My beckett pressure burner learn with me as I go!

[Andy]

This is my current setup.
Beckett burner with lennox forced air furnace.
0.8 GPH nozzel & 1 gph spare nozzel.
I ordered a 100 psi valve to put into the nozzel tip to stop after run drip.
I ordered 2 pid digital controllers to measure and maintain a set temperature for preheat and nozzel heat. pictured below;

Working on a pump heater or a preheat of some sort.

My problems right now are when trying to run 100% waste oil the pump works the motor to hard and trips the motors built it overload. it seems to burn ok with the nozzel heater on but the fire goes out because the pump slows down and overloads the motor. I need a preheater.

I was thinking of buying a 3"x3.25"x.25" heater plate and bolting it to the end of my pump housing, the end of my pump housing holds some oil before it gose into the actual pump so that would possibly eliminate the need for a reirculation pump and electronic valves ect. (I'm trying to do it cheap but effective!)

[Andy]

I milled down the end on the pump to make it flat


I made this out of aluminum to transfer the heat easyer,


I found this heater band on ebay for $10.00 its 300W at 240V or 150w at 120V


Its starting to go together!


Here it is back together!


I had no luck tonight, I was able to heat the oil well, but the oil would not burn?
 It was vaporizing but not lighting? The pump ran good with the added preheat to thin it down,
I was running 125* preheat and 190* nozzel heat. I was going to try some differant oil?
maybe my used oil is bad?  If I run diesel through it it burns great turn it back to oil and it
sputters out and dies.   I have some new motor oil I was going to try and see what happens. 
I have the anti drip things but have not installed it yet, not till after I get this thing figured out.


I was hoping not to have to turn it to a siphon type system but if I have to???
Any help would be great!!! Thanks

[Andy]

Guess Im the only one on here? Well I tryed it again with clean unused motor oil and it still did not work, but I think I see the problem. the oil can't flow good enough to get to the pump. looks like I will be building a preheater tank with a recirculation pump ect....

[Russ]

Hey Andy, nice project.  I see people viewing your post, but no replies.  Have you tried a mixture of oil and diesel?  I'm not much help here as you are a bit further on your project than I am.  Looks good what you are doing.  Keep us updated on your progress.  Thanks for posting!

[Andy]

Well I got it to fire somewhat. I put a heater between the oil barrel and the filter to heat the oil, I installed a return line from the pump and added a electric pump to the return line with a valve. It took a long time to heat up basically because Im heating my whole barrel of oil. I got it up to about 100* shut the pump off closed the valve and tryed it, the nozzel was at 190* tryed it and nothing. So I turned the nozzel heat up to 300* and it started but was running kind of speratic and sputtered at times. I tryed adjusting the 2 air settings but have both of them turned down to 0 or all the way closed and it seemed that it needed less air. I will try and tape up some of the openings and see what happens. It was shotting about a 1.5' flame seemed alittle to long??? but Im using a .75 gph nozzel tip and some have said on here to use a .65 gph tip at most??? the forced air furnace im using says with fuel oil I can run up to a 1 gph tip. 


I don't think the oil in the nozzel was actually 300* I just have the thermocouple in a bad spot, its right where the heater rod in attached to the pipe. so the pipe might be 300* right there but the oil down by the nozzel is probably alot less. Im going to move the thermocople farther down closer to the tip and see if that gets a better reading?

I have tryed mixing oil and diesel, before I did any modifications it burned a mix of 65% diesel to 35% oil with good results, any higher I went with the oil mixture and it started sputtering and had a bad flame.

I though about dumping some diesel or Kerosene in the oil but did not want to because I want it to run only on waste oil, Adding diesel cost money and I want it to run for free with only the inital cost of conversion and some minor mantinace cost. (Hopefully)

[Andy]

Ok I changed a few things, I moved the thermocouple to unside the burner on the 90* fitting just b4 the nozzel.
What a differance that made!!!   I got it up to 180* started it up and with a little help lots of flame!!!  so I added the anti drip nozzel and that helped some with the oil spitting all over the ground after shut down.

It has some trouble with startup. I'm thinking its because the oil between the nozzel and the heater is colder.
It has to run for about a min to get the hot oil to start spraying out and then it will light and run pretty good.
When I startup the burner the nozzel will be at 180* after a bit it goes down to 130-140* because the fan is blowing on it cooling it down. I'm going to start designing a newer nozzel heater that will heat the oil right up to the nozzel tip. Something like the one found on ebay for $170 but that one is for a siphon system.

[Russ]

Sounds like good news Andy!  Glad to hear you have some good flame going on.  Sounds like the oil probably just wasnt getting hot enough.  I think you are on the right track with building a nozzle heater like the siphon one you have seen on ebay.  Getting that oil hot right up to the tip would be a good thing.

What kind of anti dirp nozzle are you using?  Sounds like a good idea to prevent dripping.

I took some pics of the almost finished block heater for my burner.  Check out the pics for some ideas.

Keep up the good work.

Russ

[Kyle]

looks pretty good, but you should remember that halfing the voltage on a heater element gives you a quarter of the watts, so actually it would be 75 watts.

[Andy]

Anyone seen anything like this before? Its a nozzel heater. I will try and get more info on it but it looks like the tip will screw right in. just add wiring and maybe a thermocouple or maybe its built in?

Just a update I'm making a preheat container now and reworking a stock type nozzel, a idea Koolkris gave me was to put a heaterband around the stock tip holder! I am going to try that! if the heater band can't keep up I can just up the temperature from the preheat.  Also Im running a return like kyles from the tip back instead of from the pump like I was originally doing.

The biggest thing I need to know from Kyle is what do you use to recirculate the oil from the preheat tank to the nozzel tip??  Are you using the burner pump to recirculate or something else??  Thanks

Hey kyle thanks for the correction on the wattage I should have noticed that, being that I'm a Electrican. LOL

[Andy]

What kind of anti dirp nozzle are you using?  Sounds like a good idea to prevent dripping.
Russ

Ebay item #
290289248700   

It just comes with the screen and valve only, not the tip, just unscrew your old screen thing and screw this one in.

[Andy]

Well Im trying a new way. Here is what I have so far.


Its a old fire extinguisher with a 3" heater band and thermocouple.


3" heaterband 240v 1300W streched a little to fit the 3.25" jug.


The 1" heaterband or nozzel heater 120V 100W with aluminum spacer.


Assembled and waiting for the 1/8" pipeing return to be installed.


More of the same.

[tightwad nik]

without sounding jumped up, its good to see someones steep learning curve on here, that way we can all learn by each others triumphs and tribulations, i have a friend who has purchased a decent sized heater made by thermobile, i will try to gain a few pics and some info so we can copy it, keep up the good work ANDY

[steve]

HI Andy,
first of all thanks for all the info and pics. im builing the same system as you except im using deisel to fire and heat the fire box up then switching to wmo, im doing this manually at this point till i get some bugs out, then with electic valves and a timer on the deiesel, i figure it woulnt burn much deisel at all, its just enough to get things hot. to acheive a good burn with the oil, what are your thoughts on this being your a electician. thanks steve.