Easy-Clean Vaporizing Burner

In case anyone is interested, I wanted to post a note that after many months of extremely difficult inventing/design/blueprinting work, I have finished the fully-detailed blueprints/shop drawings for my previously-mentioned "Easy-Clean Burner Cleaner System". If this system works in practice, then it means that all carbon can be blown out of a steam car vaporizing burner [including pilot] by merely pulling back a handle, which operates several valves in sequence, such that high-pressure boiler steam blows all the carbon out of the vaporizer, filter screens, etc.. The shop drawings now look complete enough to build the system for initial testing. 33 sheets of drawings, 93 parts, almost all parts off the shelf, all custom parts easily machined from standard materials on simple basic home-shop equipment.

Essentially, to clean the vaporizing burner with this system, the operator pulls back a handle 9 inches, with about 10 lbs pull, holds it back for about 3 seconds, then releases it slowly back to "start position". 5 seconds total. The pull handle is a standard off the shelf starter cord/handle for a small gas engine, like a gas lawn mower. ~US$5 from McMaster or any hardware store. Pull-handle is located just under instrument panel, near driver's seat, so you just sit in driver's seat to operate it. No "get out and get under" with a box of tools. Compare that to the considerable time/effort/difficulty involved in taking apart/re-assembling an old-time steam car vaporizing burner to clean it.

With the capacious steam-cleaned carbon filter screens which I have designed, and vaporizer length "tuned" for minimum carbon, I believe that this burner will run on ordinary low-cost modern gas-station gasoline, with no carbon plug-up, if the steam-clean handle is pulled at each fuel refill.

Of course none of this has actually been built and tested yet.

Thanks to Ron Roberts for his circa October 2018 comments, which I would paraphrase [though he might not approve] as: "If it weren't for vaporizing burners plugging up with carbon, then traditional steam cars would be virtually trouble-free". He credited Fred Marriott in his comments, so another tip of the hat, in that direction, is fitting. I spent many years working on easy/automatic vaporizing burner carbon-cleaners until about 2005, when Jim Crank convinced me that simply tuning vaporizer length could eliminate burner carbon. But recently, especially with increasing ethanol content of "pump gas", I came to suspect that an easy-carbon-cleanout system was needed -- in addition to a carefully-tuned vaporizer,

That has now been fully invented, designed, and blueprinted/shop-drawn, and only awaits building and testing.

Wish me luck!

Peter



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2019 07:06AM by Peter Brow.

5 seconds of clean time versus, well, I have read estimates varying from 15-45 minutes carbon-cleanout time for old-time steam car burners.

So, 15 minutes to clean an old-time burner, versus 5 seconds with this system. 900 seconds versus 5 seconds. So my system is 180 times faster to clean than the old burners. 180 versus one. My system has a bigger number. The bigger number always wins, same as with fuel mileage. Never mind other factors like vehicle weight, frontal area, air drag, actual drive cycle vs optimum-load/speed lab tests, warmup, overall cost per mile, etc.. Bigger numbers, man, bigger numbers. What part of "bigger numbers' do you not understand? it's _bigger_. Bigger is better. Bigger.

Brings to mind this clip:

[www.youtube.com]

[The "these go to 11" clip from the movie "This Is Spinal Tap".]

Oh, and here's a very special link, straight on out from Mr Pete to SACA Forum Boss Scott Finegan; hope ya love it baby; who doesn't love classic Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedy::

[www.youtube.com]

Peter



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2019 05:42AM by Peter Brow.

This I look forward to!

Hi Peter,
I put a vaporizing coil in my burner. How do you know when it needs cleaning. And so running steam through the coil cleans it?
Best regards, Don