Fuel injection for model diesels, how can it be done?

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Hi
I don't mean to minimize what you are doing and if you or someone can actually figure out a way to really build a miniature diesel fuel injection system it would be an awesome model. However given the high pressures involved and the accuracy required it is going to bea daunting task.
In order to get atomization of the fuel you will need to push it through one or more very small orifices, on conventional full scale direct injection engines these orifices can vary between 4 thousands of an inch to 12 thousands of an inch. Injector opening pressures range from 120 bar up. Precombustion chamber engines are less fussy about atomization due to the confining of the hot air created during compression and can use glow plugs to help initiate combustion during starting. During the diesel cycle you only have a few degrees of crank travel to accomplish atomization and mixing of the fuel with the air. For a direct injection engine typically injection will have to be begin between 20 and 30 degrees before top dead center and combustion should initiate before top dead center. Beginning of combustion will depend speed of the engine low speed engines are more forgiving. When you accomplish this the pressure in the system will rise very rapidly a thousand bar or more is not uncommon. The very high pressures are why steel injection lines are used and the internal bore of these lines will be in the order of one or one and a half millimeters. Not only do the lines have to be strong enough to withstand the pressures, without appreciable expansion, but the fuel will compress slightly at the pressures generated in the system during injection. There are five things that any diesel fuel injection system must accomplish and these are. Meter the quantity of fuel very accurately. Distribute the fuel to the correct cylinder/injector on multi cylinder engines. Control the rate of injection so that the fuel is very rapidly delivered to the injector, this is accomplished by the injection pump cam profile, complete injection within ten or so degrees of engine rotation. Atomize the fuel into micro droplets so that it is easily vaporized by the hot swirling air within the engine cylinder. And finally injection must take place at exactly the right time to insure complete mixing ignition and burning of the fuel during the last few degrees of the compression stoke and the first part of the power stroke. MDCAT. To this, of course the injection pump itself must be capable of generating the kinds of pressures required. A method of preventing the fuel from rushing back into the pump at the end of injection is required and this component is known as a delivery valve which prevents drain back and also prevents secondary injection caused by pressure waves travelling back and forth in the line after the injector closes. Secondary injection is like water pipes banging when a kitchen tap is closed very quickly and there is a lose pipe in the wall.
You didn't mention how you were obtaining turbulence in your engine cylinder. Turbulence is vital to completely mix the fuel with the hot air created during compression. Piston design is the most common way to generate turbulence in direct injection engines. Precombustion,and turbulence chambers or energy cells were used on someengines manufactured up until the last decade of the last century. Prechambers allowed designers to build lighter engines and use lower injection pressures. Examples include the VW Golf, Smaller Ag tractors, GM and Ford Pick up trucks. Prechambered engines did not meet the emission standards of the 21st century and are becoming museum pieces.
This is a rather long ramble which I hope will be taken in the way it was intended as an answert to your question.
Again I don't mean to rain on your parade. Keep at it.
Ernie Johnson :)
 
My friend, Don Comstock, builds model Diesels. He is mentioned in this thread:

http://www.smokstak.com/forum/showthread.php?t=50410

His son, Terry, posted a video of it running:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOCpgZe87O8[/ame]

IIRC, Don modifies Oldsmobile Diesel injectors. I've not asked him for the details; but, I know he drills new orifices with insanely tiny bits. The thread, linked above, tells a bit about them.

The thread also mentions a four cylinder. Don has since completed it and it runs quite well.

Orrin
 
Hallo Alex,
I guess your problem is more likely unreliable pressure buildup, which is rather likely caused by bad deaeration or by an unreliable pump.
You can easily sort out that problem by buying a used commercial injector on eb*y. If it works, it's your selfmade injector that has to be worked on.
How do you establish 100% deaeration?? Do you have a deaeration-screw on the injector housing??? Do you have a lever on the pump for manual dearation prior to use?
(200bar isn't much for a direct injection diesel engine, you might want to improve spray by adding methanol)
A (handmade) sketch of your pump and the injector would be very helpful to provide at least some useful information. btw: How did you lap the hardened plunger in the hardened bore? I found that very difficult, so I ended up using a precision ground steel plunger with a precision ground bore in a hardened cast iron liner.
Open, needle-less nozzles work fine btw.
Watercooling makes the coldstart of small displacements pretty difficult, as it turns out to be difficult to pre-heat the system with a blowtorch for easy starting.
Grüße aus Hamburg,
 
Hi Guys,

Maybe you can see more some information here... There are also other interesting projects...

Cheers,

Alexandre
 
Hello!
Thank you very much for your fine replies!
Just to test, I have now made a different cylinder head for spark ignition and attached a simple petrol vapor fuel tank to the air inlet and off it goes...
I probably will rethink all this injection stuff and debug this if I find some more time.
The next project is already ongoing, but this will be a 4-stroke hit&miss engine :)

best regards,
Alex
 
The smallest commercial Diesel I know of, has 350 cm^3. So that is a hint what is doable.

5 years have passed since Nick's post and now there is a commercial Yanmar L48N diesel engine having 219 cm³ (13.4 in³) putting out 3.5 kW (~4.8 hp). Somebody has started to split droplets in half...
And I have found a video [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXzqGHn0CDY"]link[/ame] of a running model diesel engine with 20 cm³ (1.2 in³) displacement using a mechanical injection system.
Thinking about injector pumps and injectors for such low volumes as required in model diesel engines ink jet printers come to mind... Only they don't spray against some 30 bar (~435psi) back-pressure and their goal is to spray as few droplets as possible not as many droplets as possible as desired for diesel combustion.
 
This fellow has built several very small diesel engines. I know the basic configuration of his injectors, but how he gets the right fit is a bit of a mystery...

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZlxQDWvmoY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZlxQDWvmoY[/ame]

Chuck
 
See this injector, not difficult to understand.. :)

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_1waBLOrv4&t=465[/ame]
 
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