Cyclonic action CCV Air/Oil separator fabrication

seaglf · Sep 2, 2011

IT isn't a turbine! that would indicate moving parts, like in a turbo or jet engine. It uses the gas flow to spin the gas, the centrifugal force it creates as it moves down the cone removes the heavy particles like carbon, oil, etc which drop to the bottom while the gas exits back into the intake.

Its the same principle as those Dyson Vacums.

rickmay · Sep 3, 2011

OK, seaglf

But this is the part I was wondering about. CCVs were installed to prevent an accumulation of pressure. If you watch the two videos in my last post, the healthy car had so little air movement that you could not see it. So, it seems to me that without air movement, there would be no cyclonic action. A Dyson has a fan to move the air at high speed to make it work. Otherwise, it will do absolutely nothing. It makes me wonder if there is anything in the BMW that creates air movement. Even that would seem incongruous because the valve cover is essentially a sealed container (the oil fill cap is sealed, the valve cover has a gasket seal). The only place you get circulation is through the valve seals caused by any blowby. Since healthy engines have very little blowby, there should be negligible air flow. Negligible air flow, no cyclonic action. I also asked if there was a particulate filter in the unit that was replaceable. The one photo looked like there was a filter, but the unit also looks sealed.

I understand the premise, but with little or no air velocity, there is no cyclonic action. Remove the breather hose on your valve cover, and put the two fingers loosely over the opening, and tell me how much air you feel leaking through. May I suggest doing this with a cold engine, so you don't burn yourself? My Mercedes engine seems to have great compression, but when I do this, I feel little. I was trying to understand the attraction of doing this, since logic tells it does little when you have a healthy engine.

josh8loop · Sep 3, 2011

rickmay said:
But this is the part I was wondering about. CCVs were installed to prevent an accumulation of pressure. If you watch the two videos in my last post, the healthy car had so little air movement that you could not see it. So, it seems to me that without air movement, there would be no cyclonic action. A Dyson has a fan to move the air at high speed to make it work. Otherwise, it will do absolutely nothing. It makes me wonder if there is anything in the BMW that creates air movement. Even that would seem incongruous because the valve cover is essentially a sealed container (the oil fill cap is sealed, the valve cover has a gasket seal). The only place you get circulation is through the valve seals caused by any blowby. Since healthy engines have very little blowby, there should be negligible air flow. Negligible air flow, no cyclonic action. I also asked if there was a particulate filter in the unit that was replaceable. The one photo looked like there was a filter, but the unit also looks sealed.

I understand the premise, but with little or no air velocity, there is no cyclonic action. Remove the breather hose on your valve cover, and put the two fingers loosely over the opening, and tell me how much air you feel leaking through. May I suggest doing this with a cold engine, so you don't burn yourself? My Mercedes engine seems to have great compression, but when I do this, I feel little. I was trying to understand the attraction of doing this, since logic tells it does little when you have a healthy engine.

As you know most all engines will have a certain amount of blowby. Engines that are a bit more loose will certainly have more-doesn't mean it's not healthy, just well used

. Also, ALH TDI engines vent their vacuum pump exhaust directly into the valve cover area and this also increases the CCV effluent volume. You are correct, the cyclonic oil separators do indeed need a certain volume of air flow to work properly. This is something I had to take into account when I first started this thread and began constructing my own device. My home made unit did not work(dimensions not right for the TDI flow rate). Then I found the BMW unit- Suffice it to say that in general there is enough air flow to allow this to work on my TDI during most operating conditions.

It is well known in the ALH TDI community that oil vapors that collect in the lower inter cooler come from a couple places-number one being the CCV, and number two being the turbo oil seals. Not sure which would be the greatest contributor, and would most likely depend how the particular user drives. The way I have this setup it takes care of the issue from both angles. For me I see value in having a setup that will assure me that I will have very little to no oil accumulation in my lower IC so I don't have to be concerned with a run away engine or hydrolock. Once this is all done I will most likely figure out an easy way to return any collected oil to the oil drain pan. This separator does not have an internal filter by the way.

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seaglf · Sep 3, 2011

rickmay said:
But this is the part I was wondering about. CCVs were installed to prevent an accumulation of pressure. If you watch the two videos in my last post, the healthy car had so little air movement that you could not see it. So, it seems to me that without air movement, there would be no cyclonic action. A Dyson has a fan to move the air at high speed to make it work. Otherwise, it will do absolutely nothing. It makes me wonder if there is anything in the BMW that creates air movement. Even that would seem incongruous because the valve cover is essentially a sealed container (the oil fill cap is sealed, the valve cover has a gasket seal). The only place you get circulation is through the valve seals caused by any blowby. Since healthy engines have very little blowby, there should be negligible air flow. Negligible air flow, no cyclonic action. I also asked if there was a particulate filter in the unit that was replaceable. The one photo looked like there was a filter, but the unit also looks sealed.

I understand the premise, but with little or no air velocity, there is no cyclonic action. Remove the breather hose on your valve cover, and put the two fingers loosely over the opening, and tell me how much air you feel leaking through. May I suggest doing this with a cold engine, so you don't burn yourself? My Mercedes engine seems to have great compression, but when I do this, I feel little. I was trying to understand the attraction of doing this, since logic tells it does little when you have a healthy engine.

the more miles on an engine or a cylinder out of round creates a environmental where more exhaust gas escapes around the piston rings creating more blow by such as in the film with the black smoke. Also i'm sure timing and fuel injection has allot to do with.

Also in the video that he had with the cyclonic separator he was removing oil over a short period of time. Oil that would have otherwise gone into the intake and mixed with the exhaust gas from the EGR and clogged it up. This is the whole purpose of the CCV oil separators. This has been a real problem in late model trucks such as the 6.0 powerstroke and the diesel power magazine is loaded with articles and adverts on deleting the EGR or adding the CCV oil filter systems. I'm a Captain and work on vessels with large Cats, Detroits, cumminns etc. And they are even starting to use them more often now, even though they don't have emission control systems.

I like the idea of the Cyclonic separator for the same reason I like the oil centrifuge....no filters to replace, and if the cyc. separator works as good as the centrifuge it should be better then the filter type separators. the oil centrifuge on one of my previous posts filters down as low as 1/2 micron.

But anything that keeps oil from entering the intake is good.

josh8loop · Sep 6, 2011

Update:

Just looked at the glass catch container this afternoon, and it looks like since I added the lower intercooler air/oil bleed to the inlet of my cyclonic separator it has increased my oil removal quite a bit. Within the first couple thousand miles I had about a teaspoon, and since I added the bleed(last thousand miles) the oil quantity doubled. Very cool! I like it

PS.

Just because this seems to be working very effectively for my ALH TDI, it doesn't mean that it will flow enough for larger diesel engines(Powerstroke, Cummins Etc). In that case, you would want to source one that is capable of flowing more CCV volume without causing increased backpressure. FYI

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p377y7h33f · Sep 6, 2011

josh8loop said:
Update:

Just looked at the glass catch container this afternoon, and it looks like since I added the lower intercooler air/oil bleed to the inlet of my cyclonic separator it has increased my oil removal quite a bit. Within the first couple thousand miles I had about a teaspoon, and since I added the bleed(last thousand miles) the oil quantity doubled. Very cool! I like it

based on this information, do you suppose the separator wasn't as efficient at separating the oil from the air stream without the added airflow from the intercooler? or maybe the additional amounts of oil are there from simply draining whatever gets past the turbo seals from the intercooler? either way you've killed two birds with one stone by adding the bleed to the lowest part of the system, but what is the actual source of the extra oil?

josh8loop · Sep 6, 2011

p377y7h33f said:
based on this information, do you suppose the separator wasn't as efficient at separating the oil from the air stream without the added airflow from the intercooler? or maybe the additional amounts of oil are there from simply draining whatever gets past the turbo seals from the intercooler? either way you've killed two birds with one stone by adding the bleed to the lowest part of the system, but what is the actual source of the extra oil?

The separators were designed for a 5.0L BMW engine and they used two of these- one for each bank of cylinders. That would be about 2.5L of cylinder/CCV flow for each separator. Since our TDI's are 1.9L plus additional air volume from the vacuum system(which the BMW didn't have) it is pretty close to the flow rate needed to remove oil vapor effectively. The extra air bleed among other important things(like keeping oil from pooling in the IC) provides a bit of air flow bias to put the separator in a more efficient operating regime flow wise.

As far as where the oil comes from, seems like the answer would be both. The slight increase in air flow helps the cyclonic separator take out the entrained oil vapors from the crank case gasses better while the same air bleed drains whatever comes from/past the turbo. The source of the extra oil is just oil that the cyclonic separator didn't or wasn't able(like oil from turbo seals) to take out, so no mystery there. It would be nice if some one else would put this system together and evaluate it on their car to get some more feedback, but as far as I'm concerned it's the best thing going right now.

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p377y7h33f · Sep 6, 2011

i am tempted to do this, as i'm sick of the elephant trunk, literally, but the idea of tapping into the intercooler seems like a lot of work. i have my eye on the Provent 200 for a while now. yes, it's a costly solution, but the installation is straight forward and the results have been proven with time.

josh8loop · Sep 6, 2011

p377y7h33f said:
i am tempted to do this, as i'm sick of the elephant trunk, literally, but the idea of tapping into the intercooler seems like a lot of work. i have my eye on the Provent 200 for a while now. yes, it's a costly solution, but the installation is straight forward and the results have been proven with time.

Mine seemed to work even without the bleed installed, albeit not as much oil was removed. Probably expect to remove a few tablespoons of oil per OCI I would think without the bleed. One thing that the provent can't do is keep the lower IC from pooling oil that gets past the turbo oil seals! Extra time spent creating the Lower IC bleed is worth the extra few minutes IMHO. I ended up using a drill, and a 10/32" tap to create mine. I found a fitting that had the 10/32" thread on one end, and a 1/8" quick disconnect fitting on the other end. Some time I will make another video of the new setup with the bleed installed.

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josh8loop · Sep 12, 2011

Took a look at my system, and made a couple modifications to my cyclonic oil/air separator. It's getting close to it's final version plumbing wise now. Instead of my previous 1/8" black plastic bleed line I replaced it with some 1/8" clear Teflon line so I can see the mixture of air/oil that it passes-the more visual feedback, the better! When I was removing the black plastic line I noticed some liquid oil that had indeed come from the bottom of the lower intercooler, so that is total confirmation that it is removing oil from that location which agrees nicely with the increase in oil captured after the bleed installation.

Recently I came across the Old Navy CCV Unit, and noticed how much restriction there was on the inlet to the unit. No wonder why users of that device complained that in some circumstances that pressure buildup would pop it out of the valve cover. It's funny over time how much we learn, and how to adapt previously unused technologies. The cyclonic unit remains free flowing and poses very little restriction FWIW. Now that the unit is mostly in it's final configuration/orientation I will probably make a You Tube video to show exactly what the setup looks like and to help others recreate it for themselves if they wish.

seaglf · Sep 12, 2011

Hella Cool dude

josh8loop · Sep 13, 2011

My 1/8" Clear Teflon bleed line from my lower IC that I installed yesterday had a couple of drops of oil that appeared to collect in the tubing. Yesterdays commute was only 50 miles. This confirms that the bleed is very active in helping to remove collected oil in the intercooler. FWIW

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notfrommt · Oct 15, 2011

Just ordered the BMW part today. It's worth trying for the price, plus it will fit on an M5, which tells me it works.

Stay tuned, I'll throw my two cents in eventually.

josh8loop · Oct 15, 2011

notfrommt said:
Just ordered the BMW part today. It's worth trying for the price, plus it will fit on an M5, which tells me it works.

Stay tuned, I'll throw my two cents in eventually.

Glad to see someone is going to give this a "whirl"

Pardon the pun! Actually this evening I ended up removing the "P" shaped rubber hose going to the EGR valve. Before I did the cyclonic separator and the lower IC bleed I would always have an nice oil film on the inside of the intake piping. This evening I noticed everything was clean and dry on the intake piping. Seems as though my CCV mods are working really well so far. I will be measuring the caught and removed CCV/turbo seal oil that I am accumulating towards the 10K mile mark after installation. I will post results when I do.

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josh8loop · Oct 28, 2011

notfrommt said:
Just ordered the BMW part today. It's worth trying for the price, plus it will fit on an M5, which tells me it works.

Stay tuned, I'll throw my two cents in eventually.

Did ya get it yet?? Did ya, did ya!!??

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josh8loop · Oct 31, 2011

Update on performance:

I just couldn't wait until the 10K mile mark to check the oil quantity collected. I measure .75 ounces after 6500 miles collected. I am anticipating around 1 ounce total collected in 10K miles. No water was inside the glass collection container at all FWIW.

Those in cooler climates with other types of oil separators that are physically longer and tend to condense moisture would possibly get more total volume due to the extra moisure content. Mine is most likely on par since it doesn't contain significant water quantities and plumbing is short and relatively direct.

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greengeeker · Oct 31, 2011

Nice work Josh. The best visual feedback you could get from your mod would be a clear line returning to your TIP. Clean line = effective mod.

josh8loop · Nov 1, 2011

greengeeker said:
Nice work Josh. The best visual feedback you could get from your mod would be a clear line returning to your TIP. Clean line = effective mod.

Thanks for the compliment!

I suppose I could install a clear line on the output, but I like the way the black braided line looks. I will have to see if I have some clear Tygon tubing around. Also the cyclonic separator is only part of the oil removing system. The other part being the lower IC bleed. Total effectiveness could be guestimated by the accumulated oil in the catch can, and the dryness of the rubber piping from the IC to the EGR valve. If I had separate catch cans-one for the cyclonic separator, and one for the IC bleed I would be able to see how much oil each contributes to the total collected.

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josh8loop · Nov 1, 2011

Fellas,

Here is a video showing my implimentation of the lower IC bleed added to the cyclonic CCV separator system. Maybe it will help others to be able to visualize what I have done. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT2w-ejVE14

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josh8loop · Dec 31, 2011

Quick update:

I am about a couple hundred miles away from 10K on my Cyclonic oil separator/lower IC bleed combo. As of right now I have collected a little over an ounce of oil. Looks like my 5K inspection that revealed .5 ounce held to be approximately the rate of oil collection from the system. I will be going a little longer on my oil change(most likely in the 15k-20k range) and will report how things continue to go on this.

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feuerwehr7 · Jun 16, 2012

http://www.bmwpartsweb.com/Part-Number/Product-Detail__11151705237_HAM_3C8E0486.aspx

I found this one for $23 just for info.

lirunaway · Jun 16, 2012

I understand this is a beginning stage so we are looking to see the oil caught to know it is working. However I would really like to know how I could plumb it so the oil drains back into the engine.

deejaaa · Jun 17, 2012

DanG144 said:
I like the OEM setup just fine.

me either. i have a filter on mine and the oil it catches, it goes into a recycle bin.

deejaaa · Jun 17, 2012

lirunaway said:
I understand this is a beginning stage so we are looking to see the oil caught to know it is working. However I would really like to know how I could plumb it so the oil drains back into the engine.

what about the moisture? do you really want that back in the crankcase?

03Springer · Jun 18, 2012

As long as the car gets driven for 15 to 20 miles all of the moisture would be burnt off. Once oil is up to temperature most if not all of the moisture evaporates.

josh8loop · Jul 26, 2012

deejaaa said:
what about the moisture? do you really want that back in the crankcase?

Most BMW's, Mercedes, and Porches with the Cyclonic setup drain right back into the oil pan FWIW. I think you'll be ok

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Turbo6.0L · Aug 30, 2012

Josh8loop - Nice work and good job finding the part. Have you looked at the return line yet to see how clean it is? It doesnt take much oil to make a mess of intake, intercooler and piping. Have done catch can mods on 2 other diesel non VW vehicles and it always amazed me how clean things were after the catch was running for a while.

79TA7.6 · Sep 20, 2012

I just bought one from eBay for $29.99 shipped. In case this link goes dead here is the users name deutschepartsusa, clickable links. I have just installed mine today. I will be starting school again next week and putting 400-500 miles on per week so I will be able to see how it is doing real quick. I will post up pics or a link to how my set up is, basically the same as Josh's.

Turbo6.0L · Sep 20, 2012

I am very curious as to how clean the return line is staying. Please keep us posted.

SD26 · Sep 21, 2012

Turbo6.0L said:
Josh8loop - Nice work and good job finding the part. Have you looked at the return line yet to see how clean it is? It doesnt take much oil to make a mess of intake, intercooler and piping. Have done catch can mods on 2 other diesel non VW vehicles and it always amazed me how clean things were after the catch was running for a while.

So, did you do it to a 6.0PSD? If so, what did you use?

Cyclonic action CCV Air/Oil separator fabrication

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