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Author Topic: heating the injection line  (Read 35645 times)

kyradawg

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #15 on: February 10, 2006, 03:44:13 AM »
 

Peace&Love :D, Darren
« Last Edit: August 03, 2006, 04:43:36 PM by kyradawg »

Stevels

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #16 on: February 12, 2006, 07:00:59 PM »
I would agree with Darren, though I have no empirical evidence to back it up – it does make sense.  All my research seems to conclude that between 160 and 180 degrees F is the ideal temperature range for feeding a diesel engine WVO.  I would assume that the exhaust based heat exchange system would be to unreliable, vary in temp greatly, and almost certainly run too hot overall for good results.  I think a controlled liquid cooled system is better and am making that design for my Listeroid.

I am planning my WVO conversion for my 12/2 but right now, I begrudgingly admit, I have not yet even started my Listeroid.

I went to the scrap yard yesterday, and got some serious I-beam and some other metal framing material that I will use to make a frame for the engine and ST head, but I thought I would use copper water cooling lines wrapped around the exhaust pipes to capture additional waste heat -- but not use this to heat the WVO directly. 

I like the idea of converting my Lister to an active liquid cooled system, and tapping copper tubing around the exhaust flanges to capture more heat after the coolant has left the engine.  I will employ a heat exchanger radiator to harvest the waste heat from the engine in the winter, and route the coolant to an external radiator in the summer (until I build my Stirling engine to use that waste heat!).  Of course, I have the cooling system thermostatically controlled, like in a car.

Ambitious? I think so, but I have almost all the parts in, and am waiting really for the weather to get warm enough for me to work in the garage without getting blue lips.

I too, am running the Frybrid WVO conversion in my car, and it works wonderfully.  I learned a lot from Frybrid’s owner, Chris Goodwin, regarding decisions he made when designing his system.  Things like the coolant system is an ideal means of heating WVO because it is a fairly reliable and stable means of using waste heat to heat the fuel almost exactly in the ideal temperature pocket suitable for WVO fuel heating.  I also love his "hose in hose" design as a means of keeping the who warm when going from tank to engine and back.

I currently have the high bid on a Pollack 6 port valve on Ebay – and with any luck, I will have all the parts for my first attempt in time for the snow to melt so I can get into my garage again!
Converting everything I own to run on WVO

SHIPCHIEF

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #17 on: February 25, 2006, 05:01:44 AM »
Put a representative sample of the WVO in a skillet and heat it up while monitoring the temp with an infrared temp gun. Note the temp when the oil starts to change state: carmelling, carbon formation, bubbles of water, or anything you wouldn't want to see plate out in the line or injector, or get gritty and clog or wear the injector.
When you run your new heat exchanger system, monitor the outside of the fuel line with the temp gun and see how close you get to your self assigned danger point.
NOTE: THIS IS JUST MY PRACTICAL IDEA, I HAVE NOT TRIED THIS MYSELF.
Any other comments, improvements, or wise cracks are WELCOME.
Scott E
Ashwamegh 25/2 & ST12
Lister SR2 10Kw 'Long Edurance' genset on a 10 gallon sump/skid,
Onan 6.5NH in an old Jeager Compressor trailer and a few CCK's

danalinscott

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #18 on: March 24, 2006, 03:49:09 PM »
First post here.

Injector line heaters are a relatively new tool inthe VO conversion toolbox.
Those currently commercially avaialbe are pretty crude.
I am currently retrofitting several hundred heavy trucks with a more efficient design  line heater and have had several listeroids using them for some time.  Fuel consumption goes down indicating better fuel efficiency. On large turck ther is a comparative HP increase but I do not see this on small diesel engines like the Listers.

Combustion chamber carbon accretions..especially on the valves also appears to decrease significantly especially on engines run below thier optimum throttle setting or idled for significnat amounts of time.

At the very least light foam insulation helps avoid heat loss from the injector lines and is cheap and easy to add.

Dana
danalinscott@yahoo.com
« Last Edit: March 24, 2006, 03:55:38 PM by danalinscott »
Dana
danalinscott@yahoo.com

johnny williams

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #19 on: March 24, 2006, 09:19:56 PM »
Hey Guys. I am running a mix of veggie and WMO. I have a radiator from a Mazda for cooling. I start the engine on dino or bio let it get to operating temp and then switch to the mixture. I should also add the the radiator is for an automatic so I use this coil for heating the mixtuer, filter threw a fuel oil filter (General 1A2-5A) available at most hardware stores. This filter is also heated. I also heat the IP filter housing and the injector line. Sounds like over kill but I have had no issues...... yet.

bitsnpieces1

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #20 on: May 22, 2006, 12:02:24 AM »
  Hey guys check this thread out.  It's for RAW veggie oil, might be able to use lower temp for WVO.  Anyway, it's a university study of using preheated RVO in a Listeroid.  Sounds very promising.   
Lister Petter AC1, Listeroid 12/1, Briggs & Stratton ZZ, various US Mil. surplus engines. Crosley (American) 4cyl marine engine(26hp).

fattywagonman

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #21 on: May 25, 2006, 06:10:34 PM »
Hi folks, I sent Ken an injector line heater for testing...

Here's what Ken had  to say...

We are on the 3rd day of 24/7 running on the lister. The outside temps are running below zero. The temp in the gen shed is in the 50's. I have been running the line heater you sent me the entire time. I have noticed that the engine seems to have a bit more power, is runninmg very smooth, and the "Carbon Knock" that should have arrived by now hasn't. I strongly believe that the line heater is doing a very goood job!!
 
Best regards .... Ken

Last night it was -28*(f) and the barrel heater for the VO supply failed. The Fattywagon Line Heater kept working and the generator kept running until the oil in the barrel thickened so much the pump would not move it. The Line Heater protected the engine from ever getting way too cold VO. I restarted on diesel, turned on the heaters in the barrel and was able to switch back to WVO within an hour. As of 5am today the generator has been running 24/7 since last Tuesday at 5am (72hrs). The only time is was down was during the failure of the VO heat, less then 30 minutes.
Ken Gardner

The temperatures have climed up out of the sub-zeros, 10 above last night for a low. A real heat wave is predicted for today at above 30*
The Lister/generator ran 139 hours, 24/7 with the only time down needed for changing the VO filter and check engine oil. It burned right at 31 gallons of oil on this run. Most of the time it was running between 80-90% of full throttle providing power to the electric heaters in our cabin.
After my last long 24/7 run of 3 days the engine had carboned up to the point that the exhaust valve had hung open and was burned. I replaced it and cleaned up the head and piston. By the end of that run it also had a "Carbon Knock" caused by the build up of carbon on the head and piston.
This time John of www.fattywagons.com had blessed me with a fuel line heater. It heats the line between the IP and injector. Now there is no "Carbon Knock", the valves move freely, and the engine started right up this morning, no problem. In the past I would have to at least taken the head off and most likely clean the carbon out, and perhaps freed up the valves, but not this time. I believe that the reason is because the Fattywagon Fuel Line heater added the extra boost of heat just before the injector resulting in a far better burn, thus no carbon buildup.
Ken Gardner

 
If anyone is interested I sell the injector line heater for $18 www.fattywagons.com

danalinscott

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #22 on: May 25, 2006, 06:23:45 PM »
And I have a slightly more advanced line heater design available for $12 incl. shipping.
Dana
danalinscott@yahoo.com

Doug

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #23 on: May 25, 2006, 06:50:31 PM »
Yikes -28?
I live in Norhtern Ontario and the AC is running? Where does this poor bugger live????

Doug

ixtow

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #24 on: May 25, 2006, 07:10:57 PM »
the real difference in usefulness of Injector Line Heaters comes from low-consumption engines.  People who ahve experience with large automotive engines say it's not needed and dangerous, but that's becasue they suck fuel so fast that it has little dwell time in the Injector Lines to cool down.  If you drive a new VW Jetta that gets 50mpg, you will start to care very soon.  Listers fall into this category.  How long does it take the VO to go from the IP to the Injector?  In the F350 I had, it would take 8 seconds to purge at idle before shutting down.  Now you've got one cylinder sipping fule at MUCH lower rate...  and how long is that line?  Another reason that large-engine owners don't see a use for Injector Line Heaters, is still the very same.  Since the oil isn't in the line for very long, it doesn't pick up much heat from it either.  Dwell Time effects both ends of that argument.

Some say the Injector Line heaters make it too hot... I say they don't understand the idea of pulse-width modulation.  I bet a piece of nichrome wire that's 6 inches long will get pretty darn hot dropped across your alternator to ground...  I say to these people: How about a longer load, instead of telling us that Injector Line Heaters suck just becasue you didn't think about the installation properly?  Would you blame your car if you drove it off a cliff, too?  It must be the tires, tires are bad....

The point is to keep the oil at 160-180F.  200F doesn't hurt for slower flow operations.  But 400F "because of the damn line heaters" is just not using the heaters properly.

danalinscott

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #25 on: May 25, 2006, 07:48:09 PM »
Ken lives in Montana..but it was an old post from last winter that Fatty posted from him.
Its a bit warmer there now. ;D

" People who have experience with large automotive engines say it's not needed and dangerous, but that's becasuse they suck fuel so fast that it has little dwell time in the Injector Lines to cool down"

I would have to respectfully disagree.
Though you may in fact be paraphrasing one of my past statements.

The main application I am using injector line heaters on is large diesel truck engines.
Having run fairly extensive dyno and over the road testing I am satisfied that the line heaters I use are increasing combustion efficiency significantly by raising the VO temp to over 200°F prior to entering the injectors. I have also tested them extensivly on small low speed diesel gesets and found that combustion efficiency was raised by nearly the same %.  The main advantage ot using them on small constant load diesel is a lowering of carbon based valve, ring land,  and head accretions and longer maintenance intervals. We tend to get significantly less lube oil polymerization as well.

Improperly designed injector line heaters can be dangerous and inefficient.
Which is why the developer/manufacturer of the ones I use invested in very extensive testing (R&D) before I was even willing to give them a try let alone advise fleet clients that they were a wise investment.

So far over 3200 of them have been installed on clients trucks.
On these large engines the cost of installing them is paid back in fuel savings in less than 4 weeks.
Dana
danalinscott@yahoo.com

ixtow

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #26 on: June 01, 2006, 09:44:59 PM »
Perhaps I was unclear.  I was saying that of those persons who say Injector Line Heaters are superfluous/dangerous, you'll find few with small engines among them who aren't having to do major repairs.

Certainly you are correct.  Any engine can benefit from them.

The lack of them has a more dramatic impact on a small engine, was the point I was trying to make.  It cools off even more.  Thusly, I would almost call them mandatory on a small engine.  My 4cyl engines will not be running WVO without Injector Line Heaters, period.  You can get by without them, but life is so much better with them.

Would you be willing to elaborate on the design/installation technique that you use for your Heaters?

danalinscott

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #27 on: June 01, 2006, 10:06:46 PM »
Send me an email (in my sig) and I will send you a few of the installation sequence  pics.
One picture is worth a page of descriptions. ;D
Dana
danalinscott@yahoo.com

Defnac

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #28 on: June 19, 2006, 10:02:03 PM »
I cool my Lister with an automotive radiator, and was wondering how much the temp rise of the WVO would be, if I were to pump it through the transmission cooler lines...  Anyone have experience doing this?  The engine runs at 190 degrees, with a 16" box fan running, drawing 70 watts (Kill-a-Watt)...thanks.

Richard

johnny williams

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Re: heating the injection line
« Reply #29 on: June 20, 2006, 05:05:16 PM »
While I was running the WVO through the transmission line of the radiator all was fine. The only dray back was waiting for the water to get up to temp. I am in the process of changing my setup to the following:

I have an outside water stove made by Taylor Mfg. I am taking the "cool" water off of the bottom of the stove and using it for my engine coolant and the excess heat heats my domestic hot water in the summer ;D. The water stove has provisions for domestic hot water coils so I will use one of the extra coils to heat my WVO to 180 - 185*F the run through a WELL insulated line to the first of two filters and then to the IP on to the injector via a WELL insulated injection line. In my experience if the oil is not hot enough the you will have LOTS of carbon build up. I start on diesel get to temp switch to WVO then flush the system with diesel before shutting down.

What type of filters is everyone using for their WVO? I prefilter my oil to get the rocks out. Then filter through a whole house water filter(3 micron) then a NAPA fuel filter to catch any Water.