Monday, June 30, 2014

Another 250 ~ 260 liters processed .845 SG

A run making diesel weight fuel of .845 Specific Gravity was completed at the weekend. There was a number of new parts to test including extra retort insulation, scale balance for weighing retort, additional temperature gauges, revised preheater iteration and turk injector pump nozzle tweaks.

 Some new thermocouples were added. The 'Exhaust' recorded up 250°C so will be heat source of the newly proposed preheater heat-exchanger. 'Oil-in' is the temperature at which preheated oil feedstock enters the secondary heating stage, a pipe-in-pipe heat exchanger. The 'Burner' shows the current flame temperature as it exits the turk-burner-head.

Here the sight glass was showing water droplets. I believe the oil feedstock was wet with a suspended water content. This may have been responsible for the boil-over problems experienced.

This is the feedstock infeed pump which is a simple gear pump commonly used on boats. In order to obtain the speed I wanted, I had to gear it down considerably. I'm far from convinced that this pump is delivering the quantity at which it was tested. It turns quite slow and has to pump 100°C oil so may be suffering because of it.
 
This is the reduction gearing made from a bicycle wheel rim, which drives a set of bicycle sprockets giving the required deep reduction. Theory says the current range of spare motor pulleys allow feedstock rates between 30 and 45 liters per hour.
 
The approx. 40kg of balance scale weights used to determine how much feedstock is inside the 47 liter retort. This is a great help for the operator when using a constant or batch feed pump to deliver fresh feedstock. The weights are recycled cast iron pulleys and flywheels.

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