Water injection works!

[EdDee]

Hey Glort,

You wont believe this.... I lay awake last night thinking about an exhaust heatex up close to the header to boil off oil and condense it later down the pipe in the colder heatex to make fuel processing easier, maybe even a condensing coil in the reservoir tank for the cogen ........ I must admit, I really dislike working with my fuel processor, if there was a really simple way I could find to do it, and I think I have, I am all for building a voodoo box to do the black arts rather than having to do them hands-on...

Lemme see what I can come up with... I am not keen to fully pyrolise the fuel, rather just still it off to remove some additives maybe and get rid of very fine solids and metal particles......

Keep on cooking....

Regds
Ed

[billswan]

Ed

there was a guy on this forum years ago that used to work in the oil industry as a chemist If memory serves me correctly.

And his comments on the distillation of any oil was that it is a very dangerous undertaking. And you would eventually have an explosion of you still.
The cracking of oil is fraught with unseen dangers. But I also have considered trying to do it. Just saying watch your self or you could find yourself in a situation like you talked of with the broken flywheel or grind stone flying through the air only this time the propulsion will be from exploding petrol. and the debris will be the lines or tanks the oil is being boiled in.

Bill swan

Ps some day i will go back through my old posts and find how high I had run my 10/1 injector cracking pressure but as you have said of some things I am to lazy. Have to much other STUFF calling on me to do.................

[EdDee]

Hey BillSwan,

I don't wanna hijack this thread, so I am replying in "The listeroid Chronicles"...

See you there..

Regds
Ed

[EdDee]

Hi Glort,

Wi does indeed clean the muffler and pipe, particularly with the higher doses you are running... Its quite entertaining to see the black gravel being dumped at high speed... (watch out for friends in white cars traveling behind you on the highway, and washing on the line when you flush out the lister.... Dont ask me how I know  )

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hi Glort,

Mostly carbon as dust/cloud.... on a NA engine you might see a few chunky bits/gravel size that relocate and move house... Depends on your silencer etc as to the size of the bits that get "strained out"  by the baffles... occasionally you see a reddish cloud of rust that precedes or follows the black dust, probably from trapped rust in the carbon...Never seen water actually make it out of the exhaust under "normal" circumstances.... If you give it a good hard water flush, you can get liquid droplets being expelled with wet carbon .... works wonders on washing day with a lister.... 

I wonder how the turbines fare with head/idi chamber/etc carbon chunks hitting the impeller? Might be a point to ponder before sticking WI on an turbo engine that has not had it before... All solids will erode the blades to some extent, the larger the solid, the bigger the "ding" ....

Cheers
Ed

[George A]

Don't forget that for really stubborn carbon deposits, EZ-Off oven cleaner works well. It will remove hard carbon overnight. Without damage to the metal parts.

Quite true, but don't forget that the lye in it will attack aluminum, bronze or brass in a most hideous way. My other hobby is collecting military surplus rifles and the accepted method for removing old, hardened cosmolene (grease preservative) was to spray on the Easy Off. Unfortunately, the lye got on the wood stock and ate it alive...........

That method was quickly abandoned for safer means. I've been careful with oven cleaners since.

[mike90045]

.
I use Potasium Hydroxide around the place. Buy it in bags and use it for cleaning oil off the driveway.....

That's what I use for electrolyte in my NiFe batteries.   I am planning on changing it out this summer, and now I know what I can do with the leftovers....   clean the engine !

[rdbates1]

I'd be very interested in seeing pictures of your water injection setups.  Are you running drip systems or I have thought of using a small fuel injector to mist water into the intake. 

[buickanddeere]

  Super Heated steam at high velocity with some oxygen will mechanically or chemically pickup and move just about anything eventually.

[BruceM]

Glort, thanks for the cheap 12v peristalsis type pump tip!  That with a dropping resistor seems a nice low power and simple way to go for "drip irrigation".

Do you think exhaust pipe exterior temp near the head be a reliable load indicator or is thermocouple insert type sensor needed?

[AdeV]

Another way would be to sense the rack position. You could use a throttle position sensor off a car for that and tie it to the rack. Pretty sure they work like arduino, 0-5V. As long as the thing knows idle and Full open positions, it can work out the rest in about 1000 increments.

Good idea, but if you're going to do this I'd also add an RPM sensor, as the rack will be WoT when starting and running up to speed. Feeding it water too early would presumably lead to hard starting? A simple delayed start on the WI might work just as well.

[BruceM]

Thanks Ade and Glort. That helped get my brain in gear.

I could add very little circuitry to sense a "good load" of greater than 1000 watt AC or air compressor pumping load. After  15 minutes of running at that load,  turn on the low volume pump until the load drops (until 5 minutes of resumed load) or shut down is ordered. This would need only an additional analog comparator for AC load sensing. This might be the simplest solution for my setup, as it would need no new sensors, just an additional "good load" input signal derived from existing sensors and a new bit of water pump on code added to the no-load sensing software.

 My normal running load is 1150 to 2200 watts.  I already have a current sense transformer and some analog circuitry to sense even the smallest load such as the timer on the washing machine between cycles but not the load of the step down transformers. I could add a "decent load" signal for water injection purposes.  I  already sense the air compressor pumping via the small AC oscillations on the pneumatic pressure on an air pressure transducer.

 Both are combined at present to generate a "no load" signal which lets the microcontroller shut down the engine after 10 minutes unless the remote time-out-overide switch is on.  Auto shutdown was necessary as I can't hear the engine and am prone to forget that the laundry or compressor is done.  I don't like torturing my Listeroid with prolonged idling.

I do have an IGT sensor that I could install for testing to make sure that the drip irrigation flow isn't substantially reducing IGT. Pump rate controlled via 1/4" drip fitting valve bypass or dropping resistor seems simple enough.   

[BruceM]

Alas, not many interested in my setup here, Glort.  I built my own processor and interface circuitry boards with point to point soldered wiring in those days. There are NO off the shelf boards of any kind.  I have been specializing in very low EMF designs which would interest no one here and only a few in the world.

[starfire]

This head has hardened seats, so there shouldn't be any surprises. What might you expect?

I know this is an old subject, but will comment anyway cause its important and I had similar problems with sudden compression loss. This in my case at least, was  caused  by carbon buildup on the exhaust valve seat. Harder valve springs help, but long term causes wear of the valve guides, the short rockers, at least on the 3 1/2 version create more side thrust on the stems. A better way, and the successful fix for this is to narrow the exhaust seat width... ie, the width of the valve contact area to the seat. This increases the loading by reducing the surface contact area, allowing the valve to "nip" through any carbon flakes. Deisel exhaust temps are usually not high, so longevity is not affected. The inlet valve never causes problems, and its life can be extended by removing the bung to the left of the lifters, fitting a 3/8" brass tail, and running a plastic hose from there to the inlet manifold. This introduces a slight oil mist into the airstream, condensing on the valve stem and lubricating the guide. Theres not enough "blowby" in a good engine to cause runaway. All Listers I have had have around a 2mm contact width to the valve seat. This can be reduced by a factor of two or more, and with snug guides, wont cause undue valve seat wear, helped too by burning oils rather than "dry" diesel fuels.