Hawkies Lardinator CHP project ongoing

[hawkie]

Exhaust heat exhanger so far

Not sure how efficient this will be?
40mm steel tube surrounded by 50mm box section for the water jacket (wife calls this the trombone)




here again with some of the copper tube added.

[knighty]

it's not worth doing if you can't make it up as you go along !

are you a member of the vegetable oil / bio diesel forum ?  http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/forum/

there's a lot of useful information on there about running on veg oil.... tho it's a bit thin on the lard side of things !

exhaust heat exchanger looks pretty good to me... all you can do is try it and see !   if it's not perfect you could always add another layer on-top of it ?


are you going to plumb the heat into your house ?

[hawkie]

Eventually going to connect it into the central heating via a flat plate heat exchanger, but for now taking one step at a time. only had short runs on veg oil so far. Very crude, ran engine on diesel until nice and hot then used a fuel pump to suck untreated oil straight from the drum that I have given to me to push it through one of those cheap in-line filters. Connected the pipe to the injector pump and restarted the engine, to my amazement the engine ran as normal once the air was flushed out. So early signs look promising.

I intend to run the engine for around 4 hours a day controlled by a time switch, and try to do the power hungry tasks in that period (dishwasher, Washing machine etc) I will also prepare batches of fuel during lardinator runs. I have also bought a 3 stage 100 amp charger for my 12 volt battery bank so should then be able to run fridge, freezer and solar pump station via inverters for the remaining 20 hours..

All sounds good, but like I said just one step at a time.

[oliver90owner]

You intend harvesting exhaust gas heat with that? 

Just one question:  How will you clean it?

Regards, RAB

[Mostie]

Hi Hawkie, nice bit of bodgery going on there, I intend to start building my own 'Lardinator' later this year. I will watch with interest.

[noelsquibb]

love the heat exchanger / exhaust
thats proper tinkering, as a certain lardluvver might say and accordingly, gets you a brownie point.

Be interesting to know how much all that mass, including water, effects the amount of exhaust noise ?

[desperate]

Hawkie

I second Noels sentiment, certainly would be proud to have bodgeneering of that merit in the bowels of Cactusville

Desperate

[Billy]

Hawkie,

Most excellent, but isn't your grass getting a little bare?

Billy

 

[hawkie]

You intend harvesting exhaust gas heat with that? 

Just one question:  How will you clean it?

Regards, RAB

Will possibly make the bends and connections removable, do you have experience of this, how often will it need cleaning etc?

[hawkie]

Hi Billy, Oh yes, Ive been so busy I didn't notice the grass so many jobs , so little time and a different forum I expect

Regards Hawkie

[hawkie]

Control panel

I thought I would show you all my new control panel

It is based upon the Gencontrol engine control module (the brains) pictured top right
The singles I know are the wrong colours etc but beggars can't be choosers.
The enclosure is recycled I removed it from a house that I was rewiring it had been used to house a 80 amp switch fuse, in fact quite a few of the bits used are recycled



Now the insides for anyone interested




Ill try to explain how it works later, when I have more time

Hawkie

[KenB]

Hawkie,

A great project, and good to hear that you have a reliable fuel source.

However, I feel I ought to warn anyone wishing to follow the veg oil route, that it is imperative to have a reliable fuel supply. Waste vegetable oil is now being consumed in vast volumes by the biodiesel professionals, and you are likely to find that the casual supplies from pubs and restaurants have all but dried up.

The diesel engine will convert WVO to electricity with an efficiency of between 20 and 25%.   So a litre of fuel (9kWh) will produce at best 2kWh of power.  Extended tests on my 6hp Lister showed a fuel consumption of 1.32 litres of WVO per hour, whilst producing 2.5kW on the alternator.

It is imperative that the oil is heated immediately before the injector, with an injection line heater. Failure to do this will result in a poor injection spray pattern, and you will find that your engine needs decoked after approximately 100 hours of running.

Fortunately injector line heating is fairly easy to do with a small PTC heating element running either on low voltage dc or 230V ac.  It brings the oil up to about 150 C so that its viscosity reduces and it injects more like diesel.

The exhaust gas heat exchanger needs to be insulated (fibreglass etc) in order to raise its efficiency.  


Lovely job of the electrics BTW. 





Ken

[Billy]

Excellent, most neat and carefully crafted.  A credit to you, last time I saw one as neat, it was sewn.  I guess that would have been before cable ties!

Billy

 

[daftlad]

All rather good, wee like looking at stuff like this.
ta ta

[hawkie]

Ken

can you tell me more about hp line and injector heating. have you any information or photos etc

Cheers Hawkie