Charcoal Gasifier for Generator

kyle · April 1, 2016, 2:04am

At first, I thought a jaw crusher would be simpler to prototype. But, now that I have gotten into it, I think it is going to be more complicated. Plus, we have 2 members who have rotary crushers that are real world proven, and appear to work well.

So, I have decided to go with a design more similar to Don and Gary’s.

I picked up a few parts this afternoon.

I couldn’t find a 3" piece of pipe, so I a going to try a 2". Hope that works.

But my daughter is really going to be upset if this doesn’t work, since we just took apart the scooter to get the motor.

don_mannes · April 1, 2016, 2:13am

Al, that little motor is a gear motor with a 90 degree worm drive and 170 RPM and 1/20th HP. The rotor is a 3 inch pipe with 3 teeth welded on at one third revolution each.

trigaux · April 1, 2016, 2:24am

Don

what size the crusher teeth?

don_mannes · April 1, 2016, 2:31am

3/8" (9.5mm) teeth go through 9/16"(14mm) slots.

ray_menke · April 1, 2016, 2:50am

Here is a photo I made over three years ago. It shows the one I welded up, but I’m pretty sure I copied Gary’s teeth spacing, etc.

Here is the photo of Gary’s unit:

don_mannes · April 1, 2016, 2:56am

Yup, that last pic is of Gary’s grinder. His motor is 1/6th HP I believe and 60 RPM which allows more teeth. I think the number of cuts per minute is about the same as mine.

d100f · April 1, 2016, 4:08am

Looks like you have moved on from the jaw crusher idea Kyle , but as promised here are a few pictures of the small jaw crusher we have laying in the yard , if time permits we will get a motor to it and try it out on some charcoal <img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/7/75ca6ae4e7a7cacbfcaec9cedaf44a9351308766.jpg" width=“281”

height=“500”>
Dave

d100f · April 1, 2016, 4:10am

looks like this photo didn’t go with the last lot so here it is again

abnervalbuena · April 1, 2016, 9:11pm

OK Guys, “long time no see”. I was waiting to have more pictures of the giant biochar kiln, but I couldn´t make it to my friends shop (he has bigger equipments and a huge winche. I have one picture and a drawing I´ll upload right away.

DRAWING:
wood gas comes out a 3" pipe and enters under it to a 3" manifold and ends over 3 one inch pipes that are sloted no holes only a slot all thee ways on the top of the pipe. I´ll try to upload a video.

PHOTO

That´s all for now. More pictures coming soon

abnervalbuena · April 1, 2016, 11:02pm

Watch this:
small scale with oil drums

kyle · April 2, 2016, 1:38am

Rotor

Here’s the rotor for the charcoal buster.

Basically, it’s a 2 inch pipe with three half inch teeth on 1.25 inch centers. The teeth are staggered around the circumference.

The sprocket from the scooter is attached on the left end of the pipe. This will be chain driven by the electric motor.

A 3/4 inch diameter solid axle passes through the middle of the pipe. The axle will be supported by pillow block bearings on either end, attached to a wooden frame.

The throat of the crusher will be constructed from plywood. The sides of the throat will be just inside the threaded part of the 2 inch pipe.

The fixed teeth will be like Gary’s. There will be 4 fixed teeth from half inch bar stock. There will be one eighth inch clearance between the rotating teeth and the fixed teeth.

kyle · April 2, 2016, 1:54am

Abner:

That looks really cool.

How big is that thing going to be?

kyle · April 2, 2016, 2:07am

I wonder if there is an advantage to turning these things on their sides?

Maybe the heat would be distributed more evenly?

A long time ago, I saw a video of some natives making charcoal somewhere in the Amazon. They used a long steel pipe crammed with wood with a ditch under it. They built a fire in the ditch. The steel pipe was sealed on both ends but had a small copper pipe exiting one end. They let this drip into a container to get pitch. I suppose the gasses just escaped from the same pipe.

kyle · April 3, 2016, 2:05am

Working Along

on the charcoal muncher.

Here is the rotor, in place in the frame.

Here is the throat of the crusher with the fixed teeth.

I decided to put some 1/4 inch plate under the teeth, and just weld them in place. Figured that would make this area stronger, since it will take a lot of abuse.

BillSchiller · April 3, 2016, 6:10pm

Now I understand, thanks Don.
I noticed you feeding the hopper as the charcoal was getting ground up. Were you doing that for us to see the operation? Can you take a big shovel full and dump it all in at once and get the same results?

abnervalbuena · April 3, 2016, 6:37pm

Good morning to all of you. Kyle, its BIG!!! 1x1x2 meters!!! 2000 liters capacity ,its BIG. By the way: nice chunker!

don_mannes · April 3, 2016, 7:28pm

Yes, I did not have a tripod for my camera so I just fed in a little to show how it worked. A day later I did it without videoing and I ground up 40 gallons by feeding it as fast as it would take it with the hopper filled to the top. which took about a half an hour. I now have about 170 gallons of engine grade charcoal in air tight plastic containers along with about 20 gallons of garden biochar.

drost2you2 · April 3, 2016, 11:23pm

Hey Don. You sound like gasoline is only needed by the wife at your household. I was curious as to how important it is to prevent atmosphere moisture from affecting charcoal. I thought that similar to popped popcorn, you would have to soak it in water to really make a temporary mess.

kyle · April 3, 2016, 11:38pm

Charcoal Grinder Finished

Finished up the charcoal grinder.

Here it is with the motor and the upper throat installed.

This motor is from the scooter pictured above. As far as I can tell by looking around on the Internet, it is a 225 watt motor (around 1/3 HP ?) designed to operate at a nominal voltage of 24 volts. But, from what I read, it can operate from 12 to 36 volts.

I don’t know the exact RPM, but I am estimating that the rotor speed is around 180 RPM at 24V.

Here it is with the hopper.

kyle · April 3, 2016, 11:51pm

Charcoal Grinder - First Test

I decided to test the grinder at 12V first, so that it would be going a little slower.

The first test went OK, but was a little disappointing.

In particular, the grinder choked several times with the first few handfuls of charcoal I put in it.

A little investigation revealed that I had randomly selected the last 5 gallon bucket from the first batch of charcoal I had made. This would have been the very last of the charcoal out of the retort, which would have been located in the top of the retort during the burn. As I commented previously, I found the most torified wood in this region, and from that burn. And, sure enough, it was choking on the occasional “solid” piece that was not fully charred (even though it might look charred on the outside).

I switched to a bucket from my second batch of charcoal. It digested a few handfuls of this fine at 12V. I decided to kick it up to 24V. It was noticeably faster. I processed a 5 gallon bucket of charcoal in just a few minutes.

After screening, this is what the “fuel” charcoal looked like.

I don’t know if you can see it in this picture, but I think that there are some fines in the dust tray that are big enough to use for fuel as well. I think I need to tighten up my small screen a little bit.

Anyway, I am very happy with the results. It looks like the grinder will produce fuel quality charcoal a lot faster than I can make it. It should work fine for what I have in mind.

The grinding and screening process does make quite a bit of dust. I think it would be better to do that outside.

I can also see the need for some sort of simple screen shaker; or an arrangement like Don’s.

Anyway, a big thanks to Gary for sharing his design, and Don for inspiring me to try this method.