Hi Jamison,

Ron asked me to calculate his burner output. So I started with an energy equation, orifice sizes and mixing tube sizes. I used Bernoulli Equation to get estimated flow. All this was going well until I tried estimating the temperature of the fuel coming out the nozzle...then it became really radical.

When someone provides an output in BTU/hour of a burner, you need to be careful on how this was determined. If you want the best way to determine the burner output, do it the old fashion way. Fill your gas tank, run your burner for a known amount of time and then measure the amount of fuel needed to fill the tank again. With this information, you can calculate the burner output in BTU per hour. The calculation will probably require converting gallons to lbs. You can do it!

However, I wouldn't waste my time. From experience, you have a kick-ass burner, I can see it in your video and confirmed from other folks like Peter and Ron. You have plenty of burner to make tons of steam. Let us focus on the boiler?

In my opinion, I think that the swirl method will provide excellent heating to your coils. Proceed with vigor my friend!

Kind regards,
Rick H.

Quote: "every (non-regulator) weed burner torch I could find for sale on the internet advertises the same 500,000 BTU output for their torches using a 20# tank."


As Rick says, it's really not important, I was just trying to answer your valid question, regarding the claimed 500k propane rating, the new burner looks as though it would be a step down in output. I think you'll be surprised how much more heat you get out of it though. Yes, we're all anxious to see your boiler design.

-Ron

Rick and Ron,

Thanks for clarifying and looking into that for me...I just want to make sure I’m on the right track with the new burner. It works and burns nice and blue...and how well it turns water into steam is what really matters. You guys are right, time to move on to the boiler...

Jamison

Ron,

Thanks for your comments on vaporizing burner warm-up. Those really got my inventor brainstorming going. For now, I am thinking of using an Ottaway vaporizer, maybe with thicker-wall tubing and some adjustable heat-shields.

Jamison,

With those sweet blue flames, I think that you are on the right track. SACA should have a "Blue Flame Award" for members who achieve this kind of excellent combustion. You'd win it hands-down. Definitely time for you to move ahead to boiler design!

Peter

A question for this thread:

The burner used in the steam generator on our LSR Streamliner was a vaporizing type, with good performance and absolutely no problems with carbon formation in the vaporizer. The vaporizer consisted of 20 feet of 3/8 S/S tubing with the vapor temp running at 900-1000F. When vapor temperatures of 400F are discussed here-I can't understand how the burner could even function. My burner would not work properly or consistently at a temp of even 600F. I was running regular gasoline, and including all the testing and dyno runs-we ran for many hours. I cut apart the original vaporizer to check it for carbon or other problems before we ran at Bonneville, and found no carbon at all.

Sure-we were burning quite a bit more fuel than you all are discussing here, but the vapor temps should correlate-eh?


Regards-Chuk

Hi Chuk,

That is interesting and food for thought. If I recall correctly, you were burning somewhere around 30 gal/hr? That would be somewhere north of 3 Million BTU!, my guess is with the fuel velocity it never had time to crack It's not likely that it set for long periods with no flow in a heated vaporizer.

-Ron

What kind of fuel pressures do you want for a vaporizing burner? Would that depend on the nozzle size? I put a gauge on my stove and I got around 5 psi. You can buy dirt cheap fuel pumps that put out about that pressure. Otherwise the next step up is high wattage high pressure car fuel pumps.

Hi Chuk,
Hope all is well with you my friend and nice to hear you giving input.

Unfortunately I don't have an answer to your question...I don't believe we have enough information about your system. I'll talk with Nick and get some details pursuant to understanding this phenomenon.

However, for folks on the thread, Chuk mentioned that he has a vaporizing burner. Not to long ago I posted pictures of my burner for my Stanley H look-alike. This type of burner is a Pressure Burner where it utilizes the force of the vaporized gas from a nozzle, injected into a trumpet type of tube (mixing tube) and then burned in a pressure drop device (burner branches). So there are three (3) components to a pressure burner; vaporizing tube, mixing tube and burner grate/branches depending on the configuration.

So a vaporizing burner may not be the same as a pressure burner. Carbon chunks are a problem in the pressure burner, they get stuck in the nozzle.

After I talk with Nick, I'll have more insight...more to come. The answer may be simple that Chuk just doesn't have a nozzle to catch the carbon chunks.

Kind regards,
Rick

To add to the discussion, here is a video of a guy talking about his Stanley and the carbon issues.


[www.youtube.com]

-Ron

Rick, Ron, and all-

Ron-you may be right-perhaps I'm comparing "chalk to cheese"! The fuel burn was substantial and there was minimum time when the fuel wasn't flowing thru the system. The fuel pressure was over 200 psi-perhaps that helped a bit too. I did have a slight problem with carbon flakes when I first built the burner because there was a hot spot in the vaporizer that was getting too much heat input. Once I got that problem solved there were no further problems.

Rick-I had a vaporizing burner, whereas the pressurized fuel was blown thru a vaporizer and then thru 16-.040 jets to be mixed with air and burnt. The pressurized air for combustion was supplied by a blower, but the burner would still be called a "vaporizing burner". In the books I've read regarding burners and combustion the type burner that you guys have-with the pressurized jet of fuel vapor used to pull in combustion air-is called an "atmospheric burner".

What I find amazing about a vaporizing burner is how fast you can completely combust a helluva lot of fuel in a very small space when you heat it to 1000F before ignition!


Chuk

"What kind of fuel pressures do you want for a vaporizing burner? "

Mostly depends on the size of the burner and the type. As you wrote, a small campstove sized vaporizing burner only requires 5 psi, my stoves I use for pilots run at 15 psi. A larger burner will run anywhere from 40 to 200 psi fuel pressure. The lower fuel pressure types are typically used in conjunction with secondary air i.e. fresh air openings in the bottom of the enclosure, The Stanley/Baker are sealed types pull all of their air in through the mixing tube so much higher fuel pressure is needed for increased velocity. A standard automotive fuel pump will work.

-Ron

I found a fuel injected motorcycle fuel pump. It has a built in pressure relief and regulates to around 40 psi. My only complaint is that it draws ~50 watts to deliver ~10 times the fuel needed, and I don't know if pwm control would work properly to reduce the current consumption. I'm thinking about ordering it and a gun oil burner nozzle, and hooking them up together to see what happens.

I also thought about using an ultrasonic vaporizer to vaporize the gasoline. Theoretically it can be far more energy efficient than pressure atomization. However, cheap vaporizers are not designed with this in mind. A properly designed one could provide the 1gph flow that I want using maybe 10 watts, but that would be custom designed for the application. I might still order a cheap one and see what kind of flow rate I can get out of it. 1gph of gasoline is 40KW thermal.

I built a gasoline burner with an ultrasonic vaporizer last year, just to test the idea. The air was supplied by a compact PC cooling fan. The commercial vaporizers have a sensor to turn them off if the water level gets low, and this sensor won't work with water. I had to disconnect it and short out the leads.

The problem is that the unit is very sensitive to the depth of the fluid above the vaporizer. Too high or too low and the vapor production diminishes rapidly. Of course, tilting the container causes a shift in level, makes operation difficult on slopes or in turns at a significant fraction of a gee. It's a bit tricky putting air into the chamber and taking an air/vapor mix out … if the discharge is too close to the vaporizer, you'll get a lot of wet gasoline out. Too far away and the air might bat vapor out of the way.

If you really check out the vaporizer ratings, you'll find the current draw is still significant for a decent sized flame.

Honestly, while I could see using a vaporizer disc for a pilot light while stationary, my experiments didn't look promising as a main source of flame.

Ken



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2018 07:47AM by frustrated.

Quote: "I found a fuel injected motorcycle fuel pump. It has a built in pressure relief and regulates to around 40 psi. My only complaint is that it draws ~50 watts to deliver ~10 times the fuel needed"

Yep, that is a lot of current over a long period, would likely be cheaper to have a 12 volt air compressor for the fuel tank. That is the beauty of using air, it's essentially a spring that can store energy for long periods of fuel delivery, unlike a liquid pump that would be needed continually.

The Conrad steam car I'm currently restoring has an onboard air pump as many of these small carriages had. That is how it is used for this type system, it is only needed and ran occasionally and it omits the need for an actual air surge tank and regulator. The fuel pressure can be adjusted on the fly - see a long hill coming, cut in the air pump and increase the fuel pressure - hotter fire.

The Later Stanley fuel system does this automatically with axle driven pumps and very small tanks. The main fuel tank is at atmospheric. It was much safer in the event of an accident or broken fuel line.

-Ron

Hi Chuk,
I did some research on burner terminology. Here is what I found: yes a Stanley Burner is a atmospheric burner much like a gas stove. Also, Ron runs two (2) Primus backpack stoves that operate a little differently. The pressurized fuel shouts out the nozzle, vertical to a plate and gets atomized and burns. Good stoves, don't get me wrong. Nick and I experimented with my Primus Stove [primus.us] and found the flame to be lazy when put into a boiler configuration like my spiral, fire tube boiler. It would not push through the fire tubes.

After some thought, I decided that a burner that would push through the fire tubes was needed. Hence, I thought I needed a pressure burner. A turkey fryer, propane burner fits the bill. I found where someone calls it a pressure burner.
[www.forbesmarshall.com]

OK, how about the terminology of a vaporizing burner? Yes, we combine a vaporizer with the burner to excite the gasoline to vapor and shout it out a nozzle. The classic example is the Coleman camp stove, gasoline burner. [www.coleman.com]

I would smize to say that a Stanley/Ofeldt/White/etc. type of burner is a vaporizing, pressure burner. Hope this makes sense.

I still trying to talk with Nick about your burner. From what I'm hearing, it's a vaporizing, pressure burner on steroids

Kind regards,
Rick

Quote: " The pressurized fuel shouts out the nozzle, vertical to a plate and gets atomized and burns. "

It gets vaporized and burns. They use a plate vaporizer that is commonly called "post-mix vaporization". The plate heats up from the burn. I've thought about that for a large scale burner. Incidentally, I think that is how electric "gun-burners" work in a furnace, there is a back plate in the furnace combustion chamber that gets hot and vaporizes the atomized fuel.

On the Otpmius Nova stoves there is a tiny .008" stream of fuel that sprays up against the plate and instantly vaporizes. Serpolet used that type of a burner head on a manifold grid. The cool thing about the Optimus stove is a magnet can be waved under neath which repels an opposing magnet inside the burner casting and shoves a tiny wire through the orifice and cleans it. Cleaning the orifices if needed is very simple. The body of the burner does get hot over time, with white fuel, I think it eventually vaporizes the fuel before it ever reaches the orifice, they are 8000 BTU each and very reliable.

-Ron

Technically, all these burners which use fuel vapor pressure to pull air into a mixing tube, then burn the fuel/air mix, are called "Bunsen burners". The ones which pull secondary air through gaps in the grate are "atmospheric" burners; Stanley type burners are Bunsen principle, but not "atmospheric", because the firebox burns at a pressure above atmospheric pressure. Early White burners had secondary air ports and were "atmospheric" burners; later Whites had a sealed firebox which operated above atmospheric pressure. When you get the firebox above atmospheric pressure, you can shove more combustion products through the firetubes and/or tube stack, improving performance and reducing tube stack volume relative to atmospheric pressure. Add a fan, or ram air, and you can boost burner/boiler performance per unit volume and weight far above "atmospheric burners". Or reduce burner/boiler weight/volume to steam generation ratio, for a given continuous steam output.

Hi Ron,
Thank you for the correction...atomized should be vaporizing plate. Nice explanation of the principle.

Peter,
You bring out an excellent point about the mass flow rate on a burner. When you increase the flow of hot gasses to the boiler, the heat transfer rate goes up and one gets better boiler performance/response. I have mentioned to Jamison about building a boiler where the hot gasses should travel a mile a minute. In other words, have the hot gas pass over generating tubes in a path that if straightened out would be a mile. This is an important consideration.

Sort of technical, the mass flow rate component used within heat transfer equation will show the above point to be true. It is a direct relationship, increase mass flow rate of hot gasses and energy exchange goes up.

OK, still don't believe me. I experiment with my steam scooter often. When using one of my first Bunsen Burners (hope you like that), I wasn't happy with its performance. It was too small. However, when I attached a fan to the exhaust duct and pulled the hot gasses through, man did she respond. So when I fire up my scooter now with a sized Bayou Burner, I get steam up to a point where the blower will work. This brings steam up faster than just firing with the hot gas flow via gravity.

Note this is contrary to operating a wood shove where you use a damper. One might believe that the damping transfers the heat more. Sorry, not true. It just makes the fire last longer, burn slower and provide extended heating time.

To All,
Just wanted to point this out because I believe it to be an important point.

Kind regards,
Rick

Hi Rick,

Yes, mass flow is very important. The water-recirculation/steam generation calcs for my current boiler design show potential for much higher steam output. I plan to work it out for Stanley-style vaporizing burner, then experiment with higher/regulated-pressure ram air feed, and perhaps additional staged fuel vapor jets, to boost the firing rate and output for the same tube stack -- after the more-traditional setup is running well on the road. The Stage One design should provide more than ample steam for lower vehicle speeds; the regulated ram air should kick it up to spectacular output at higher vehicle speeds, which are the only conditions where it would be useful.

But one thing at a time. First Stage One. To feed boiler and burner for that, I need fuel & water pumps. I do want to finish the oil pump drawings at the same time; "strike while the iron is hot", so to speak, with similar [pump-] design work. Designing all the pumps at the same time has been very helpful. The oil pump unit is so neat that I am tempted to build it ASAP, but realistically I should shelve those drawings until the boiler and burner are ready to run an engine. Then build oil pump.

Doble got a big increase in the firing/steam rate of his tube stack by adding his "turbo-booster" to the burner. Over the years, Stanley & White improved their steam generator performance with increased mass flow too, though by different methods. Note Ron's comment on higher fuel pressures in Bunsen-principle burners increasing air flow and [sealed-] combustion chamber pressure, relative to lower-fuel-pressure, secondary-air burners.

Peter

I bought this air atomizing nozzle from ebay to play around with. I originally also got a very small air pump that was woefully inadequate to run the nozzle. I plan on testing it out with one of those little yellow harbor freight 12 volt inflators. It says it pulls 10 amps, but since I'll only be running a few psi, it should draw less current. Also, once I'm up to steam, I can always switch to steam atomizing. I thought about just doing pressure atomizing like an oil burner, but I didn't like the selection of pumps that I could reasonably get ahold of. They all had flow rates and accompanying current draws that were way higher than what I needed. It would be more possible if I could get ahold of a small pressure accumulator or something.

Quote: if I could get ahold of a small pressure accumulator

On Ebay they have new small air tanks for sale pretty reasonable. I use a 1/2 gallon for the pilot tank on the Locomobile.

Since I'm storing pressurized liquid, I would either need a bladder tank, or a level sensor that worked with petroleum. I could probably make a capacitance level sensor, especially since it's not a heated tank. In any case, I'm gonna try this air atomizer first.

One idea I plan to try, to tell how much fuel and how much air are in a fuel pressure tank, is to mount the tank on vertical slides, kinda like the ways on a lathe, with tank sitting on a spring, with a step-up lever attached to the tank. The step up lever is set up so that if the tank drops or rises, say, 1/8 inch, the long end of the lever moves a full inch. Put a little arrow on the long end of the lever, pointing to an arc-shaped indicator, which is easily marked to show how much fuel/air is in the tank. Fill tank 1/4 fuel 3/4 air, and mark the position on the indicating card. Then fill/mark 1/2 fuel, 3/4 fuel, etc, and as many points in between as desired. Or just mark the ideal fuel/air content, and add compressed air when indicator shows too much fuel in pressure tank [IE, tank too heavy]. It should not be difficult to calibrate.

If the tank has too much air, it will rise; too little air, and the tank will drop. The step-up indicator lever/arrow make the slight changes visible, so that you can add (or remove) just the right amount of air.

This requires a flexible fuel hose between tank and chassis. Probably a small coil of stainless-braided high-pressure polymer tubing.

My idea is just to use this for topping off air in fuel pressure tanks, and add 1 or more wingnut screws to lock the tank to its slides when on the road. But it could be used to indicate fuel level in fuel pressure tanks while driving, with the understanding that the indicator needle is going to bounce around a lot over road bumps.

My duplex oil pump is now fully blueprinted, and the fuel and water pumps are 90% blueprinted. Looking forward to finishing the fuel pump design, & building it, so's I can pump up pilot & main fuel pressure tanks and do pilot/main burner experiments.

Another trick I plan to try is a main fuel pressure tank big enough to fire up the boiler without hand pumping of fuel. Fuel pressure and firing rate will drop a bit toward end of fire-up of course.

For pilot, I got a Harbor Freight 5-gallon compressed air tank rated to somewhere over 100 psi.. I will only be running about 20psi in it. If it ever pinholes thru, then fragrant fuel drips on ground, alerting operator, and it's a cheap/easy replacement.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2018 01:25AM by Peter Brow.

[www.harborfreight.com]

Gotta dig HF's motto "Quality Tools At Ridiculously Low Prices". Maybe Brow Motors should rip this off: "Quality Steam Cars At Ridiculously Low Prices".

LOL

P



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2018 02:54AM by Peter Brow.

Z,

I just checked out your air-atomizing nozzle link. Looks good. I think that you can build a good burner around that, if you can work out the compressed air supply issue. There are several possibilities. No "fuel-boiling" vaporizer tube, etc is an advantage. I wish you the best of luck with this.

P

Quote: "storing pressurized liquid, I would either need a bladder tank"

If an air tank (accumulator) is above the liquid line in the bullhead of a Tee fitting perhaps, air is trapped in the tank. Air doesn't really need to be added, not for the short term anyway. This is how most piston water pumps were set up from the factory a hundred years ago, that is what the light bulb shaped casting is, it's an accumulator that traps air above and cushions the delivery eliminating water hammer, and too, it can store pressure. Doesn't even have to be a tank, on my Locomobile, I have a feedwater heater tubing coil in the muffler that coils up and back down, it traps air in the upper coils and eliminates water hammer. Just anything that the liquid flow is up and the only way out is back down, air will take care of the rest on it's own Some steamboaters use a simple T with a nipple going up and a cap on it for a shock arrester, it can be that easy. This is something to avoid on suction side piping lest it become "air-locked". The is why most feedpumps are mounted below the lowest level of the water tank.

Using an accumulator with an electric pump, the size of the accumulator will determine how often the pump needs to run. My advice, I wouldn't mess with any sort of fuel pump when an air over fuel tank works very good and 100% reliable. Air it up in the morning and it will run all day. You could have have an onboard air pump to bump it up occasionally if it's needed longer or when refueling, I have a "Slime" air compressor and motorcycle battery in a gym bag that I take along to the shows. On my Locomobile, I run the main air tank (which is not mandatory, a single fuel tank with air over liquid will work), at 100 psi and then I have regulator set at 50 for the main fuel and another set at 15 psi for the pilot tank, it runs and maintains fuel pressure until the three gallon main fuel tank is empty. With omission of a main air tank and simply air over liquid in one tank, fuel pressure will drop as the tank empties, but not very much.

-Ron

A pressurized fuel tank would be nice, but it requires more fabrication that I want to devote to a fuel tank, and it would be considerably heavier than an unpressurized tank and a pump. I tested running the nozzle on a little portable inflator, and I think it'll work as far as the air goes for atomization, but the fuel is gonna need a little help. I'm gonna get one of those little 2-4psi fuel pumps for carburetors and see what that does.

All files from this thread

File Name	File Size		Posted by	Date
640C5047-6B78-47A5-B045-F4F00A84FBF4.jpeg	957 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/16/2018	Read message
96A28C2C-17CD-41F1-8D11-37905D634D9E.jpeg	684.2 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/16/2018	Read message
36ADD9C9-456E-4D50-A58A-4C7AC9BE114F.jpeg	576.5 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/16/2018	Read message
867A82F5-F7A4-43E1-9D0F-E413EF16E0A3.jpeg	1008.3 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/16/2018	Read message
2725071C-B274-48F5-B770-5A5D44AD6B99.jpeg	721.1 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/16/2018	Read message
shotgun burner.jpg	124.8 KB	open | download	IronChief	07/16/2018	Read message
C3D8EBEC-A9CE-4570-A750-D6C42B544FA5.png	469.3 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/18/2018	Read message
induced.vacuum.jpg	87.1 KB	open | download	IronChief	07/19/2018	Read message
Captain Obvious.jpg	181.7 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/20/2018	Read message
induced.vacuum.steam.jpg	101.3 KB	open | download	IronChief	07/20/2018	Read message
Captain Obvious Challenge.jpg	504.2 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/21/2018	Read message
0FBC4EF8-3A45-488F-A161-47726163E31F.jpeg	403 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/21/2018	Read message
6D7426B8-4941-46D7-BE60-8729779ECF9B.jpeg	424.7 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/21/2018	Read message
E48CAB66-FFDD-4731-B01F-A99F15B2547D.jpeg	207.2 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/21/2018	Read message
F22D2F95-4B6C-40D8-A6D0-61DBF2DCE420.jpeg	542.5 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/21/2018	Read message
IMG_1276.JPG	81.8 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/22/2018	Read message
IMG_1277.JPG	74.7 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/22/2018	Read message
IMG_1279.JPG	108.7 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/22/2018	Read message
IMG_1280.JPG	116.4 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/22/2018	Read message
IMG_1284.JPG	92.7 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/22/2018	Read message
IMG_1285.JPG	99.3 KB	open | download	Rick.H	07/22/2018	Read message
6017E3FE-E953-4AB6-BE02-2D3C077DA1E0.jpeg	664.7 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/22/2018	Read message
83BF5277-AE68-465B-A380-1008D360D5BF.jpeg	590.3 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/22/2018	Read message
0BC90872-14E9-4FEE-8F79-8483F63B0332.jpeg	744.8 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/22/2018	Read message
5C63A818-486E-4518-A00F-FCDB30B8D75B.jpeg	294.4 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/23/2018	Read message
BB73683C-2180-4227-A967-FC326E2C09C9.jpeg	195.1 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/23/2018	Read message
273195EF-A22B-419C-9B27-8882EDA2B062.jpeg	185.3 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/23/2018	Read message
AFC19B7B-2A0C-4EB7-B3E0-E687204F45A2.jpeg	245.9 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/23/2018	Read message
37D4D97C-F034-4DB9-A3B7-994B6E8A0176.jpeg	113.2 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/23/2018	Read message
6F41BBB0-5E25-49A7-8A59-B2FB091A2981.jpeg	563.7 KB	open | download	Arch-Tone	07/23/2018	Read message