Stewart Corman
18th December 2008, 10:16
I have completed the manual mode operation of a HHO gun conversion to WVO for my firewood whole house furnace. The biggest obstacle to the entire project was a means to power filter the raw WVO and an update to my previous thread on that subject has been appended there.
The final hardware consists of a stock HHO high pressure gun which has had the gear pump/motor/blower/nozzle removed and replaced with a siphon feed nozzle fed by a 10psi/1cfm air supply and a small 15cfm blower ....a circulation pump provides a constant head of 1" lift and also is capable of preheating the sump, while a 150watt immersion heater preheats the fuel, just before atomizing. The entire electrical requirements of the unit can be <400watts/hr and will burn about 0.75gal/hr of fuel.
a collection of photos of the progress of this project are posted here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/stewcorman/WVOBurner#
the latest gun assm looks like this:
578
the entire setup looks like this:
579
note the sump is about 8 gals and is run by a Procon vane pump which is self priming, but runs at 120 watts (whereas a better substitute would be a 1/20hp Taco hot water recirc pump running at 50watts for continuous duty) ...this vane pump is also used externally in the filtration process. Compressed air is supplied continuously (w/o accumulator) by a small Gast vane pressure/vacuum pump which can be a 1/10hp at 70watts.
http://www.gastmfg.com/pdf/rotvane/1531_series.pdf
The manual operation is as follows:
The preheater is controlled by a SPST toggle switch with a center off position.
When everything is cold, fuel valve is open, the heater is turned on for a few minutes till it reaches 180F, then switched to "auto" mode.
Then WVO sump is turned on, then gun assm is turned on and ignited with propane torch and is then continuously self ignited. Once the flame is stable, the fireplace damper is closed to same position as for wood fired operation. The CAD cell detector controls the air pump, blower, and preheater ...since the fuel supply is by siphon, if flame goes out, air supply stops and fuel atomization stops....if heat is not required, fuel valve is shut, then gun power is shut ...sump is manually turned off
a photo of a typical flame blast is here:
580
The operating conditions at at 10psi w/180F preheat are stack temp = 330F, baseboard water recirc temp = 130F. From a cold start around 55F, with outside temps in the low 20's, I heated 2750sqft ranch to 65F in about three hours.
Items to complete are obtaining new ignition transformer to allow auto start and a small fin/tube heat exchanger to preheat sump WVO as it circulates.
Stew Corman from sunny Endicott
The final hardware consists of a stock HHO high pressure gun which has had the gear pump/motor/blower/nozzle removed and replaced with a siphon feed nozzle fed by a 10psi/1cfm air supply and a small 15cfm blower ....a circulation pump provides a constant head of 1" lift and also is capable of preheating the sump, while a 150watt immersion heater preheats the fuel, just before atomizing. The entire electrical requirements of the unit can be <400watts/hr and will burn about 0.75gal/hr of fuel.
a collection of photos of the progress of this project are posted here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/stewcorman/WVOBurner#
the latest gun assm looks like this:
578
the entire setup looks like this:
579
note the sump is about 8 gals and is run by a Procon vane pump which is self priming, but runs at 120 watts (whereas a better substitute would be a 1/20hp Taco hot water recirc pump running at 50watts for continuous duty) ...this vane pump is also used externally in the filtration process. Compressed air is supplied continuously (w/o accumulator) by a small Gast vane pressure/vacuum pump which can be a 1/10hp at 70watts.
http://www.gastmfg.com/pdf/rotvane/1531_series.pdf
The manual operation is as follows:
The preheater is controlled by a SPST toggle switch with a center off position.
When everything is cold, fuel valve is open, the heater is turned on for a few minutes till it reaches 180F, then switched to "auto" mode.
Then WVO sump is turned on, then gun assm is turned on and ignited with propane torch and is then continuously self ignited. Once the flame is stable, the fireplace damper is closed to same position as for wood fired operation. The CAD cell detector controls the air pump, blower, and preheater ...since the fuel supply is by siphon, if flame goes out, air supply stops and fuel atomization stops....if heat is not required, fuel valve is shut, then gun power is shut ...sump is manually turned off
a photo of a typical flame blast is here:
580
The operating conditions at at 10psi w/180F preheat are stack temp = 330F, baseboard water recirc temp = 130F. From a cold start around 55F, with outside temps in the low 20's, I heated 2750sqft ranch to 65F in about three hours.
Items to complete are obtaining new ignition transformer to allow auto start and a small fin/tube heat exchanger to preheat sump WVO as it circulates.
Stew Corman from sunny Endicott