auto ignition for veg oil burner.

[Ivan]

I'm wondering how I could auto-ignite my veg oil turk burner inside my converted rayburn. It's a bit of a pain to light with paper. I could drill and insert a tube for a primus burner flame but it would be even better if I didn't have to even open the firedoor (my door seal is suffering from the regular opening/closing.

I am wondering whether a diesel glowplug would work, bearing in mind that the fuel is not atomised - it simply drips into the bottom of the burner tube. I'd have to work out a way of providing high temperature wiring, which I'm sure isn't going to be easy either.

[guydewdney]

model aircraft type glow plug gets pretty damn hot? You only have to insulate one wire - ceramic tube from a kiln?

[DonL]

I fear IMHO that without oil atomisation these are unlikely to work.
The solution could be to use a gas fired pilot burner with ignition via a spark electrode. The gas would be closed off once ignition occurred and so usage pretty small and could be from a bottle.
I can find some links to typical equipment if you're interested?

[Fintray]

Ivan
A length of MICC cable should be ok for this!

[Heinz]

I think the diesel heater plug will create a lot of vaporised oil before it (perhaps) ignites, might be a dramatic way of auto sweeping the flue ?? 
How about a heater plug in the arse of the dish and a spark above that to ignite it? The horrible paraffin blow heaters have spark plugs with 30mm? long electrodes which might be suitable? Not sure how well it would cope with the heat though.

Heinz

[Countrypaul]

The old oil fired boilers used to use a heater in a "dish" of oil to ignite the oil before the pressure burners came out. That is how my original oil boiler worked before the jacket failed!.

Don't see why it won't work for veg oil, after all you can set a chip pan on fire all too easily.

[Billy]

My diesel pot burner (Wallas 32D) is ignited by a heater plug.  The diesel is just dripped via a metering pump into the bottom of the pot and the plug is above this rather than in it, no problems.

billy
 

[Justme]

How about butchering a hand held cooker lighter?

The ones like souped up fag lighters with a long neck.

[Ivan]

I'm inclined to think that glow plugs might do a fair bit of vaporisation rather than ignition - and good point - I don't want to blow the cooker up (wife's faith in my tinkering might be forever dented).

Gas pilot light setup would be ideal, but I don't think it would survive the ambient temperature inside the rayburn once the thing is running.

The heated pan + glow plug sounds like a good option, but I don't think I could manage the 'heated pan' part of the set up. My burner is suspended from above, and is completed surrounded by the air jacket. It has to be removeable from the top - not easy to achieve if I attached a heater. Also, when it's been running for a few hours it's glowing somewhere between orange and yellow - so it's pretty hot (around 900-1100C).

Guess the best option might be to fabricate a tube through which burning gas from the primus can enter the middle of the burner.

[knighty]

it might be easier to modify a blowtorch with a bit of extra piple / bend the pipe so it can easily reach down and in from above ?

a mapp gas torch should light it pretty quick ?




once it's winter can you not leave it going 24/7 on a very low setting ?

[Ivan]

You're right - a modified 'swan-neck' blow torch would be a good idea. It doesn't need to be particularly hot nor for a particularly long period to start it, so ordinary propane would be fine. I'd say a couple of minutes would be enough - judging by the amount of paper I need to burn to get it started.

I suspect I could leave it running 24/7...but I'm a little nervous to do so, in case something went wrong whilst I was asleep. Other people who have run Turk burners suffer the nozzles sooting up, but in my latest version of the burner, this doesn't seem to be the case. If the nozzle soots up, the back pressure increases and that's not good for the peristaltic tubing. My latest version is very easy to clear by just undoing a nipple and rodding it with a TIG welding rod. I do this every time I light it, but I suspect it will go several days without any need to do so. My next plan is to try to automate some of the stuff, and to build-in some safety features to shut things down if anything gets too hot or flame fails. I am inclined to use arduino, as I've got one here, but unfortunately not the world's best programmer.

[Billy]

I must confess that there is a whoooooooph as the vaporised diesel explodes, but after that it settles down.

billy
 

[julian]

What about a combination approach -

the electronic ignition options discussed, but also some sort of 'twin tanking' so as you are starting up on a more volitile fuel?