Help! Flame Irregularity

[Greenspec]

Hi, I have a Nortel minor torch run on propane and an oxycon. Now I haven't done beads for a few months and when I went to fire up the torch I get even candles for a short time but when I add more oxygen the candles kinda go all wonky and some ports just look like they stop working. It also blows itslef out as well. All the pressures seem to be fine on the propane and there is oxygen coming for the oxycon. I tried taking a picture but my camera can't focus on the flame. I've cleaned all the ports with the little tool it comes with a couple times and it hasn't made any difference Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[vega]

I nabbed this from a neaby thread, this was a reply by kbinkster, I think this might help:

"Oh, and speaking of pressure... too many times, people equate psi with heat. This is a misconception when it comes to using concentrators. On a tank situation with a regulator, you need to set the line pressure (psi) high in order to get more flow (volume per a given amount of time, like liters per minute [LPM] or cubic feet per hour [CFH]) out of the tank. On a concentrator, you set the flow rate (LPM) - or more precisely, the upper limit of the flow rate (the machine will only let out as much as will pass through your torch at any given flame setting). You do not have to have higher psi in order to have higher flow on for most torches, particularly the standard mix bead burners like the Mini CC. For these torches, it is the flow (LPM), the volume, the actual amount of oxygen that gets to your torch and its purity that matters - not so much the delivery pressure (psi). Where psi is important is where there are lots of restrictions in a torch that you need to push through or when you have a lot of jet to feed (then you would need higher psi to move the flow along). There just aren't that many restrictions or that many jets in standard mix bead torches."

[kbinkster]

Hi, I have a Nortel minor torch run on propane and an oxycon. Now I haven't done beads for a few months and when I went to fire up the torch I get even candles for a short time but when I add more oxygen the candles kinda go all wonky and some ports just look like they stop working. It also blows itslef out as well. All the pressures seem to be fine on the propane and there is oxygen coming for the oxycon. I tried taking a picture but my camera can't focus on the flame. I've cleaned all the ports with the little tool it comes with a couple times and it hasn't made any difference Any advice would be greatly appreciated
If you were on tanked oxygen, and you kept pushing more oxygen, you could distort the flame to the point where the candles get wonky and if you push the oxygen hard enough, you could blow the flame right out.

When running on a concentrator, though, you have to consider the possibility that poor purity is the culprit for blowing out the flame. Have you ever had air in your lines at start-up and had it blow out your flame? Poor purity from a concentrator is just like that air and it will blow a flame out. It would have to be really, really low.

If you are running your torch on a low flame setting, the concentrator will only be putting out a low flow. Generally, the lower the flow on a concentrator, the better the purity and the higher the flow, the poorer the purity. So, you could have good enough purity to support a flame on a low setting. However, if you find that when you open your torch oxygen valve more, thus allowing the concentrator to produce a higher flow of oxygen, and the flame blows out, that could mean that what is getting through to the torch has such low purity that it cannot support a flame.

Did anything happen to your concentrator in the months that you weren't making beads? Did it work fine before?

[Greenspec]

Yeah, everything worked great up until this point, what I am wondering though is if there could be corrosion on anything from having sat out in a cold garage all winter in the Pacific Northwest?

[renee in nola]

Funny - I'm having the same problem, sort of. I worked with it last night and it was just fine, today I can't even get candles going. Took the rig apart and put it back together. Checked the lines, wondered if the high humidity (in New Orleans) could affect it. No dogs laying on the lines either.

This happened once before and *poof* it was fine a couple of hours later. <sigh> Tanked air is not an option here because they are impossible to find. It's very frustrating!

renee

[kbinkster]

I would think that it depends on how cold it got, if it was moved around, how protected it was from the elements, stuff like that.

[Andrew]

Sounds like you may have moisture in the Zeolite beds. Industrial machines have pre filters with activated alumina and charcoal which removes any moisture before it gets to the Zeolite beds. A lot of medical ones dont so if they sit around for a extended periods of time. The Zeolite which not only has a liking for Nitrogen but also for Co2 and water in the normal process of operation will desorb the Nitrogen moisure and Co2 on the venting stage when it returns to normal atmospheric pressure.

What you may need to do is run it inside for a couple of hours without using it for torching. The running temperature and pressure during normal operation may slowly re activate the Zeolite. If this doesnt work you may have to have the machine checked to see what the oxygen content is at low LPM and see if the beds are ok.

Hope this is a help

Regards
Andrew.