Measuring Instantaneous and Total Fuel Flow with a Pelton Sensor and Digital Readout

So a one minute timer hitting the tare button. Hmmm you could even have a second scale hanging off the first for total weight.

 

You and I are starting to think along the same lines. I would really love to have something like this for my WVO. One big hit reset button and then watch it for one minute while it averaged out in grams per minute. It could do 60 samples per minute and report back to a screen/Digital Display.

 

I pressurize my fuel tanks with air. The loss balance between these two, is almost nonnegotiable. There could be a jump between button of original weight, original weight over time and a reset counter for both.

 

You can get that same sensor almost direct for about quarter of the price.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/328...earchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_

 

You can't go wrong for that price!.

 

The only problem is if you order from Ali. Do you need to put it in your calendar for dispute. I got ripped off for two dollars on something small I ordered. It just pisses me off. Otherwise I've been 99% happy with the website. The website is ruled with an iron fist. But this is a two-way street for customers and vendors. Both customers and vendors get to rank each other.

 

That HX711 looks like it would get things off to a good start: 24 bit resolution at 10 or 80 samples per second and up to 128 times programmable gain of the signal so 24 bits into 20Kg would get you a bit over milligram resolution in theory at up to 80 times per second.

So if diesel has a specific gravity of 0.8508 then 20Kg would be 23.5 litres which is what my furnace uses per hour for iron, so 20/60= 0.333 kilos per minute or 391 millilitres per minute or 5.555 grams per second flat out. The HX711 could measure the 20Kg load cell in increments of 0.001192 grams.

 

Air flow measurement. Look at IFM Efector SA6010 lists for $350 but I was getting them for about half that. Has a digital display and analog output.

 

Thanks, Gary. I did check them out and looks like a nice unit. I looked around some and about the best price I could find was $278. It would be nice to measure air flow. But, as long as I can measure fuel and know at least one parameter that way, I have a pretty good chance of tuning my furnace to optimal performance. Prior to knowing fuel flow it was a real guessing game as it is possible to tune the furnace based on exhaust color etc at what I have now measured to be 60% to 140% optimal and really not be able to tell how far off you are. I have a feeling others may be better at tuning by observation. But, for me, just being able to nail down fuel flow has taken most of the guesswork out of the operation and resulted in consistent and rapid melt times and, in some cases, halving fuel consumption.

Denis

 

I'm a little bit crazy. But I would not spend $270 on anything electrical to save me some free $ in waste vegetable oil. I'm figuring my 1/2-1L diesel start up cost me about one dollar.

I'd rather pick up a few aluminum rims for $12 each this week, or brake rotors for $.50 a pound.

 

Knowledge ain't free you know! At my previous job were were having problems with the membrane treatment plant I designed. We had a flowmeter measuring the flow of the pump but you have to calibrate insertion style flowmeters to the account for the exact ID of the pipe. For the smaller flowmeters we had a test port and we sent the flow through the flowmeter into a calibrated test tank and then adjusted the pulses per gallon until they matched. The big flowmeter though needed to be tested at 300 gpm and the hoses and tank were way to small for that. So we only tested it up to 50 gpm and when the pump wasn't pumping what it should we thought the flowmeter was wrong because the pump pressure drop chart matched a much higher flow rate. Fast forward a couple of months and we find out that ALL our problems are because that pump and the four others just like it can't pump the flow we need because of insufficient Net Positive Suction Head. We wound up running around to already installing jobs changing automatic valves and piping from 3"PVC to 6" PVC. All because we failed to get a bigger tank and bigger hose to run a good test.