Flow Bench Continued.

Hey everyone, It's Matt here to update you on what's going on with the Oil-Vapor Separator Team.

We just sat down briefly with our adviser Chuck Maguire to pick his brain about how to go about setting up our flow bench.  We had run into some issues with looking at fans that would pull enough flow through the system at the pressure that we wanted.  We've now decided on utilizing an air compressor and a holding tank, and then utilizing a flow control valve to push air through our system.

Jon is going to be heading up the design of the oiling mechanism that we'll be using.  It's currently looking as though we'll be going with some kind of capillary tube to supply the oil to the air before it gets to the catch can.  the oil is going to be applied a minimum of 10 tube diameters downstream from the catch can.

Right now we're going to focus in on general design of the system and then narrow our view to other things that we can add to the system.  We'll be updating the blog again by next Thursday at the very latest.

Flow Bench Project Specifications

At our last meeting we had a brain storming session to come up with some parameters that our flow bench hand to meet.  The following is what came out of that meeting.

Flow Bench Project Specifications

- Fluid (oil) that acts, when at room temperature, like engine oil at engine operating temperature.

- Recreate the oil mist that will enter the Catch Can

- Attaches to 3/8 fitting on Catch Can, possibly for other sizes as well

- Flow rate through Catch Can of 0 to 7 CFM (Fan that functions well at low frequencies)

- Measures the pressure drop due to the Catch Can

- Measures of the flow through the Catch Can

- U-Tube Manometer

- Oil Reservoir

- Oil collector (for what is not collected by a catch can)

- Scales to measure the amount of oil that is put into the system and how much the catch can actually collects

- Flow bench Electrical Box for power of all devices

- VFD and PLC to control the Fan

- Easy DAQ installation and removal

- Inlet from atmosphere

- Exhaust to atmosphere

- Table to house all equipment

On the sponsor front, Forest has talked to several of the companies who offered to donate catch cans to our project, and asked if we could possibly receive the catch cans sooner rather than later.

The Website is going through steady updates, we're trying to update it at a minimum of once per week.

Keep watching the blog for more updates!