Building a ceramic burner

RioGrandeFan said:

How are your mods comparing to the stock design? Have you tried adding a collar to the stock burner for air adjustment?
I think you will always need warm water in your tender running in suck cold conditions. Have you tried your mods on blended gas? The little bit of propane should help with the pressure in cold conditions and with this gas you might get away without warm water in the tender. I live in California where it’s rarely in the low 40s so I can’t run test in your conditions, I did run my k-28 the other day with blended gas and no water in the tender with zero issues for pressure but it was probably 55 degrees outside.
These need to be converted to coal and all your issues will be gone. To bad they didn't design this one like the c-25.
Is the brick arch the shield above the burner in the fire box? What is the purpose of this piece?
Either way good to see you making progress.

Click to expand...

So after installing in two C-18 engines, and running one at the Botanical indoor gardens, and the other two nights prior in near freezing temps. This is what I have found.

To run the C-18 on butane, you MUST. I repeat, you MUST take out that flame baffle/ brick arch. If your engine runs well now in your opinion, raise your standards. It will run excellent without the arch.

Next, the modifications to the burner written up by Bill I will call a necessary safety improvement. It eliminates the need for water any warmer than room temperature in the tender. It allowed me to make steam and just put along light engine with no/or cold water with air temps as low as 33F. By doing that modification you can leave the tender cooler, keeping gas pressures lower and safer. It also negates the need for extra equipment in the form of a kettle or other water heater. Keep in mind this performance was with straight butane. Lower pressure yet than a blend.

So first, remove the shield to improve performance.
Modify the burner to improve safety margins around pressurized fuel tanks.

Notes I have found pertaining to the modified burner.
These are burners I've worked on. Bill may be able produce more consistent results.
The same burner will perform differently in different engines.
My burners require a little air adjustment collar to perfect the mixture once installed.

I ran my engine in the above video and had the mixture set right, once I moved the burner into a different engine, I had to tweak the mixture.
I made a second burner for my engine, it requires a different collar setting to burn the same on the bench or in the engine. I imagine if I moved the burner to another engine it would need tuning again.

Each burner and engine combination will need fine tuning.

As far as a collar on a stock burner, that will be compounding the problem of an already rich mixture.

Tyler

Tyler seems to have his engines running as well as possible with the drafted system and small ceramic burners.
A little of my history on air hole collars.
I first started using them on my poker burner engines to quiet the howling. I actually set them up with a handle which could adjust the position while the engine was running. I found that the collars worked best about half covered preventing the howling but inhibited the steam production. After things warmed up, I was able to slid them back without the howling and better poker burn and steam production
Back in the olden days, carburetors needed to be designed for the correct air/fuel mixture (I think it was 27-1). Now we have fuel injection where we always want more air so the mixture is not an issue. On our turbocharged diesel engines, the power is increased just by increasing the fuel volume with no concern for the air as there is always enough air and never too much. I feel our gas fired burners are the same here, In other words, unless you are restricting the air because of howling, you are limiting steam production. It is hard to determine if adjustments to the collar are working from boiler to boiler or even from run to run. I have tested ceramic burners with collars in the past and just to make sure, I did it again yesterday and they only decrease the burn, On my burners I have four 7/32" holes which is the largest I can get in. Like I said you can't have too much air.

Just my two cents