Pyrolysis chamber

Hello everybody!

Firstly I want to sincerely thank the founders and members of this wonderful resource rich rare and very interesting information.

I decided to use for engine feeding waste engine oil, rotten vegetable oil and fuel oil.

Opportunity to work on these fuels is a unique feature of the external combustion engines in general, steam engine in my opinion is the most promising design compared to Stirling.

For the realization of this idea I will create a steam engine with a pyrolytic chamber. Pyrolysis of contaminated fuel will dramatically increase combustion efficiency and thereby reduce ecologic damage at its utilisation.
I plan to install such engines on a chassis similar to Toledo, Stanley and the like. They impressed me stylistically. These steamers will be used by members of my family as a normal everyday vehicle.

I regularly read, I read and I will read your very interesting forum, now I have an opportunity to ask questions respected and more experienced colleagues.

With best wishes and a Happy New Year,

Andrew
Moscow
Russia.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2010 04:14AM by Tiamo.

Does the burner require an electric blower, or does the fuel spray draw in the needed air?

Karl Petersen

Hello Karl.
Thank you for your question.

I do not want to use a spray of liquid fuel for the subsequent burning it. In this case, the immutable part of the contaminated fuel will deposit on the tubes of spirals, with time this slag layer will become thicker and thicker, sharply worsening conditions of heat transfer. Clear the tube from the outer furnace slag will be virtually impossible.
We decided to use a special pyrolytic chamber. In its liquid fuel will be supplied to the pump with adjustable pitch, pyrolysis chamber is heated by radiation from near the top of the catalytic cone to 300-400 degrees Celsius, at this temperature for all the hydrocarbons will be converted into a gaseous state, and climb up to the catalytic cone, which will mix with air and burn completely without release of carbon monoxide, soot and unburned hydrocarbons. Catalyst Resource is 5000 hours of continuous burning. The catalyst is very cheap, the active part of it consists of iron(III) oxide. With proper design and correct settings should be cleaned from the pyrolysis chamber completely dry dusty white, yellow or gray slag after 240 hours of continuous operation and burning of 1000 liters (1 US liquid Quart = 0.95 liter) of used motor oil for boiler's thermal power 50-60 kW.

This design requires a pump for pumping a thick liquid and air fan for air supply.

Such boilers are used in Russia for stationary applications. I can put a photo or video if it will be interesting.

Regards,
Andrew.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2010 10:31AM by Tiamo.

Welcome!

Reuse of waste products makes for an interesting topic
Please do post pictures, or video, if you have it, I would learn something.

Thanks
Scott

Very good information. I would suggest that with the materials easily available to you an excellent first car would be the Educator buggy [www.firedragon.com] using an converted two-cycle inline 4 engine which uses roller bearings. A rotary starting valve of a simple kind would be useful on it. It may seem that this is not the perfect vehicle, but the learning experience it will give at a low cost will be very valuable and it will not take years to do. I speak from experience.

Karl Petersen

This is one of many realisations (Perm' city 58°00′50″ north 56°14′56″ east):

[www.youtube.com]

Peak power near 80 kW with the consumption of oil through the oil station of 10.5 liters per hour. No circulating pump for the coolant in the heating system is and so when a maximum fuel and air flow become coolant is boiling.
Max power near 60 kW,
Nominal power near 40 kW,

Pressurization fan of the stove from baby car seat with 3 degrees of adjustment.
The supply of fuel through the oil station to maintain the level of float chamber, the volume speed of the fuel is regulated. At moment of capture voltage on the engine is about 4 volts which corresponds to the filing of about 5,5 liters of fuel per hour. Evaporative type burner in the form of plates made of stainless steel supplied with the fuel. The length of the heating registers is 12 meters, plus a radiator from two small cars with powerful ventilators. The power supply - 250 watt transformer with a rectifier bridge.

Toggle switches on the power supply:
1. Total on/off
2. The fan on/off,
3. The oil pump on/off.

Adjustments:
1. Oil pump,
2. Fan pressurization of the boiler.

Author unsuccessfully tried to show us the smoke from the chimney. In his words a clear and white smoke dissipates immediately.

This is just one of the realizations.

Sincerely.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2010 07:42AM by Tiamo.

An another 2 devices.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2010 09:52AM by Tiamo.

Continue...

Types of combustion:



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2010 07:17AM by Tiamo.

Else:

The white soot:

Hello Andrew,

I am curious about what fuel you are using. What kinds of contamination are there? Organic compounds, like PCBs or PBBs, or metals like used lubricants or cutting oils? We have strict emission regulations about such chemicals and their burning. Are you checking what is in that white smoke?

Your project looks interesting, good luck

Tom

Hello Tom,

Thank you for your interest to our project and for your questions. I have know answers just for a part of its.

As usual we are using a used motor oil because most of such boilers are building by owners of car service stations. You can imagine yourself a kind of contamination for such fuel. We haven't any analysis of its content.

If we uses a catalyst of oxidation (iron(III) oxyde) in a burning gas flow and if we have there a slight excess of oxygen we haven't any smoke. Often we can't see even any flame in burner chamber, flame is absolutely transparent. Temperature of flame is very high and all organic compounds are destructs to oxides of simple elements. Russian army at now are destructs his very dangerous chemical weapons by pyrolytic way, any tests of pyrolitic reaction products by independent laboratories indicates that it is a very reliable method of complete decomposition.

But a condensate of exhaust gases if we are to supercool its is very corrosive. 1 heating season (6 months) = 1 chimney of ordinary steel. For high efficiency of boiler we must built a last heat exchanger for exhaust condensate process using stainless steel and a last outlet tube using polypropylene. The condensate we merge by passing it through at first an activated charcoal and at second a dolomite (CaCO3).

We suppose that it containing such acids like sulphurous acid, hydrochloric acid, and possibly any of nitrous acid. The same acid found in any standard exhaust when burning a natural hydrocarbon fuel is always a complex composition containing sulfur.
This acids do reaction of neutralisation with calcium carbonate (dolomite) and became a calcium sulphite, calcium chloride, calcium nitrite. Sulphite and nitrite slowly reacts with oxigen of air and became to sulphate and nitrate. Dissipation of dolomite by solution his SO3-SO4, NO2-NO3 and Cl salts in water is signal to adding CaCO3 to exhaust box.

Also we suspects that white or yellow or gray soot contains a oxides of such elements like molibdenum, vanadium, nickelum and other interesting and expensive things.

Merry Xmas for all!

Andrew
Moscow
Russia.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 08:39AM by Tiamo.

As I wrote above, to maximize the purity of exhaust gases we will use evaporation and gasification of liquid fuel through a pyrolysis. This technology long used in stationary boilers, we have not invented. We want to use this method for steam generators of steam cars.

When using this process all agents unable to evaporate or to gasify and then to burn (as a rule are inorganic substances) will remain as a compact dust in the pyrolytic chamber. This dust can be easily assembled with a brush or vacuum cleaner, if it turns out that in her includes valuable material that does not exclude the possibility of further use.
Perhaps they can be sold.

All other substances can vaporize or gasify at pyrolysis chamber and then completely burned in the combustion chamber to simple oxides. In this case, the exhaust gas represents a nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor and a vapors of the above acids. If we make the condensation of exhaust gas then acid can be easily and very cheaply neutralized, turning them into ordinary and safe water-soluble calcium salts.

In the case of nozzles for spraying a waste liquid fuel and direct combustion it into the combustion chamber all of inorganic materials are deposited on the tubes of heat exchanger and then fly into the atmosphere that is harm for the equipment and for the environment.

Keyword in terms of ecology - "pyrolysis".
Key words from an economic perspective - "used motor oil".

Sincerely.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2010 05:19AM by Tiamo.

Pyrolysis of this type, where the fuel and air are the ingredients, will leave behind oxides and acid gases. If pyrolysis occurs in a bed of limestone (CaCO3), then the oxides and gases are captured by chemical reaction. This leaves behind relatively neutral salts of the acids and, of course, the oxides of the metals. These oxides are then mixed with other solids and not so easily recovered.

The fluidized bed process using limestone has been popular in converting trash to energy in Europe for a few decades and our Hal Fuller developed it while at Wormser Engineering. This expands the fuel selection to any liquid or solid combustible of any shape which will fit into the pot, but adds the task of managing an air supply to complete combustion without smoke and managing the heat which cannot simply be switched off and on.

Carrying a fluidized bed in a vehicle is an intriguing concept, and we hoped Jim Golden would have built one for us to enjoy by now, but it that task will have to be enjoyed by others.

Karl Petersen

HI Tiamo your chamber is interesting how do you start it. Do you have to preheat it? If you steamer Tory efficiency is not important. But if you want to billed a car you can derive its as important as the wheels. A Stanly is 5or 6% a F doebl is 15% efficient and a Williams 22% and our teem is hoping to beet diesel efficiency. It takes for things to be efficient presser temperature clearness and cutoff ’ ‘ are engine is Zero clearance Zero compress. 6o% of what was dun in the 50s 60s and 70s woes garbage. So be capful. Hope this helps. Howard

A company I worked for in 1980 was testing a fluidized bed combustion unit for tires, to make steam for recapping operations. We used dolomite limestone and magnesia for the pebbles. Worked well on the pollution side, with very clean exhaust, trapping the sulfur as calcium sulfide. The problem was the steel tire cords, which would sinter together, interfere with feeding and gas flow, and made cleaning the beds a real pain, Crying shame, too; just think of all that potential fuel going to waste. As Karl said, this is much easier to do in a fixed plant, definitely not a quick response type of boiler burner. It took a fair amount of preheating to get the bed to ignition temperature. Seems like that was a problem with the original steamers, wasn't it? Considering the flexibility of fuel selection, however, it could be worthwhile for a hobby design, but not for a production vehicle.

Tom

Hi Guys,

I have just dropped by & noticed this thread. Can someone get me up to speed please? This looks very interesting. Is this pyroliser essentially "cracking" lubricating oil - thereby eliminating the heavy metal contaminents & converting long chain hydrocarbon molecules to shorter, more highly volatile products to be use later on in the process as a burner fuel?

I'm sorry if this is slightly off topic, but are any of you guys aware of any small scale batch process (continuous flow would be even better) wood pyrolisers?

Best wishes
Greg

Hey Greg,

This is a post mix(air fuel) vaporizing burner.

Much like the burner I posted about a year or so back(which was about a 50 or 60 year old design), here is a link to the thread.

[steamautomobile.com]

Except the one in this thread appears to trap the air and fuel mix in a heated tube and thusly that is where the vaporizing occurs.

Good Luck with the Barrett!

Caleb Ramsby

Greg Walker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Guys,
>
> I have just dropped by & noticed this thread. Can
> someone get me up to speed please? This looks
> very interesting. Is this pyroliser essentially
> "cracking" lubricating oil - thereby eliminating
> the heavy metal contaminents & converting long
> chain hydrocarbon molecules to shorter, more
> highly volatile products to be use later on in the
> process as a burner fuel?
>
> I'm sorry if this is slightly off topic, but are
> any of you guys aware of any small scale batch
> process (continuous flow would be even better)
> wood pyrolisers?
>
> Best wishes
> Greg

About pyrolysis and cracking:
[en.wikipedia.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2010 01:05AM by Tiamo.

hlangdon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> HI Tiamo your chamber is interesting how do you
> start it. Do you have to preheat it? If you
> steamer Tory efficiency is not important. But if
> you want to billed a car you can derive its as
> important as the wheels. A Stanly is 5or 6% a F
> doebl is 15% efficient and a Williams 22% and our
> teem is hoping to beet diesel efficiency. It takes
> for things to be efficient presser temperature
> clearness and cutoff ’ ‘ are engine is Zero
> clearance Zero compress. 6o% of what was dun in
> the 50s 60s and 70s woes garbage. So be capful.
> Hope this helps. Howard

Hello Howard,
Those pyrolytic boilers, which build for themselves or for their friends by our enthusiasts, have a pyrolytic chamber with some quantity of liquid fuel in it. The main of these boilers are constructed very primitive and they start using a direct ignition waste oil or diesel fuel by burning rags. Burning fuel heats the metal of pyrolysis chamber and the new portions of entering into it of fuel, oxygen concentration in the pyrolytic chamber decreases, the fuel begins to evaporate gradually growing stronger and burning moves itself into the combustion chamber, located above the pyrolysis chamber and it is served fresh air. Units of us seek comfort and set in such boilers any automatics.
However, it is possible, to the installation of a lambda probe, and such cases I known.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2010 05:17PM by Tiamo.

TH Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A company I worked for in 1980 was testing a
> fluidized bed combustion unit for tires, to make
> steam for recapping operations. We used dolomite
> limestone and magnesia for the pebbles. Worked
> well on the pollution side, with very clean
> exhaust, trapping the sulfur as calcium sulfide.
> The problem was the steel tire cords, which would
> sinter together, interfere with feeding and gas
> flow, and made cleaning the beds a real pain,
> Crying shame, too; just think of all that
> potential fuel going to waste. As Karl said, this
> is much easier to do in a fixed plant, definitely
> not a quick response type of boiler burner. It
> took a fair amount of preheating to get the bed to
> ignition temperature. Seems like that was a
> problem with the original steamers, wasn't it?
> Considering the flexibility of fuel selection,
> however, it could be worthwhile for a hobby
> design, but not for a production vehicle.
>
> Tom

I think too that pyrolysis of tires is a stationary method. One of the product of this reaction is a "synthetic oil" which can be divided into fractions by conventional distillation.

My bad, it appears to be just like a pre-mix vaporizing burner, just instead of having the fuel under high pressure and in a small tube, it is under a very low pressure and is inside of a large tube.

Thusly, it can not clog from boiling heavy liquid fuels, simular in principle to the solid fuel gasifiers that are used in third world countries for cooking and such.

Very simular to the burner that Nadar Kalili used to fire his geltaftan houses with. His burner was composed of one tube inside of another with the end gaps sealed with strips of steel welded in. The fuel was admited(from a drum 20 or so feet in the air) in the cavity between the two tubes and the vaporized fuel exited nozzles facing into the open center of the inner tube.

The fire was partially contained inside the inner tube and that provided the heat to vaporize the fuel with. The large and open fuel vaporizing chamber inbetween the two tubes kept it from getting choked up with deposits and allowed him to use heavier liquid fuels to fire the houses with.

Caleb Ramsby

Hello Howard,

You have mentioned several times that the projected efficiency of the zero clearance/zero compression engine project is in the Diesel engine range. This would then be projecting roughly an engine efficiency of about 39% and with a boiler efficiency of 90% for an overall efficiency of 35% which is roughly what a Diesel engine in good tune might get.

I look at the thermodynamics of this type of engine and don't come up with any increase in efficiency over a high compression unaflow engine. What I do find though is that the engine displacement would be smaller for the same HP output.

The work output of a counterflow engine is basically H1 -H2 or the change in enthalpy during the cycle. The Unaflow engines work output is H1 - U2 or the starting enthalpy minus the end of expansion internal energy of the steam. This is because the Unaflow does NOT have to use work to push the steam out of the cylinder (PV work).

The work of re-compression in a high compression Unaflow is returned to the expansion process and cancels out. (Ideally.) The work of exhausting steam by pushing it out of the cylinder by piston force, as with a counterflow, is not returned and so the engine requires a greater expansion ratio than does a Unaflow for the same efficiency.

Your group was working on a wet steam re-compressor at one point, as I understand it. A wet steam re-compressor is a very hard thing to design and build so that it works efficiently but it is not an impossibility. This re-compressor could raise the efficiency by a good margin.

Is the re-compressor part of the system you are considering when talking of the high efficiency??


Best Regards,


Bill G.

Bill,

There are a few other things to consider too:
* Counterflow engines, slide or piston valve, have greater flow friction losses than a unaflow with the poppet valve in the head, preferably opening directly into the bore.
* Most unaflow engines do not exhaust against any backpressure; but into a vacuum, or at least they certainly should.
* High compression develops a higher heat in the residual steam in the cylinder due to the temperature generated by the high compression, thus lessening the loss of cooling down the incoming steam by mixing with the cooler exhaust. High compression also means a minimum clearance volume, also lessening the loss of filling that void before the steam is going to work on the piston.
* Unaflow engines generally have a much greater exhaust port area than any counterflow.
* The ultimate expression of the unaflow steam engine is the twin crankshaft opposed piston type. Less conduction losses to the head area, better and larger ports for exhaust and the nice feature of total dynamic balance. The SAE bookstore has a new book on opposed piston engines and all should buy a copy and see what is going on in one.
* The drive does not have to be taken off one of the crankshafts; but off the synchronizing cross shaft, which can run at a different speed than the crankshafts.
* Single acting engines can safely operate at higher speeds than a counterflow, making matching to available differential ratios much easier. The inertia loads are much less.
* Single acting poppet valve unaflow engines usually are happy with less cylinder oil than counterflow engines. Or, forget this oil and use injected water on the rings and use water lubed ball or roller bearings. Now the upper superheat temperature can safely be raised, removing that cap on improving the efficiency.

Sort of points the way to go if one is really interested in designing an efficient steam engine.
Question: Why on earth would one add a wet steam compressor lump of iron when the same gains may be had in the operating cylinder?

Jim



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2010 11:21PM by Karl Petersen.

Hello Jim,

Jim a wet steam compressor will theoretically perform a similar service as re-generation would. Looking at the T-S diagram re-generation will put a vertical line on the left side from saturated condensate to saturated high pressure steam. This is done by bleeding off steam from the engine which has gone at least through the constant pressure part of the process and consequently done some work output in the engine.

Generally several places are tapped for re-generation steam during the expansion process. This is easy with a turbine but harder with a piston engine. Instead of tapping the expanding steam somewhere it is far easier to just take the heat from the cylinder wall to heat the feed water as the Cyclone engine does. Also use the exhaust steam to add heat to the feed water. This helps lower the cylinder wall temperature for oil usage.

The problem here is that a steam engine at partial throttle or short cutoff will have a lower temperature exhaust and cylinder temperature making re-generation less effective by this method and cruising down the road is where we need the highest efficiency.

A wet steam re-compressor, if it works efficiently, can maintain the vertical line on the left side of the T-S diagram at lower engine output and will adjust itself to the needs of the engine by moving farther right as engine output decreases.

The trade offs apply, of course, as to adding a "chunk of iron". Much would have to go into the design of it as to efficiency, size and cost to see what the trade offs are and if it is worth it. As to design, compressing wet steam from exhaust steam is a real challenge as the compression ratio is usually very, very high (About 100: 1) and the compression process has to be cooled as it progresses. The re-compression of wet steam is a lot harder than the expansion of it, if you can imagine.

In expansion of steam into the wet zone we have mist droplets forming which are very small and vapor still expanding. The expanding vapor is cooling the droplets. They are its heat sink and they grow as they cool and also more mist forms.

After the expanding steam has set for a small while bigger droplets form. In re-compression of this wet steam those droplets first see a higher pressure which slows down their vaporizing process. The vapor in this mix starts to heat and those droplets are slower to vaporize than mist would be. If additional fine cool mist is not provided the mix will re-compress to superheat and water droplets. The efficiency of the process goes out the window. Not impossible but a tough nut to crack.


Best, ----------- Bill G.

Bill,

The question is WHY?? Unless it is just and exercise in design engineering.
Regeneration is easy to do, light weight, static and it works all the time, it also works best when the delta T is highest, just what you want. So why complicate matters by this compressor thing? 100-1 compression means, probably, a piston compressor which is large to handle the maximum mass flow rate, vibrates, costly and has to be driven and not by some wimpy motor either.

Then consider how are you going to drive it? The mass flow rate is highest at start with long cutoff and large throttle opening. The function of this compressor seems to me to be the same as a condenser fan turbine or draft booster. Wide open when starting, accelerating or climbing a long hill, loafing along when on the highway.
It constantly amazes me that people insist on complicating the Rankine cycle system, when skilled engineering when designing the engine and he rest of it can produce better results with much less cost, bulk and weight.

I always remember what Marc Lothrup said to me at one of he SACA meets when someone made the most complicated goofy eccentric crankshaft thing for an opposed six cylinder engine: "A kinematic oddisy that ought to remain a rarity."
Have fun.

Bill, We are going off topic again, as much fun as it is. I think this posting had something to do with a version of a wood gas generator for the burner, or something like that.

Jim



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2010 11:58AM by Jim Crank.

Tiamo you have very nice flame dispersion...


Lets not hyjack Tiamo's thread here, Regarding the ZCZC wet steam engine process, I not even sure if thats applicable, because with Zero Compression, there can be no recompression.

Didnt JandP (Jerry P) make a topic on the ZCZC engine?

Jeremy

Looks like good clean combustion too.
I have one of those wood gas stoves and when it is running, the flame looks like this one.
They talk about pyrolysis on the "Wood Gas" web site, so i wonder if this is not quite similar in actual function?

Jeremy, That's what I said in the previous post. Let's stay on topic, no matter how much fun it is to deviate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2010 08:06PM by Jim Crank.

Combustion is VERY clean, it's tru. A used motor oil in this cases always passes through
1. instant Nd-Fe-B magnet,
2. 0,3 mm filter and next through
3. 20 000 rpm centrifuge. To boiler fuel comes as transparent fluid.

Exhaust gases go to atmosphere, it is our breathing air. Nobody don't wants to die.

Thank you, but this is photo of not my boiler. But in Russia there are many peoples that can make boilers like this. We have special russian web-resource.

Your deviating discussion is very interesting for me.

Happy New Year!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2010 05:34AM by Tiamo.

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