Jacob. Out of curiosity, why does your friend want to go in this direction. Does he believe that other more common fuels will be unavailable. ( he would be right) There are definite advantages to cooking with a gas fueled burner but not nearly enough to make it sense-able to use wood gas. I know a number of people that have gone back to old fashioned wood cook stoves and after surviving the learning curve are very happy with them. They paid much more for them than the ones I’m linking so I’m not sure how they are selling them here for these prices but it’s just an example. Stove Cooker Stove Turkish Oven Stove Wood Iron Burning | Etsyk_EAIaIQobChMIyIDIrqSW9gIVNz6tBh0UGwmNEAQYCCABEgKrgfD_BwE_k&utm_content=go_12567673668_122422054991_507253754083_pla-308555950715_c__998036007_413061747&utm_custom2=12567673668&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyIDIrqSW9gIVNz6tBh0UGwmNEAQYCCABEgKrgfD_BwE
I can also see some reasons to build some sort of hybrid using common fuels with a pressurized delivery system, like a common Coleman camping stove which could also make it possible for a person to produce their own fuels. An interesting video.
Personally, I find this kind of project to be extremely interesting so I hope you and your friend can make it work somehow. Give me $4500 dollars and you can bet I’d come up with something good.
Hi Jacob,
I think you are leaning in the right direction here.
I think home heating, cooking, and engine fuel production are three very different directions. Just because you are good at one of them doesn’t mean you can do them all.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a TLUD that would heat my house, AND produce charcoal for a gasifier. The more I think about it the more I feel that it will be better to make a wood burning rocket stove and a wood gasifier. And yup there is going to be a learning curve in each case.
Rindert
If you think a little beyond just cooking and heating and could create clean gas for other uses. Then you can better justify losses of efficiency on some applications as other applications if ran on gas versus electric counter parts would be far more efficient than any electric driven application from engine drive electric power from gasification. Those applications would far exceed efficiency gains making up for those losses of the other application’s. Then to add I can see where there is also an advantage of simply using a gas stove ran off the this gas if the gas supply could be easy to implement. If such a system could produce charcoal in all of this process then you have easily made fuel for charcoal gasification for engine driven electric power. That is where Im going with the gasometer system and a simple raw fueled gasifier optimized to drop charcoal I see no easier way. If all appliance that are an option to run on gas then you have a huge HUGE efficiency gains as you can use the gas directly without engine losses converting the gas to electric. These appliances then reduce your electrical needs so less charcoal creation is then needed. Combined with some solar this system will hopefully generator a surplus of charcoal daily while fully supplying all gas appliances 24 / 7.
As for heating though, I think a good ole wood stove that is efficient will still be hard to beat as mentioned. A wood stove is a gasifier, its simply doing all the processes in the fire box and without losses of the reactions of a more advanced gasifier. The energy losses are lost in a different way, losses in gases that are not fully converted to combustible gases and flu heat losses. Those things can be overcome with better wood stove designs.
So for me, it Im going to go to the trouble of running cooking hardware on any type of wood gas then Im going to make the system run much more and run all appliances that are available gas fuel counter parts to electric, Then its more justifiable especially if you are making charcoal to support daily electric off grid electric power.
We have this one in our house. I don’t like it very much
It is hard to clean. It is smokey and has two small of fire box. I am now thinking of suggesting. Just taking stove principles and combining them to make a good stove.
This is for Aprovacho, a organization Larry worked with/ started. they got a grant to design/ build efficient heating/ cook stoves. He thought/ thinks that gasifiers are the way to go. I’m not sure how stuck he is on going that direction.
This is for Aprovacho, a organization Larry worked with/ started.
What a way to honor your friend you go Jacob.
With the temp at 10f (-9c) and feels like of 1f(-17c) I was thinking about welding up something to heat up the shop and then checked the DOW and boom this thread popped up.
Jacob going back up to your original questions on your topic starting post two places you say their desire is, ". . . turn the biggest wood possible into gas good enough to burn . . . “. Then, " . . . how big of wood it could handle.”
This is saying big as in cut&split, cordwood and stick wood forms.
16-18-even 24" long by 2-4" across. 1, to 5 pounds, even 10 pounds pieces of wood.
No current in use small/personal use scale of gasifer system can do this. They all must have X by X ratio wood chunks. Or screened wood chips. Or densified ground wood pellets or briquettes.
Big splits wood and true stick woods you have only three choices to use them intact.
Horizontal laying; vertical stacked hopper fed.
Vertical bunch stacked. Either truly vertical; or near vertical splayed cone like a badminton birdies tail. A floral arrangement in a vase.
Been tried modern. Been done in produced units like the Soviet tracked forestry machines.
In all cases these only work with manual char breaking rods; or an internal HOT zone char breaking mechanism.
Very operator dependent. With much direct to metal constructs fo the hot char 100% of the time. The metals heats exposures: and hot gas cutting/erosions, distort, and metals die sooner versus later.
Because until you create that continuous char bed you will not be gasifying converting.
You will be oxidization burning.
And then you will have no, pipe to somewhere else, fuel gas.
Peter Berg from the first video I know in person. He is an authority on the RBB. He has his own website where he explains everything, batchrocket.eu. Design is open source and he is planning to get that certified. Rules are getting more difficult every year and some people want a wood burn ban. It is his legacy and no bla bla. Backed up with data. Jakob, I think this is what you are looking for. How big is big? Even for America big there is a design! The burn is super and you decide if you heat the house fast, slow or want to cook.
I was not familiar with Aprovacho so I looked it up. They seem very well versed in things like RMH’s and therefore other alternative heating methods. They would be familiar with the work at https://permies.com/ and I’m sure they have explored all the various options other than Wood gas. I’m guessing that is why they are focused on doing it with a gasifier,
Im planning a similar project for a family member but im thinking of the best way to go about it. My idea behind it is making woodgas to run a boiler for heating,hot water and gas stovetop. She had a wood stove for all this but it needed to run 24/7 for hot water so i had to be outside as it was to hot to have inside in summer and in winter it was a pain to go out and cook.
My plan is the gasifire would run to fill a storage bag then that bag would run the hotwater service and stove tops. This would prevent the need to run a wood stove 24/7 and the stove heating up the house in summer.
I would like to find a gas pump to supply the services when needed and turn off automatically but that is harder to find than i had hoped. The biogas pumps have to be turned on manually.
We had a discussion about this. See: Indoor cooking with woodgas
Here’s an ezpz way to make a ~30 gallon gasometer, with very little risk of gas leaks.
Rindert
That is the easiest gasometer I have ever seen. And the cheapest build too. If you use a counter weight too pull up on the empty barrel to fill it transfer the weight to the bottom barrel by releasing the counter weight you would have Matt’s idea for filling the gas.
Yes that will be my plan if i cant find a pump that does the job. The trick will be finding what pressure it will need to cut off at and if the there is a switch that goes down that low. All switches iv found is very high. Here is the pump i was looking at but i might have found a better suited pump just need to hear back from the supplier.
Let me know what you find as I was planning on making my own pump but would prefer to just buy them if available. Im tired of making everything lol cant I just buy it?? haha.
Here is an option for a low presure switch, this one I believe has a built in relay. You then wire to this another larger relay that can handle your voltage and amps. These are very precise and are pretty slick. But they are expensive.
I have the specs of the pump but the supplier but not the like yet. But this is what i have. Its a 220v pump im not sure if that will work fir you depending where you live.
