I have a question on your charcoal bbq picture.
Could you explain the carbon negative aspect of a charcoal powered object?
Doesn’t make sense to me.
Terry
I harvest and pelletize the tumble weeds; then burn them in my gasifier Out of my gasifier comes charcoal and ash.
the ash is food for the soil The charcoal that does not get burned in the gasifier is the carbon capture.
Throw that on the grownd and Brazi has proven that to be the most effecient soil additive there is
Thanks Daucie,
That clears it up. So you have a wood(pellet) gasifier.
You might want to change the pic. It implies a charcoal gasifier which is not negative.
If I put mass in, and I get energy out I have profit. If I also get biochar out of it that is carbon negitve
I fertilize my fields with prepared nutrients my yard production surprises my gadiners
Hi DaucieR
I saw a picture you put up on another thread, you showing a grass pellet clinker chunk.
Also showed the bottom of your actual pellet fueled gasifier. Nice clean fabbing from what I can see man. Looked like a foot operated grate shaker/clinker grinder set up?
That and your words show you have experience and skills. Ha! Ha! Not just another pretty face in the crowd, but an actual doer.
I agree with ArvidO. Your red devil Weber BBQ picture is sending the wrong visual message for your worded stated intents. “Take trash bio-mass. Make pellet fuel. Use the fuel pellets for heat, power and soil enhancement.”
Suggest you change your visual to enhance your message.
Look at the attention Matt Ryder and others get with their system pictures.
Or you can show the results of gasification power like Wayne Baker and others do.
Or like I and others do, show a backdrop that just says, “Got Wood?”, “Got Fuel?” I do!
Regards
Steve Unruh
Thanks for the comments. That big klinker also shows me that my grass clippings are not going to
work in my little vulcan. Matt does pretty work, but it can’t handle that much ash.
Here is a pic of my charcoal maker. I auger my pellets through an induction furnass and flare the gasses
Yeah that is one improvement we made to the 2013 M-1. We raised up the grate and reduction bell a few inches along with the larger hopper that comes stock. If you are interested we can build you a bolt on extension for it. Or you might be able to tackle this your self. Let me know. In any case I hope your machine is working well for you:)
hello Matt, I just reassimbled that m-1 Ididn’t know the grate was adjustable. Big savings in charcoal
I was planing on extinding the jets over the cone to see if I could get that klinker to flow befor it built up too big.
Haven’t done that yet. didn’t have that problem while runnig the gen. so maybe it was over heating on flare
Has anyone been able to convert a truck in california.
Hey nice new picture you have DaucieR.
In this is an explanation to the make clinkers flaring, versus not, when engine running on your grass fuel pellets.
The engine shaking on this rubber wheeled cart and the single cylinder engine intake pulsations is not allowing the burnt off exposed mineral ash particles to settle against each other long enough to heat fuse.
This is why I say loudly and annoyingly that if a persons end intention is to fuel run IC engines, then run with IC engines as soon as you can get them to run at all. Refine and develop from there. Flare staring is for heat applications, Lab Geeks, and unavailable futuristic heat engines us common’s will never see or be able to afford. No reasonable affordable assembled suction motor set up can simulate an actual running IC piston engine.
Just make sure the IC engines you are learning woodgas developing on are common and readily available. Save the rare antiques, one off imports and one of a kind NOS’s for after you have made all of your learning mistakes.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Well said Steve. When I was in school, I read the text books like novels. Some things cannot be graspped until the dirt is on the hands
I saw an ad for the “MULTIPLAS WELDER” It is designed for welding and cutting metal
If you point that at a wood block, You get 8000 degrees of steam with no nitrogen
The quality of the fuel produced would be so much better and you could tune one nozzle
for 10hp, the second for 30 hp, and the third for 150hp…what do you think
Ha! Ha! Morning DaucieR.
I think the old saying is apt, “Give a man a hammer as his only tool and then all problems will be solved with Nails!”
I’ve woodgased worked with an excellent welder man - he solved the majority of his needs by welding/fabbing. I’ve worked some with a woodgas fellow who was excellent with research and the maths - same problems, solve differently. 'Nother fellow I’ve corresponded with is/was real good with energy balances right down to the molecular level. He taught himself to weld and fab.; saw and fuel chunk.
So of course you as a working electrician will have a different spin on solutions. The other then go in and back fill their knowledge and skills as best they could. Sure could have used a good experienced Industrial electrician there for a couple of years.
Every one of these guys, you and I have to face the reality of actually handling and processing the actual real tons/cubic meters of wood (or bio-mass) to do anything useful more than bench-top experimenting and a Woo-Hoo! YouTube.
So . . . “I THINK” any gains in conversion efficiency and fuel gas purity by a plasma conversion wood to fuel refining method will be offset by the stacked up conversion stepped ineffincenies getting from woodgas fuel -> engine shaft power -> usable levels of AC electrical power to then “Fuel” the plasma making process. If the juice is coming grid supplied from Dino NG turbines well hardly can be called a “neutral” process now can it? A subsidized process.
I’ve been poked with the the joke all of my life of, “Electricity doesn’t grow on trees you know!” Us actual timber owners just smiling now and can say, “Oh, Yes it Does!”
Really hard to beat the wood itself suppling the heat energy to closed energy loop doing it’s own thermal/chemical woodgas refining in a well designed and constructed system like the Keith System and a few others.
No offense intended man. But best if you say it, you step up and prove it. Many of us will be asking where the actual energy power come from to do the initial bulk fuel processing and then power the actual fuel refining steps.
Full discolsure: I buy out gasoline and diesel fuels to do mine for my current ~80,000,000 BTU annual of woodfuel needs. Annually 20 USD gallons gasoline and 5 USD gallons of diesel fuels. 3.5 million BTU’s purchased to make 80 million available, useable to me. Much safer with this killing capable equipment like chainsaws, sawmills and tractors to just be able to focus on the task at hand.
The future? Well always possible to do these woodgas powered too ever come the need. For now I am still supporting at least 100X the carbon being locked up and growing as I release. Much more than an Urban Eco-Green can ever prove.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Thanks Steve We use to have so many oak trees in this vally we could even find a deer or two.
Then they dammed the river and 50yrs later all we have is tumbleweeds.
When the wind blows the dust and pollen get so thick the EPA threatens to fine the county
$1,000,000 a day for pollution violations
I talk about burnning the tumbleweeds here because it brings a grin to most people.
But, if I paid myself $.50 an hr, gasoline would still be too cheap to mess with
I just have to have something to work on to keep my inner child alive.
Hey Daucie no harm no foul man.
I know of a man who back yard gasifies rabbit poop. He has lots of rabbits.
I’ve read of turkey, chicken and pig farmers with the same manure waste problem wanting to gasify them.
Horrifying to me living in a rainforest with rain mineral depleted soils needing all the manures we can scrounge.
On the other hand for four days I’ve been heating with PITA to burn Doug Fir bark. Here most just leave it to rot. Or open air smoky burn it off just to get it out of the way wasting all of those wonderful BTU’s. This stuff is tannic acid gold to natural leather tanners. None here anymore. Gone off shore to China and Korea.
Most the wood burners here think I am a crazy 'ol coot for burning bark and limb “twiggs” down to 1/2". No. Repactful of Mother Natures bounty. Very, very labor intensive handling this stuff.
I have read and some where a download file of portable Nepal charcoal converters. They are severely de-forested there. Get really cold and need to room heat and cook and too poor and distant to buy out Dino fuel. They now cut and bundle their invasive weeds. Char convert them in these converters. Grind up the charred stalks, add water, grind up and make a slurry and form these in forms into dougnut like pucks. High altitude solar dried. These are local sold and marketed as their fuel. Burnt in special stoves center out for heat and cooking.
After reading this I woke up and stopped criticizing anyones local BIO-Mass fuel sources.
Invasive tumbleweeds sound like a good fuel for this process. More of the West like this than forests.
I’ll search for the file or link of this.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Well, I been running the numbers and it took me a while to spot it, but the btu of hydrogen
is 11,260/M3 not 9.5 so that brings the cost to only 10 times the cost of wood pellets
plus, the good Dr. has no trees. Even the weeds are needed by the villagers to do cooking
The only thing he could see to work with was salt water
The aluminum feed is so reliable and non fouling that he can get back to work on his true calling
The electric system on the space capsule incredably exspencive but it fit the box they had to put it in.
So it matters where you are and whas you have to work with.
Morning DaucieR
I had to go back to 2009 note books to find the Nepal “BeeHive” charcoal making and stove systems. Sadly the published links I had then are no longer supported by their sponsors.
If you Google up Nepal BeeHive Charcoal Stoves you will find many links and downloads to this work. You want to find one that shows the actual charring retort and the BeeHive fuel biscuit making process.
Your missionaries African villagers could develop a cottage industry with their weeds out of this.
Even farther back in 2008 I openly moaned and groaned about an London Urban English fellow who was going to gasify green ground up leaf, twig and limb Arborist “free” dumped tree waste. Here we use this for 8 months of the year as walking path construction and farm working mud abatement to allow working in the rainy season. Rots in and disappears in 1-2 years leaving a rich loam. He was offended I called his “fuel” dirt. I had to apologize.
He later learned this most difficult of gasification fuel sources would only work if he screened, sorted out and solar or exhaust system dried just the limb chunks. Lot of work for “free”. Free often has the highest price of all.
And I learned never to criticize another fellows fuels. This is a big world with many different situations.
Reality is reality. Woodgasification for motor fuel works best, easiest if you do use actual clean, chunked, dry wood. Everything else bio-mass multiplies the difficulties.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Ok, here is where I turn it back relevent to woodgas; I can burn hydrogen clear down to 5% mixture.
hopefully, I can run the start up smoke through my engine so I don’t smoke up the neaborhood
Just like a deisel uses a pilot drop to ignite the woodgas, maybe I can force-burn the start up smoke
using the hydrogen. otherwise, there’s no way CARB is going to allow wood burners in california
Is there a topic on using propane carbs with wood gass?
Darcie
Take a look under my topic Wood gas for Diesel Engines - I have listed vendor urls that dual-fuel diesel and propane kits.
Start with propane then go wood-gas when its up to temp…
Doug