Hydrothermal Biomass-Fueled Engines

[Frederick J Sparber]

-----Original Message-----
From: Raymond C Drouillard <cosmic.ray at juno.com>
To: diy_efi at efi332.eng.ohio-state.edu <diy_efi at efi332.eng.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Thursday, June 11, 1998 9:22 PM
Subject: Re: Hydrothermal Biomass-Fueled Engines

Raymond C. Drouillard wrote:
>
>As someone pointed out, filtering out the solid stuff is important.  How
>much liquid is left after the stuff is processed?

The solid organic stuff should burn very well
if it is less than 0.016" or so as witnessed by
the explosion at that Kansas grain elevator
tragedy the other day. The liquid might run as high as 10:1 but will flash
to a 550 to 700 F vapor and disperse the solids when the injector opens.
>
>Obviously, an engine
>can swallow a certain amount of liquid.  We had a couple threads going
>about water injection.

This is very hot steam injection where the heat is scavenged from the
exhaust heat exchanger.
>
>I think that the main challenge will be that the mixture will vary in the
>amount of heat released, the amount of oxygen required (C2H4 requires
>more O2 than H2 does - when measured by volume), and the octane value.

True.
>Also, the CO2 and H2O will give you something very similar to EGR.

Actually H2O + CO will shift to H2 + CO2 thus lowering the CO output. My
patent work on
an exhaust line catalyst was abandoned after a
european patent using a chromite catalyst issued on this.
>
>The variable amount of oxygen required for combustion can be dealt with
>using an O2 sensor.  A fixed station engine will be run at a fairly
>steady speed, so all the fancy programming for wildly varying loads will
>be much reduced.  You won't need an accelerater pump or power valve
>equivelent.  YOu can probablly get away with a straight analog feedback
>loop.  If loads are going to be suddenly applied or released, you will,
>of course, need that fancy stuff.

I  think the loads will be fairly constant,but that is hard to predict even
for stationary engine applications.
>
>The variable octane can be dealt with by simply designing the engine for
>the lowest value you expect to get.  If you want to optomize things
>better, then a knock sensor of some sort will be needed.
>
>One thought:  The octane value might corrolate somewhat with the amount
>of O2 required.  Methane has a higher octane value than propane, and also
>requires less oxygen (by volume).

Thanks Ray.

Regards,    Frederick
>
>Ray Drouillard
>
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