Densified or supercharged fuels

Jeez. This DOW server slow down sure makes it hard to have timely interchange.

Back up to you Terry Grybz
I think your over-rich obsevation is very important to this topic.
You only had just so much Heat to stimulate so many carbons, to grab so many oxegens.
So you have to meter in just enough oil dense carbon/hydrogen chains to balance with your available heat energy.
Balances are very important.
The child can have all of the stacking blocks possible. The child is the energy source and director to put them into some kind of balance to make something useful out of the jumble. (really bad example as molocule building blocks want to activley self-couple up and or repel - it is with HEAT, you inhibit, simulate and somewhat control this)

Yeah JohnB. You are right. But those damn twelve carbon faces insist on All kissing someboby, anybody; and especially can “Like” even each other. Why WE can long chain them up. Then have to with Much energy input, pry them apart. Teenagers!
And now we back to soots again, ain’t we.
Understand and accept this prevalence to group link-up in carbons and you will understand a lot about soots. Where. And why. How to avoid/minimize. How to use.
Was you who expained this WHY of it to me JohnB.
I was lost until then just stacking experiences on experiences never being able to WHY organize them to make forward sense.
S.U.

Adding any oils or plastics can drastically increase the oxygen needed. I ran the calculations on some plastics and found that for stoichiometric they needed about four times the oxygen that wood needs per unit weight. That’s why I mentioned that anyone seriously into this would probably have to increase their air intake plumbing.
Soots, soots. Those from incomplete combustion…and those from reformation. I think, jokingly, that harmonics could have a play in this. Stick a stainless rod into the plumbing with a big woofer magnet on the end and play some serious Janis Joplin into it and maybe no more soots? Just kidding.

Steve,
I feel oxygen is the limiting factor. With it completely used up processing the extra hydrocarbons(the upset of balance as you mentioned). There is not enough for sufficient combustion of the whole conglomerate(similar to making town gas) I suppose if one were to add more air along with the oil then the WG mixture would stay consistent.

MikeL, John B,
I am surprised either of you have not noticed an uncontrollable rich condition when playing with oil.

Terry
(staying away from drama, even if it is chemical)
haha

Awesome John! I’m glad we are on the same page!
T

Well guys I did say it was all about balances.
I think you are still under appreciating the value in this of the heat energy.
Three places in modern small scale gasification you can experience “rational” heat energy factoring in:
Larry Dobsons works
Ben Petersons works after the Victory model hearths into the HotWatt and now VictoryGrid models.
A large engine, well ran WayneKieth system.
In these, the design goals became to keep in/recycle ALL of the heats as much as possible and then just let the chemicals sort themselves out. No more finite oxegen/hydrocarbon balancing needed then. With a Heat surplus’s then the chem changes will take care of themselves nicely, thank you.
The challenges for all three of these vastly different systems then became just how to structurally/material envelope survive all of this long duration, highly energetic heat energy exposures.
They all took the same approach, with forethought, or by cut and build, again and again, to evolving past the “IMBERT” obsession for high internal velocities. Slow the velocities down; you slow down the vessels erosions; give more residence time for more complete “reductions” to simplified motor fuel molecules.
And since making these motor fuel gases is so endothermic heat absorbing this is chemically grabbing, “disappearing” the massive internal heat energy reducing it’s hearth apparent damaged until you “IC engine magic” then re-express this chemical energy potential back out as heat again, and now pressure energy’s in the engine’s cylinder.
These are the only systems you can actually hand touch when in loaded operation. Will not even burn off standard paints.

Then that lead me to to the conlusions that the real measure of delivered fuel energy can only ever be the value of heat energy that you DID within the hearth make, and chemically potentualized deliver out to the IC engine.
Ha! That’s actually in all of the books I’ve read 1908 to current. But expressed in maths, I could not see/feel it. It was not real to me.

We really should be calling these gasifier systems for motor fuel gases Potentializers. Or heat engine, fuel Rationalizers.

I’d like to say a fourth system in Mr VesaM’s personal gasifer build works too. Could be. I’ve never seen any physical hands touching videod. And he says nothing about exterior shells temperatures in his book. Just seasonal travel wind heat shielding for vehicle winter Finn using.
S.U.

Steve I think we are well aware that without heat the magic doesn’t happen. I am all ways promoting heat recycling to drop the nitrogen factor. You may as well ad GEK to that list, it’s heat recycling is what
grabbed my attention.
An example to the effectiveness of the gek style I mention is that I’m getting condensation temps BEFORE I hit my cooling tubes. My cyclone only runs dry if we have hot dry weather. I have insulation around my exterior shell to try to keep sludge out of my dump.

Terry

Your better performance with hopper moderation excessive moisture removal just proves the point.
IF you remove the hearth thermal drag it would have had to heat energy sucking superheat all of that excessive moisture UP to 800C. Then run it as dry steam down through the hearth to NOT hearth temperature quench. Then just downstream reject out all of that hearth heat to condense away unused. All downstream heat rejected out had to be in the hearth created heat energy in the first place.
Avoid this thermal drag on the hearth as much as possible and you will get better in hearth chemical change performances.
You did not change the O’s, H’s and C’s. You saved overall hearth heat.
Save heat. Then you do not have to over-air let in to make the extra needed heat to replace that NOT rationally used in the chemical reduction. And that’s where more nitrogen is let into the system.
Heat saved in the hearth makes MORE char carbons active in ripping out an oxygen out all of the CO2’s they can find. MORE HEAT activated carbons to tear, rip out the O from any H2O’s they find too.
This is in the books as the water to gas shift that needs Heat and Hot char to do. Take much less energy than just a pure heat driven disassociation of H2O.
Heck. You sure would not want a free disassociated oxygen down in there anyhow. A CO engine fuel molocule would grab it re-reverting (burning) to CO2 in the hearth before it could be to engine delivered.
You are a Premium side member.
Read how casual Wanyes is with his air nozzles sizing. Because with now a HEAT Surplus he does not have to be rigid “Imbert” air nozzle sizing fussy.

Like Wayne’s; these others Lab test out in 40-50% nitrogen in the produced gas. Atmospere air is 78% nitrogen.

So I am still on topic here as primary considering the molecular level effect of heat energized carbons. It is immense. It is molecularly irresistible.

Off topic Terry would be the next important engine power step going to the tremedously benfitial effects for motor fuel gasses of gasifier made methane. You’ll need this for your four cylinder. By raw wood fueling with the available potassium’s and calcium’s in raw wood, under hearth and hopper conditions you are forcing into forming significant CH3? 4? gasifier methane. Once you get up to 3-5% total out gas stream of hearth made methane the engine in cylinder methane shaft power equals what you can get with either the hydrogen, or ML’s “carbonic oxides?” individually. That in books also.
But off topic I think for JohnB’s dry dusty old books fuel stocks. Or plastics, and engine oils supplementing. You ain’t got the needed calcium’s and potassium’s to catalyze for methane forming. Not in the right forms anyway. Just like is see in kiln “cooked” dried wood these seem to have been lock in somehow. Dry, dusty books. Phah!
“Raw wood does it better” Why? Available in the wood oxegen’s, and trace “others”.

Regards to all
S.U.

My 2 cents !!! You all wrote too much for me to read !!! Johan in Sweden (young guy) who’s mother is a nurse used to worry about PAH’s (poly allophatic hydrocarbons) … I personally don’t feel I’m hurting the environment by dumping a cup or two from my monorator on the the gravel shoulder on a hopper re-fill. It will probably biodegrade before it gets to any water table … If you are saving hundreds of gallons of the crap, best to recycle it back into the machine but the problem with that is a lot of it will come out again … 2 cents, Mike

Yeah Mike, you’re probably right. I keep forgetting that I am a stationary guy on a vehicle page. I just came from a stationary genset job where our runs were 8 - 12 hours daily with EPA eyes on us. There was no way in hell we could be dumping waste water on the ground. Also, lets say you run 12 hours nonstop at 1800 rpm. That could be, depending on the vehicle, over 700 miles a day or 3,000 - 4,000 miles per week. The amounts of condensate could be quite a bit more than your cup or two. Good thing for us was that the Humphrey design had no need for a hopper condensate collection, or maybe better stated, the Humphrey design gasifying that particular feedstock had no hopper condensate issues. The gas was dry enough to run it through a one micron baghouse.
Their webpage is wastetoenergysystems.com and I think they have photos of the system as it was when I left. It is constantly under development so may not be the same now.

I don’t know what to make of those PAH’s. Apparently I ingest quite a bit every time I cook a steak on the grill.
To make my dumps more nature friendly I always neutralize them by mixing the hopper(acidic) and cyclone/filter(basic).

Like I was telling Mike, you guys are probably right, it’s just that I can’t afford that luxury on the scale that I work on. If I could, you know I would. Bill should not let me freak him out on this either. If you live “out on the land”, so to speak, and get your drinking water from a well, as many still do, then any harm being done, if any is, will be to oneself…so you be the judge. It never hurts to be aware of these issues, however.
In the meantime I am going to be concentrating on just how much plastic I can feed into this beast here. I’m not worried about a cup or two of condensate. On this scale we have to be able to read the actual real-time ER of the gasifier to keep efficiency and emissions in line. Just picture in your mind running about a ton of wood an hour. Seriously complex. Getting it in, getting it dry, getting it ground, getting it briquetted…then getting it gasified, and taking care of any residues coming out of the whole process. And of course, all these guys want all that done with the push of a button. All I can say to that is Ha Ha. It’s going to take a lot of grunt hands on.

Ha! Ha!
On topic of supercharged fuel woods try dripping pitch filled wood portions.
Gasifing these will teach you well about O’s, H’s, C’s and heat balancing.
That’s after you pick yourself up off 'de floor from being thoroughly Type 1 hopper /fuels soots ass whipped.

I’m thinking my long detailed posts above have dragged down reads and inputs on this topic.
Editing now for that. Look above.
I will continue this as needed. To get this back up and going.
Not my topic. Best read my previous inputs fast now before gone, by-by.
My Topics: if you don’t like it . . . . me . . . my wordiness . . . just read away. Pretty simple really.
I’m never ever going to weld what I can more durable, energy cheaper, braze.
Welding people together just like metals requires that they be of very similar characteristics. Even then takes a lot of melting energy. Takes a bonding/filler material very much the same as the base metals. Military training.
Brazing now is bonding with a filler dissimilar from the parts; which can be themselves very dissimilar to each other. Brazing done without all of the molten heat, sparks and passions. Just doesn’t need all of that much energy. Very resistant to vibration stresses. Very corrosion resistant.
I words braze. Give the why, why, why folks some to chew on to get off of stuck, Park, and moving DOing.
Give the geeky wordy high horse people a pull down to reality that, Shock! ME, a mere high school graduate can write, know O’s, C’s, H’s and energy balances too.
Now get down here. Head 'otta the clouds, Feet solidly grounded. And use your god given hands in the tars, condnesates, ashes and soots and DO somthing real. Something actually people useable.
Ha! So if you are a self-motivated, figure-it-out-myself, no-matter-what-the-effort-or-costs, kind of person you are already DOing it.
Don’t need me. And This is Why never, ever see more than 20-30 so fellows anywhere actually doing realistic useable woodgasification.
I want to see it rise to at least 7000 worldwide who are hands-on experienced capable.
Thats only 1 in a Million. And that takes folding in others with different ways of thinking, seeing, understanding than we’ve been doing it so far.
So I will keep words brazing different peoples types of learning styles together.
Regards
Steve Unruh

Yep, I braze when I can, weld when I have to.
Now I just wish the guys would fess up that they’re more worried about tars clogging their downstreams than they are blowing their engines.

Could one add a valve to the hopper lid (or similar location) that would leak some extra air into the hopper (and thus into the hot-zone) on command? Or would that be asking for a hopper “puff-back”? I thought I remember someone mentioning that they forgot to make sure their WK hopper lid was sealled and thus ran “partially FEMA” without troubles.

Here’s my thinking (for mobile road use): Set up either a metal straw(s) or smal chute(s) that dumps out right above the nozzle ring. If one knows they have a large hill coming up or wants to be ready to pass someone, they toggle an appropriate control which either dribbles used oil (straws) or auger-feeds shredded plastic bits (chutes) directly into the top of the reaction zone. To counter the needed extra oxygen for these complex hydrocarbon chains (from now on called “Complexes”), they’d also open the “hopper valves” letting some air in that way.

If I absorbed the thermo-chemical stuffs correctly, the Complexes require more heat energy, as well as more O2, to reduce. Since long-hills/higher speeds normally “over-pull” the gasifier (pulling O2, unprocesses, all the way to the grate, making CO2 again and entering Heater-Mode) and also over-heat the reactor and can only be run for short periods to avoid reactor damage (“Duty-Cycle”). The Complexes help mitigate this problem in 3 complimentary ways:

  1. If the additional air was kept within parameters (just enough to process the Complexes completely, but not enough to over-air the reaction as a whole), the Complexes would “use up” the extra O2 before it reaches the grate.

  2. Because the Complexes absorb more Heats energy to be Reduced fully, the reactor over-heat situation would be countered/tempered and avoid damagings of Reactor.

  3. As noted above, Complexes make “denser” gases fuels post-Reactor. If Engine Air Mixer valves openned more also to maintain Stoichio rations at Engine, then Engine produces more Powers for equaling Draws, yes? Inverse: Engine produces equaled Power for LESS Drawing, true? Less Pull for hill climbing success=less need for Over-Pull at Reactor.

Brain fried. :confused: Going to go lay down in dark for a bit.

Brian,

A few WK revisions back, Wayne had a “ball” valve on his hopper condensate tank with a cable ran into the cab. This would allow him to dump condensate on the fly, but also served to let outside air into the hopper after the condensate was drained. I recall him mentioning that allowing this outside air into the hopper did give him a temporary power boost. He will have to elaborate, as that’s all I remember about it.

Hello Billy and Brian.

Brings back memories,

On an earlier version I wanted to test feeding in supplemental air from the hopper when I considered the gasifier was being over pulled. To do this would give the combustion zone a little head start . The gasifier wouldn’t be pulling in any more air but it would be just slacking off a little at the nozzles and there would be a small amount or oxygen higher in the char bed and above the nozzles . This would cause the profile of the oxygen lobe to appear more like the gasifier at moderate pulls.

The easiest way to get the air in above the nozzle zone was to bring it in through the condensate plumbing system . I mounted a choke cable in the cab with it connected by spring to a ball . The ball valve was fixed so I could set the amount of vacuum it would take for the valve to open. from the spring tension This let air inter through the condensate plumbing and into the fire tube at the top . The valve could be set anywhere from about five inches of water to a about twenty .

On the dakota I discontinued using it because after the truck set for a while the ball would stick to the opening and I would have to tap it free , The entire hopper and condensate system will have tar and it is hard to make delicate valves work properly with the tar about . Also if you are over pulling the little dakotas for any length of time you may be driving to fast already. I just could tell if it made a lot of difference with the dakota .

I plan to revisit the issue with the V -10 because I over pull it often . A few months back I teed into the hopper condensate pipe and ran several feet of hose hoping to say clear of the tar ,with a valve that can be controlled from the cab. I just haven’t had the opportunity give it enough test.

Hey Billy , I think several may have saw the valve and misinterpreted as a dumb on the fly but the valve was at the top of the tank so never gave anyone a black windshield .

If you listen close you can here the valve opening at WOT and 3000 plus rpms

BBB

Mr Wayne, Would it make sense, during an over pull, to turn on the pusher blowers for a little boost?

I’m sure you have tried it. What was the result?

Just curious

First off, keep in mind I am a stationary guy, not a vehicle guy…yet. So my perspective may be a little off. It would seem that the way to approach all this would be through actual testing, trials…with an adequate study and understanding of the background science to be able to interpret what results you find. A lot will depend on the gasifier design.
Doing tests out on the highway could become interesting. If allowing extra air in to compensate for a shot of oil caused puffers just think of prune-faced Aunt Hellen right on your bumper trying to get by and your gasifier lid popping up and down emitting a series of smoky stinky puffer farts right in her face…the ol’ gal might call in on you.
But again, all this would have to be figured out through real world testing. Too many variables for our brains to figure out ahead of time on paper. Just prep the brain with some good study beforehand.

John, all we can hope for is that prune faced aunt Hellen doesn’t have a cell phone! :slight_smile:

Thanks Wayne for the clarification on the location of the ball valve in the hopper condensate tank. My memory ain’t what it used to be, but I prefer to think that my “forgetter” is getting better!

Looking forward to you revisiting this on the V-10.