A race is a race to me. As long as you didn’t sabotage another car and follow the course that’s a clean win.
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The second morning of the race was real cold and the organizers delayed the start a couple of hours because the veggie cars could not get started. They took their fuel in the motel room and was heating it in the bath tubs.
I should have yelled foul because the times were published. Me and the wood burner could have been down the road about a hundred miles .
I could have used that $5000 
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Rally racing is different. From point A to point B you can not go over the speed limit in time to get there. No matter what seed you drive. If you have a flat tire, you will have to make up the driving time you lost. So you can drive over the speed limit to do this. If it is 10 hours driving time to point B you better not get there in 9 hours and fifty minutes. You will get penalize for it. Who ever gets to the 10 hour driving time will win. There is a lot of mathematics in this kind of racing. But now with new driving gps computers it does the figuring for you as you drive. No need for a navigator next to you. A classmate of mine use to Rally race and wanted me to be his navigator. I never did it.
Bob
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Yup Wayne they had already pick out who was going to be the winner in their riged veggie rally race.
It is a shame to the sponsors that put it on we make the rules as we go. Blah blah blah to them all.
I will bet the veggie oils had their oil spots set up ahead of time too.
Bob
Edit: opps. My apologies to Jono. I Got carried away back to your Topic Thread.
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I apologizes to Jono .
It seem we have hijacked his thread . The video of the Berkeley car drew a lot of response .
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Hello Mr Jono,
Actual GEK’s have been done by some here on the DOW.
The most prevalent long-time user/promoter has been Richard “Pepe” Lemieux, here:
Yeah. Long, long at currently 531 posts.
He does give an outline summery added his beginning this will link will drop you into.
On all DOW topic at the ending of the originator first post will be a blue box tool “Summerize this Topic” click that and it will shorted to ~100 posts.
Pepes is a GEK Version II.
Everything you are talking about GEK is later version III and version IV.
Like Pepe I am very familiar with and have operated GEK version II’s and early III’s.
This has taught me a lot.
I do not see GEK in your first post proposal at all.
To me this is a separated out, divorced process Brandt system.
Using the magnifying glass tool top bar and look up the works of Francois Pal. He is doing a lot of work with Brandt based combined wood&charcoal systems.
For your desire goals actually here on the DOW it is Matt Ryder who is proposing and developing for combined outputs system’s. Not GEK, not Brandt. His own original designs.
The reason the fellows are saying go Keith system is they are already getting lots and lots of remaining slipped system bio-char. Getting 9.0 ph upper system condensates. Weed-killer/bug killer juice. Lots of down system 5.0 ph condensate used as a plant growth potentialize. Hmm. Maybe I’m back-asswards about this?
And getting lots of many-uses tertiary concentrated tars (Stockholm Tar) too.
So they are saying why all of the extra-overthinking, eh.
Just build one. Load run it hard and get it all as a matter of course.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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no problem. I’m not precious about my thread
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thanks steve, thats really helpful, and gives me a lot of material to work through.
yes, it is a divorced process, Brandt style system. I knew someone would have done something similar, I just couldn’t find it. The only thing I was taking from the gek was using exhaust heat to drive pyrolysis.
Thinking about Bob’s implication that I might not have enough temp from the exhaust gas to fully drive pyrolysis, made me think that perhaps this isn’t exactly right, and maybe it would be more accurate to say that the gek (v.4+) uses exhaust heat to support an extended pyrolysis zone, and I probably need to think about being a bit more thermally efficient than my 2 barrel idea.
So, my next idea is to start with a tube full of charcoal, in a tube, in a barrel full of woodchip, in a barrel, in a barrel, in a barrel. I will ignite the charcoal through an ignition port, and enough of it will burn to ash to create an open tar gas combustion/cracking chamber, by the time the wood chip is hot enough to produce tar gas. It will have an insulated lid, top and bottom, so that I can empty the charcoal out, and fill with woodchip (and refill the combusted bit of charcoal that started the whole process).
I guess the critical thing is going to be the diameter of the tube full of charcoal, so that it can produce enough heat to get pyrolysis going, whilst leaving enough charcoal for thorough reduction.
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Hi Jono, looking at the drawing. The wood chips are all in a common area right?
How does the tar Gas get to the bottom of the container and how do the wood chips flow up with the targas and then down into where the charcoal level is. The charcoal level will be used up and needs to be replaced but wood chips do not flow up hill with out a mechanism help.
Or I am just not under standing the drawing very well.
Bob
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The woodchips don’t move. The idea is to size the system such that the tar gas burns all the oxygen, such that the charcoal does not combust so will not need to be replenished. The woodchio vestle is a single open vestle, with a tube in the centre, with the tube connected to the sides with pipes, so that tar gas can flow around.
I heard that 80% of the energy in biomass is in the volatiles, with only 20% in the fixed carbon. The challenge is going to be to get the heat out of the core, and into the chip fast enough to start pyrolysis, to arrest the combustion of the charcoal
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Okay the engine exhaust is going to be running on petroleum fuel to get it started. At best I see the heat being 200 °f . The combustion area is the coldest area with out side air coming in. In order to get it up to pyrolysisation temperature the charcoal in the tube will start to burn. There needs to be a way to replenish the charcoal from above the top. And as it burns there is not place for the ash to go but into the bottom and plug things up. It has to be up to 2000 °f temperature in the tube to crack the tars into a good syngases. Charcoal is white hot in this area and it is turn into ashes and being used up fast.
Also this is causing a lot of moisture to be released and it will go upwards causing a lot of steam to be released.
Bob
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No petroleum. Its started with fire through the ignition port on top. Some charcoal burns, at this point it is functioning like a down draft charcoal gasifier. At some point, heat from the charcoal combustion propagates through the walls of the tube to start pyrolysis in the woodchip, sending tar gas into the combustion tube and arresting the combustion of the charcoal. Then the whole barrel is gradually brought up to pyrolysis temperature over the next hour, mainly from the core, supported by the exhaust gas heat in the outer jacket. Once the woodchip is all turned to charcoal, the tar gas will stop flowing, oxygen will get into the charcoal core, and the charcoal will start to combust again. I will need to detect this to tell me it is time to refuel
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Oh, also, diesel engine exhaust gasses are typically in the region of 400-1200 Fahrenheit, depending on load. Gasoline engines vary less as the air intake is restricted, but similar temperatures over a narrower range. I don’t know how syngas affects exhaust temperature on either a converted diesel or Gasoline engine, but Jim mason seems to think he is getting good pyrolysis temperatures out of his set up, which is a natural gas engine running on syngas
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The charcoal won’t simply stop combusting, it will still get used up.
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Not sure I understand. I would have assumed it would depend on how much tar gas was getting produced, and the air flow through the system, as to whether or not the oxygen gets consumed before getting to the charcoal.
What is the limiting factor? As in, a retort kiln can convert 100% of its biomass into charcoal from the combustion of tar gas, excluding the fuel required to bring it up to temperature. Why can’t a gasifier? What is the ratio of charcoal that has to be consumed to charcoal that can be produced through gasification? Maybe I could size my charcoal stage to contain sufficient material for the process
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It takes a lot of charcoal at 2000 °f and higher temperatures to convert or what we call to crack the tar gases into good gases. If you could have a large amount of charcoal coming down from the top into the combustion chamber it would keep the process going until the full pyrolysisation temperature is reached and the wood is completely turned into charcoal. This takes a lot of time to do.
Meanwhile the ash from the charcoal burning prosses is going straight downward into the bottom, then you have the gases going up. What is driving this vaccum force of movement. Is it a diesel engine running? If it is how is it going to run to get this process going in the first place but on diesel fuel.
I still see a problem with all the wet moisture coming off the wood. It has no place to go but through the whole system. This will stop the good gases from being made to run the diesel unless it has another source of fuel. Now when running a diesel engines you have to be running on some diesel anyways for lubrication of the parts. So it will never be running on 100 % charcoal gases and converted tar gases.
When you run any wood type gasifer or retort you need to deal with the moisture coming out of the wood. Even wood at 18% moisture content needs to be manage in the system to make good gases. And that does not happen until about the halfway point through the pyrolysisation of the wood when most of the moisture is finally cooked off and just gases coming from the wood.
Bad tar gases going through the gasifer system could mean a tared up diesel engine temperature are not maintained.
So in your drawing there needs to be ash management in the bottom area to collect ashes and fines.
Filtering of the gases still has to be done too.
Is this system going on a diesel generator system? Or motorized vehicle? There is a big difference in how the systems work.
Bob
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Jono, I’m just curious about your background. What is your experience building and operating wood or charcoal gasifiers?
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I’m a vegetable farmer. I have no experience building or operating wood or charcoal gasifiers, I have never even seen one.
Ah, thats the bit of information that I was missing. I did not realize that charcoal was chemically involved in tar cracking, I had thought it was mostly just a thermal process, though I knew h2o can act as a catalyst.
Thanks for your patience
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Jono one way you can produce extra charcoal from a regular gasifier is to use a grate that only holds up the charbed sufficiently, size the diameter of the grate to just big enough. It will slip a lot of char. Only issue would be making sure that the system is producing enough char to replenish the bed as it’s slipping.
Thermal efficiency of preheating the air going to the nozzles definitely helps, lowers wood consumption and drives more heat into the system to pyrolyze faster. Wayne Keith’s book shows methods that work very well to preheat the incoming air.
But even in a regular system you get lots of charcoal slipped from the grate. Great for composting, and sifting out the bigger stuff and running in a charcoal gasifier.
If you plan to run a tractor on woodgas it will shake the grate plenty with all the ruts and hills you have to drive over. Shaking the grate let’s it sift char out.
Here’s Wayne’s woodgas tractor.
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