Gassifer to power Engine

We hope for you that the stirrer holds up and cooling tubes stay cleaner. Thank you for letting us experience this with you.

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We have run 1 Hr and we are unnable to sustain a flame

You are adding chip fuel at 30% moisture content?

And the material has not been screened to remove the fines?

It is encouraging to see the better results with partially dried material, which indicates better results can be gotten with dry material and better air flow through the combustion bed.

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Yes adding meterial which is between 25 to 30 Percent mosture


Yes screened not all the fines were removed

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Why is it not possible to keep the flame going. Is this gas ok for the engine

Did you start the fire with different material, dry kindling or charcoal? Was an accelerant (diesel fuel) used to start the fire? I suspect starting conditions and fuel were somehow different from new fuel added. The moisture content of 25 - 30% is still too high, so steam eventually lowered temperature below that needed for a good clean reaction.

Good start though, you are on the path to success and learning the operating requirements of your system.

I believe at this point lowering the moisture content of your fuel is the significant obstacle. Fuel should be 20% at most, 15 far better.

Faazil,

la flamme de l’usine ci dessus, de 3 ml de long sans maintient de flamme des heures sans interruption 1.3 KW/Nm3 en moyen, je t’es demandĂ© le litrage des cylindres de ton moteur, car j 'ai un doute sur les m3 de syngas que tu utilise Ă  l’heure.

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Hi Faazil, it is very important that you have a sufficient charcoal bed of charcoal, deep enough so the burning wood chips gases can pass though this bed of charcoal. The pieces of charcoal should be made of larger chips. Starting the gasifier unit with the larger pieces of pre made charcoal in the bottom filled up to where you establish your fire burn area. There has to be a deep enough bed for the wood gas conversion to take place. If you lose your bed of charcoal you lose your good gas and it will not burn or the flare tube will not stay lit. If you could add larger pieces of wood then the larger wood chip this will keep your bed from getting plugged up with to fine of charcoal causing a higher vacuum pull of the wood gas. It is a real balancing of adding just the right size and amount of wood. The larger the scale gasifier might not be as critical as a smaller scale. But charcoal bed constipation is bad and will stop your gas flowing. This is the same with all gasifier units. Note I have never run a big unit like yours or that style of gasifier. But if you are not getting good gas continuously one of the steps of making good gasification gas is being bypassed or over looked. It has to be done in the correct order of prossese. Hope this will help.
If you could have someone like Francois Pal that as built one and has it running visit you
 This would be the better way to go for help.
Bob

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I just used old fire inside the gassifer. ran the motor reverse so i built a good flame and slowly added the wood to build a charcoal level. I just stoped the gassifer because its late here. I will be starting it again tomorrow morning. The temperature inside the gassifer was between 200-280

Puis-je vĂ©rifier les dĂ©tails du moteur demain.Parce que je n’ai pas de manuel pour le moteur. Je viens de demander Ă  notre mĂ©canicien et vous faire savoir

Yes i also thought to build a good chacoal bed. Shall i fill the gassifer about half the height with charcoal and start the system.

Once i put the system to working condition everybody here is welcome to study the system.

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I would look at a moveable Version of a hoop house greenhouse to help get temperature up and you need airflow to help dry it faster. You don’t want over about 6 inches without some venting to get the moisture out. But PVC pipe, tap for the floor and plastic for the top is pretty easy and cheap.

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I may not be the one to comment on this. I watch the two fellow develop the Drizzler and when they went to the open top, I bailed out. I will say what everyone else is saying-- dry fuel, dry fuel, dry fuel. In the video where you said you could not keep it flaring, when the blue flame went out you could see a cone shape cloud. To me that is moisture. When your woodgas production slows down then it can’t overcome the moisture that is in the gas and the flame goes out. My guess on what is happening is— you start out with ? percent moisture. The closer you get to the center of a piece of wood the higher percent you get of moisture. ( when wood dries, unless forced, it dries starting on the out side and goes to the center, the center holding moisture the longest.) So if you start the pyrolysis process, the material gives up the correct amount of gases to give you a flare. Then as you get to the center of the chip pieces, you get into the higher moisture and that higher percent of moisture over rides your gas.

Bob, comments about charcoal base are good. The only thing is-- we all run will nozzles feeding air into the combustion area which is between the wood and the charcoal. We use the height of those nozzles to tell us how high the charcoal has to be. I would suggest making charcoal out side the gasifier and filling the bottom of the gasifier with it but I don’t know with out nozzles how high you have to go

Keep on working; the answer will come with-- in time TomC

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How high is the relative humidity in the air where this gasifier is mounted? I have found the it is harder for my open top gasifier to make good consistent gas on days when the relative humidity is high or when it is raining. In central Wisconsin, where I live, the relative humidity isn’t too bad, but I know that in some parts of the world it can be very high, If that’s the case, maybe you could use some process heat to dry the incoming air.

Pete Stanaitis

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Pete; I knew that you had purchased an European gasifier, but I didn’t realize it was an open top. Could you post some videos or if you have direct us to them so we can see how that type of gasifier works. Like we were just talking–l how high do you put charcoal in the tube and do you see flames in the top? I may have seen your posts but my memory isn’t worth a crap an the videos would obviously help Fairozz, TomC

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Pete, I would like to see it too.
Bob

It’s a Chinese gasifier.

For those with too much time on their hands:
https://spaco.org/Woodgas/Woodgas.htm

Or to get a bit closer to what you asked for:
https://spaco.org/JXQ10A.htm

I admit that I have gotten off-topic lately, sorta— slowly working on controls and an ECU with lotsa spark control:

Pete Stanaitis

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Thank you Pete for your posting. Sure gave us a lot to read and understand. Unfortunately, I need to spend that time in the shop working on my gasifier— Hopefully Fairozz will spend the time.

I had one more thought last night. We are all trying to get this gasifier running on “wet” materials. I think Fairozz should direct his efforts to ways of drying the material he has— and then the gasifier. I have a plant near me that collects all the saw dust from the many mills in the area and processes it and sells it ( for what purpose I am not sure) By “process” it I mean he “dries” it out. When you drive by you will see a hugh plumb of steam coming out of about ( it looks like ) 5 ft. diam pipe. Fairozz should look into making a tumbler that he can build a fire at one end and let the heat go through the tumbler to dry the material. A continuous flow system. I don’t know what the saw dust mill uses for he to dry the saw dust, but I suspect HE uses natural gas. TomC

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Along the same lines, he could utilize the heat generation he is already doing to help dry material, and he could bump up some of the insulative properties of the gasifier to retain heat where he needs it in the retort, but I haven’t suggested it because it isn’t simple or cheap. It adds another layer of complexity.

Sawdust can be used for a lot of things. We used to use it instead of woodchips for bedding instead of wood chips because it was free. A lot of people like it for animal bedding, and it is used for remanufactured wood products.

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What news of progress do you have on operation of the gasifier?

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