[Gasification] Lister on Gasoline, ingition control device?

[Ken Boak]

Hi Peter, List

Just for explanation, the Lister conversion project took place over three
consecutive Workshops at All Power Labs, Berkeley, California. Between Feb
2010 and April 2012, the team slowly picked away at the project.

The original spark ignition circuit was based on an Arduino, with a Hall
effect sensor being triggered by a tiny neodynium magnet taped to the
flywheel rim.   A darlington transistor drove the low tension side of a car
ignition coil.

https://files.pbworks.com/download/Mk7b7ymPda/gekgasifier/30638003/Lister_spark.pdf

I used a variable resistor on one of the analogue input pins as a "timing
control".  The idea was to fit the magnet very well in advance of the
optimum position, and then adjust the timingcontrol to add a given delay,
to allow the firing point to be adjusted to the position that gave the best
running.

This is what we used in the February 2010 workshop, when the engine first
ran on woodgas.  However a later discovered bug in my code meant that the
timing control was not really working as intended.

For the Fall workshop of 2010, I remade the ignition circuit on stripboard
and shipped it out to California, and Ron Ohler, Mike La Rosa, Marcus
Hardwick worked on the project. I could not attend that workshop.

The team fitted the newly positioned spark plug in the side port and proved
that the engine would run.

Marcus and I revisited the Lister project in March 2012 in the run up to
the April workshop. The Lister was converted back to stock 17:1 compression
ratio and given a new head gasket and more permanent arrangement with
gasifier, cooling and exhaust systems.

The electronic ignition (my department) was our Achilles heel this year,
and after a couple of microcontroller and transistor burn-outs, we
eventually replaced it with a commercial MSD spark ignition unit and coil.
 Ron Ohler and Andy Schofield went on to get the engine running sweetly,
after a lot of fiddling looking for the best ignition point.

I have now returned to the UK, and I am keen to maintain interest going in
the spark conversion of diesel engines.  The developing countries are
littered with small hp diesels such as Lister, Petter, Changfa clones
performing pumping, generation and agricultural processing tasks. To come
up with a cost effective spark conversion for these generic engines so that
they can be economically run on producer gas from biomass, would be a major
step towards petroleum independence.

The original IISc paper describing the performance testing of a 3 cylinder
spark converted Indian diesel engine at 17:1 CR  is here:

http://cgpl.iisc.ernet.in/site/Portals/0/Publications/ReferedJournal/Biomass%20derived%20producer%20gas%20as%20a%20reciprocating.pdf



regards



Ken Boak
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