Alternative Co2 source ...

On first look, the real problem is miniaturizing the combustion-chamber/burner so that you do not waste a high percentage of fuel to Co2 yield!

Regards,
TA

I'm thinking the only way to do this, as I made perfectly clear earlier, is to pay rediculous close attention to detail as it must be done just right for this to work at all. miniturization is one thing, but what is more difficult is keeping it simple while maintaining ease of use and functionality.

Now, no one else in the whole world has paid as much attention to the harnessing of combustion byproducts than the automotive industry. That being said, many ideas can be taken right from there.


a method I just thought of would be to use a pressure relief valve to dump gas created from the combustion in a sealed chamber. you could use an inductor coil, fuel injector, hoses, and fuel pump from a small fuel injected motorcycle or import. Just let a squirt of fuel atomize into the chamber and touch it off with a spark plug. you could use a relay and remote switch wiring setup to energize the coil from a car battery charger or something else that's like 12vdc with decent amperage. Don't even really need a switch, relay, or induction coil, you could just tap the positive lead onto the battery teminal to spark the plug, but I like doing things fancy.
 
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I'm thinking the only way to do this, as I made perfectly clear earlier, is to pay rediculous close attention to detail as it must be done just right for this to work at all. miniturization is one thing, but what is more difficult is keeping it simple while maintaining ease of use and functionality.

Now, no one else in the whole world has paid as much attention to the harnessing of combustion byproducts than the automotive industry. That being said, many ideas can be taken right from there.

I imagine a piston chamber design where, instead of driving a crank shaft, the piston shaft would merely guide the piston. A spring and rubber block in the chamber and behind the piston could provide a "softer landing " to the back of the piston head. An adequately sized ventilation hole positioned in the chamber wall just below the piston face when it is in top position could vent the gases into a diaphragmed storage tank. This type of storage tank allows you to fill compressed air into a special nozzle which pressurizes the tank's contents, while the diaphragm inside separates the compressed air from the usefull contents. From there on out it's just a matter of "scrubbing" the gass.

There is a lot there, and valid.

However, an analogy of the "combustion unit" to efficiently produce Co2 to the internal combustion engine is in error.

Much more efficient designs in carburetor design (example, a vapor carburetor instead of liquid introduced to the air stream through jets--i.e., fuel wets a fiber pad with air pulled through to evaporate the gas into the fuel/air mixture/vapor, replace the liquid/jets) and fuel injection could be employed in the combustion engine. Patents are held on these designs, they are just not practical to implement--from what I have read, it is the heat ...

Indeed, pollutants could be cut, just through such methods, where pollutant levels would drop in magnitude (and mileage increased by magnitudes.) However, the "heat of combustion quickly becomes a limiting factor. Holes are melted through piston heads, the cooling system would need to be of ridiculous proportions, oil would boil, etc. You just could not deal with the heat, it would build faster in the engine than it can be removed.

In the design we are discussing, for a Co2 generator, the heat from so small of combustion might be easily handled--literally a candle flame! (low BTU's) The combustion chamber could be red hot, resulting in VERY efficient burning of the fuel--indeed, it could be of a ceramic material (such as the ceramic insulator removed from a sodium vapor lamp, and pressed into service here) and temps can now go to white hot! I would think 99.9999999999999999999999999999% combustion efficiency would begin to occur. And, we would not be using gasoline, perhaps ethyl alcohol--something we can drink. Of course there would be a danger if efficiency levels drop low--the fish would get drunk! <LOL!>

But, yes, like I say, I have been thinking about this, will get time this winter to play with it in the garage ... again, good input! I am sure I will run though this discussion in my head, more than once, as I am "playing around."

Regards,
TA
 
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1.) The law of conservation of enegry applied to this idea implies that due to energy lost as heat during the exothermic reaction, the resulting effects suffer therefore. Meaning that there cannot be a favorable fuel to co2 yield due to the high energy nature of the reaction itself.

Energy in a system can take various forms, but energy may neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore the sum of all the energies in the system is a constant.
 
I believe this to be a dangerous venture. I would not recommend trying it without some serious engineering education/experience as well as some serious metal working/welding experience.

In order to do this you'd need a closed system for the burner so that you could collect the gas. A pressure vessel of some kind. It would need to be gas tight. From there, you would need to pipe in some kind of oxygen source. Pure oxygen would be way to dangerous for home applications, and, let's face it, piping pure oxygen into a closed system with a flame is a really dumb idea. So, the source would be air. You would also need to pipe out the resulting spent gas. You would need to minimalize how much these gases interact, or else you'd end up with some air with slightly high co2 levels.

Then, you have to figure out a way to remove the co2 from the other gases. It's better to think of it this way: remove the co2, rather than removing the other stuff. There are certainly ways to remove, or purify, co2, but for a DIYer it would just be silly to even think about. The expense to build a system like this, unless you are starting a co2 supply company, is prohibitive.

See, the real issue here isn't creating the co2...that's easy. The issue is getting out everything else and, essentially, concentrating the co2. If you had a good DIY way to do this, you wouldn't need to have a candle or any other kind of burner, you could simply pull co2 out of the air. And, air is much safer than the concentrated levels of harmful products found in spent combustion gas.

Heck, if you have a good cheap DIY, and safe, way to concentrate co2, I know some people at Chevron that would really like to meet you. And I want a finders fee of 10%.
 
In the design we are discussing, for a Co2 generator, the heat from so small of combustion might be easily handled--literally a candle flame! (low BTU's) The combustion chamber could be red hot, resulting in VERY efficient burning of the fuel--indeed, it could be of a ceramic material (such as the ceramic insulator removed from a sodium vapor lamp, and pressed into service here) and temps can now go to white hot! I would think 99.9999999999999999999999999999% combustion efficiency would begin to occur. Regards,
TA

ah, okay. But there's stil the issue of air intake, maybe something as simple as an aquarium air pump?
 
Whenever I've eaten at Taco Bell I stand next to the air-pump... just to help my plants.
 
:iagree:

I agree with jpappy on this one.

Been using diy yeast for a year or so. My yeast bottles produce co2 sure, but it's so unpredictable sometimes and not enough pressure for fancy diffuser use. I'd really just like a nice looking system that works predictably so I can dose co2 accurately and on a schedule.

Had built a pressurized system once out of old paintball parts.... never got it working for more than a week though. Went through two regulators , both of which failed and dumped so much co2 each time into my tank that water splashed out all over the place. Apparently paintball ones have degass and o-ring failures when adjusted to extremely low output. I also think that one of the two wasn't really designed for co2 as it blew o-rings constantly.

Yep. I needed three 2-L bottles on my 30 gallon just to keep a "constant" CO2 level (used BBA as my indicator). And it makes a HUGE mess when it back siphons...:wall:
 
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