Water Sparkplug

[ashtweth]

Hi Guys food for thought also from Ravzz

"Basically you need to check the annealing / crystal lattice restructuring temperatures of the metals being used first as you wouldn't want to soften them or change their characteristics during the curing cycle of the ceramic. You can find ceramics that can be cured right from 800 deg C to 1800 deg C (High Alumina). The regular spark plugs have ceramic frit coated on top of the the normal ceramic to give the glaze ... another thing to be looked into is the matching of the thermal expansion of the metal with the thermal expansion of the ceramic... if these dont matchup .. once the plug heats up during usage, theres every chance of the ceramic to crack due to the varied thermal expansions of both materials. -R."

[Robert E.]

plasma plugs

Hi all,

Thought I'd post a more complete illustration of the exact VexUs circuit I been running in my Bug.

Greg

Greg and all,
I need to show you what problems I am having after running plasma ignition for 30 miles only. I am running the same oscilator as greg but instead of the four NTE517's I used 50 IN5408 in each leg going to sparkplug. I used these because I had them.
Both plugs were run at the same time and distance. I think the one plug was eat up so much more because the tangs did not touch in the center like the others. I have run these plugs many many miles with no wear that I could see on standard ignition. But it is obvious they WILL NOT WORK with my type of plasma. I think Greg's plugs are made of different material. Mine are made from steel tig welding rod. What do you say Greg? How are your plugs holding up? and are you using nickle plugs? Mine are not nickle but steel ball and grounds.
Bob

[alsy]

Plasm

Robert, it is not clear to me as to the material for the particular welding rods used. For those researching, and making the Krupa replicas, i would like to share melting temperature data of different metals. I remember seeing a video of (not sure on spelling) Bill Cozolino, where he traveled 2200 miles (3,540km) on regular fuel, plasma, and with standard non resistor plugs. He got about 46 percent overall mpg increase over that long traveling on an old VW van. Yet the krupa style plugs with plasma is holding up relatively poorly. After seeing the wear on on Ash's plugs using (pictures from about a month ago??) Beryllium Copper, and looking up the melting temperatures, i am thinking the material and temperatures may be playing a role in accelerated wear.

The following web site has a list of materials and their melting temperatures.
Metals - Melting Temperatures

For ease of comparison, i made a short list bellow of some materials some people have mentioned and some of what i think might be used conventionally on their own, or in some alloy. I also included Silver due to Jedi asking the question of its suitability when Ash posted photos the other month. The figures on the left are temperatures in degrees Celsius, and on the right are in degrees F. I had this data made up and i was meaning to post it back then, but had forgotten about it till now.

Beryllium Copper..865 -955..........1587 - 1750
Cobalt...............1495................ 2723
Chromium..........1860.................3380
Cast Iron, Gray...1175-1290.........2150-2360
Iron..................1536.................2797
Carbon Steel......1425-1540.........2600-2800
Stainless Steel...1510.................2750
Iridium..............1536.................4440
Nickel................1453.................2647
Platinum............1770.................3220
Silver...................961................1760

btw, i have been playing around with a combustion engine simulation software. It produces data and graphs relating to temperature, pressures, Nitrous Oxide emissions, and other data as well. I entered the data for my engine so as i could see the relationship at different different engine speeds and timing in comparison to pressures and temperatures. The peak temperatures are quite hot, and i was surprised at how hot it gets in the combustion chamber, even after the combustion cycle.

I am wondering about the plasma in combination with Krupa/ Firestorm style plugs. So far, the wear seems greater than the standard non resistor plugs. I am thinking there is extra heat in the Krupa Plasma arrangement, contributing to the accelerated wear. Further, i think the extra heat is creating the extra oomph mentioned by Greg in his testing. The increased pressures from additional heat from the plasma, may require careful thought about the ignition timing if we are to have a long term reliable engine. An example might be to fire near, or as per standard factory settings and fire the plasma later, so as we don't have all the pressure focused before or at TDC. That is of course speaking for conventional fuels. Considering the aim of this thread is to run on water, i do not think the temperatures would get anywhere near as hot once we have evolved into successfully running on water, or rather the steam generated from the heat of the plasma.

[gmeast]

wear

Greg and all,
I need to show you what problems I am having after running plasma ignition for 30 miles only. I am running the same oscilator as greg but instead of the four NTE517's I used 50 IN5408 in each leg going to sparkplug. I used these because I had them.
Both plugs were run at the same time and distance. I think the one plug was eat up so much more because the tangs did not touch in the center like the others. I have run these plugs many many miles with no wear that I could see on standard ignition. But it is obvious they WILL NOT WORK with my type of plasma. I think Greg's plugs are made of different material. Mine are made from tig welding rod. What do you say Greg? How are your plugs holding up? and are you using nickle plugs?
Bob

Hi Bob,

How big is your CDI Cap? How many Joules of energy are you pumping through those puppies?

I had measurable wear in my initial test ... about .007" on a standard configuration non-resistor plug ... I posted the pics way back and that report was for a 300 mile run. Have not resumed testing yet ... soon. I do have two of the nickel plugs installed and have about 200 miles of just running around. I'll pull one out and post some pics soon.

Greg

[rosco1]

Heat?

Robert,

btw, i have been playing around with a combustion engine simulation software. It produces data and graphs relating to temperature, pressures, Nitrous Oxide emissions, and other data as well. I entered the data for my engine so as i could see the relationship at different different engine speeds and timing in comparison to pressures and temperatures. The peak temperatures are quite hot, and i was surprised at how hot it gets in the combustion chamber, even after the combustion cycle.

Hi Robert,

Rather than test this principal using software, I went the other way and just used a laser thermometer to see what happened with the temps.

I "indexed" a set of "J" gapped plugs to the worst possible firing positions, then recorded all the relative temp data, then re-indexed to the best possible firing positions and again recorded tha data. I saw a significant REDUCTION in all relative temps.

Next I swapped out the "J" gapped plugs and installed Brisk Premium LGS spark plugs, which are arguably the best off the shelf spark plugs currently available to the public, and I again recorded the relative temp data.

It was immediately apparent that from badly indexed to properly indexed, the temps LOWERED by a significant amount, and the Brisks again LOWERED the temps a little more.

I consider a temp drop of 250 odd degrees, from worst to best, to be significant.

I don't expect a Firestorm to drop the temps much more than what the the Brisks did, as the temp drops I saw were pretty much in line what Krupa said the Firestorms could do.

**Apologies for the upper case wordings, they aren't meant to imply that I'm yelling, but rather just used to highlight the point. I am in quite a rush here and haven't time to masterfully apply spin to my posts.

Look at the temp data recorded here as proof of the lowered/LOWERED temps:
Spark Plug Indexing - Holdenpaedia


Regards,
Ross.

[Robert E.]

plasma plugs

Hi Bob,

How big is your CDI Cap? How many Joules of energy are you pumping through those puppies?

I had measurable wear in my initial test ... about .007" on a standard configuration non-resistor plug ... I posted the pics way back and that report was for a 300 mile run. Have not resumed testing yet ... soon. I do have two of the nickel plugs installed and have about 200 miles of just running around. I'll pull one out and post some pics soon.

Greg

Greg my cdi cap is 3 uf oil filled , I didn't have a 2 uf like you and my voltage is running about 220 volts. The resistor is 500 ohm like yours. I failled to say what kind of tig rod for the ball and grounds, I went back and corrected that, but they were steel. I am at a dead end as to what to use now, maybe chromium? Bob

[Shane Jackson]

The Vexus PCB's came in today. I cant wait to get one toagther....

[gmeast]

clean

[QUOTE=Shane Jackson;47559]The Vexus PCB's came in today. I cant wait to get one toagther....


Hi Shane,

That looks clean. How much do you want for one?

Greg

[Shane Jackson]

[QUOTE=gmeast;47564]

The Vexus PCB's came in today. I cant wait to get one toagther....


Hi Shane,

That looks clean. How much do you want for one?

Greg

The boards are $32 shipped.

Here's a link:

FacetRough.com

I only had a few of these boards made as I did not know if there would be any demand for them (that's the reason they are a little expensive...)

I have 9 left for sale.

[Jetijs]

Hi Shane
great looking board
This might be a dumb question, but what is the putpose of all those small holes in the upper part of the board?

[dllabarre]

Current direction verification

Hi Gregg

I just want to verify what I see in your schematic. Looks like you are connecting the negative wire from your circuit to the top of your spark plugs and grounding the positive wire from your circuit. Is this true?

Is it because you car's stock ignition sends the negative to the top of the spark plug (opposite from most cars)?

I ask because my 5.5HP BS engine sends negative to the top of the spark plug and I don't want to hook your circuit up backwards.

Thank you for clarifying.
DonL

[Shane Jackson]

Hi Shane
great looking board
This might be a dumb question, but what is the putpose of all those small holes in the upper part of the board?

Places for diodes and resistors. (all 300 of them !!!)

[gmeast]

negative to top of plugs

Hi Gregg

I just want to verify what I see in your schematic. Looks like you are connecting the negative wire from your circuit to the top of your spark plugs and grounding the positive wire from your circuit. Is this true?

Is it because you car's stock ignition sends the negative to the top of the spark plug (opposite from most cars)?

I ask because my 5.5HP BS engine sends negative to the top of the spark plug and I don't want to hook your circuit up backwards.

Thank you for clarifying.
DonL

Hi Don,

I know it looks weird, though it is correct. It is why the diodes point the way they do. It is also why the AC supply must have an isolation transformer into the circuit. This holds true even if you are using a full wave bridge instead of a voltage doubler. The transformer of the simple oscillator/inverter I use automatically isolates for me. My ignition is a stock coil, negative ground, negative switched, positive from the ignition switch ... like most other systems. I'm sorry to say I never analyzed this circuit for a BS engine, I slapped the thing right on my Bug from the get-go. Of course you remember how it fried inverters which led to a long journey to find a simple oscillator circuit that wouldn't blow up. This took up allot of my time ... sad to say.

Did you set up some points and a stock coil for running the plasma circuit? If so, you should post it, it would help others who only intend to test on a small engine.

Greg

[gotoluc]

Thanks Greg updating now, putting together the new video production now with all the new results results, also guys Naresh has done a new one, please let me know if any body decides to try this, ill try and get to it.

ImageShack - Image Hosting :: pointsignitionplasmamod.gif

Ash

Hi Ash,

I just noticed this post!...please let Naresh know that I find his circuit very interesting and thank him for sharing it here.

It looks simple and I hope it is effective. Please do post updates on the performance results.

All the best to you mates

Luc

[gmeast]

circuit

Thanks Greg updating now, putting together the new video production now with all the new results results, also guys Naresh has done a new one, please let me know if any body decides to try this, ill try and get to it.

ImageShack - Image Hosting :: pointsignitionplasmamod.gif

Ash

Hi Ash,

Would you please contact Naresh and have him post a scope capture of his 1.5Uf x 630 V capacitor charge / discharge cycle(s)?

Thanks. Peace,

Greg