Hey Bruce I don’t take offense that easily and this is just a tough subject anyway.
I would say that it is completely unreasonable to try to get the same performance characteristics out of an engine that was designed to use gasoline but now you are feeding it woodgas. Maybe you need an engine that was designed for a gaseous fuel? Something like a natural gas engine?
“More efficient than what?”
Researchers use a ‘bomb calorimeter’ to determine how much heat can be gotten out of each kind of molecule. They then use this data for all kinds of calculations. If a heat engine, such as a gasoline or diesel engine, converts a larger percentage of a fuel’s heat to usable work it is said to be more efficient. Somehow I think you already knew this.
It was helpful to me to learn exactly how fuel suppliers determine octane ratings for their products. They actually have a test engine that allows them to change compression ratio on the fly. Search: octane rating test engine Octane Test Engine: The Summary of RON/MON Test Method
Here is a link to a an explanation I wrote years ago. LINK
I hope all this helps. Ask any questions.
Rindert