Mission

Dah Mission is to build a sparkin machine. The idea is to creat a plume of sparks the rise into the air.

Basic Design

A previous design used a propane fed venturi to such spark-dust into a flame. The design was abandoned because the maximum flow rate of propane that you can get out of a 20lb propane tank is too low to sustain a high flow rate.

The thought now is to use air instead propane to feed the spark-dust into a flame.

Currently I’m investigating a design that uses a blower to propel air+spark-dust into a burner manifold. The spark dust is sucked through the blower and then into the manifold. In the manifold the air combines with propane and burns. The supper heated air ignites the spark-dust as it is propelled from the manifold.

Burner Manifold Research: SparkGunSearch —- Blower Research: SparkGunBlowers

Fuel+Air Deets

Cp of air 0.244 BTU/lbm-deg F. Heat needed to vaporize the alcohol: 39.6 btu/lbm Air in 1 lbm fuel-air: 0.9

Solving for the temperature rise if we ad 39.6 BTU/lbm to the air before it is mized we get

 39.6/.9/.244 == 180 deg F temp rise.

Thus we need to heat the air around 200 deg F in order to fully vaporize the alcohol.