this one. We spent a couple of days just working this on the first one and this should have only taken a few hours. So I got the block hugger headers and inverted them. This will be so much easier to build. We did away with the air driven automation so this allowed us to go back to a full lid on the primary hopper and also I made a revision for a hinged lid for the media filter. We went to a quick clamp flange system so now disassembly for cleaning will be much easier. The condenser chiller is a bit more robust with a 50 gpm pump and the HGRS is about four times the size as the first one. A lot of development went into this last one, a lot of trial and error and fixing. This machine has all this development in a very polished package. We shouldn’t have to many changes to make, Im sure there is always something but most I think is ironed out.
Next and highest on my priority is development of the Micron Filter system. Ive been planning a conceptual plan for this and hope to get started on actual design work very soon. This will be a regenerative filter system that will filter at a micron level.
Ive attached a front view to the little M-I too. Cant wait to play with thing later this week, believe it or not I have not had my own machine in over a year.
Thanks all!! Yeah Wayne we are getting it down, its getting easier as we go. The newer systems are simpler and much more refined we are very excited about the upcoming machines and new development. BBB
