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« on: June 13, 2007, 07:16:45 PM »
After three months of daily runs, I pulled the heads last night to check for carbon buildup. Since I'm burning wvo, I did expect their would be some, and their was a little more then I expected. I attribute this to having insufficient temps during earlier runs (150- 170 deg. F), but with recent changes, I quicky get temp up to 220 deg F and maintain at injector. Hopefully their will be less carbon in the future. Today, I'll pull cylinders and pistons and have a complete look at everything else. One observation was the oil, although still black, looked very clean. I guess a bypass filter is a good thing.
Now for the title subject. The major reason why I had to stop running, is the cooling temps. Coolant started to boil in the heads during the last few runs, at which time I had to decrease load significantly. I alwayed believed the "radiator" setup I was using was undersized, and would have to be replace eventually. With the increase in ambient temps, this became obvious. Now, I'd like to do what I wanted to do in the first place, heat exchange to a large, insulated tank of water, then use the collected heat. I know from previous discussions, their are many here who believe, this just isn't worth it. My own observation indicates, that at the load I'm usually carrying, their is a considerable amount of heat that can be captured.
My plane is to thermosiphon thru a very large flat plate heat exchanger (24" x 9 1/2" x 8 1/2", 2 1/2 ports reduced to 1 1/4"). Like before, I am planning to run 1 1/4" ID hose , from the stock coolant manifolds, with a healthy raise, to the heat exchanger ports. As before, 195 deg thermostats will be installed. The upper port coolant connection will contain a tee just before heat exchanger port, to allow for a 1/4" hose connection to a reservoir above the heat exchanger. The other ports of the heat exchanger will connect to a 80 gal, insulated hot water tank, with the tank raised so connections are above heat exchanger port, to allow for effective thermo-siphoning. To cool the water in the insulated tank, the tanks second upper port will connect to a Taco pump, then to a couple of tees, each having gate valves. One tee connection will connect to a water to air heat exchanger, mounted almost flush to the wall with a louver openning, into my work shop/ wvo bulk storage area. This will help cool down the insullated tank fluid, heat wvo bulk tank when needed, and exhaust heated air into a much larger area. A second connection will connect to insulated pex pipe that will connect to a couple of baseboard radiators iin my house. A third port, when additional cooling is required in summer, will run out to a coil of 3/4" or 1" dia pex tubing, hung underneath the ladder in the pool.
I am planning to start implementing this in a few days, and I'm definitely hoping for a sanity check before I start. The part of this that bothers me the most, is the low volume of water that will be contained in the primary cooling loop.
All comments are welcomed.