Hello, I’m new to the topic of wood and charcoal gasifiers. I live in Florida and I’m interested in purchasing or assembling a gasifier that can power a 30 kw generator and generate electricity for at least 16 hours a day. However, I don’t have a workshop or much knowledge about it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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If you want to buy one pre-made that size.
if you want to build one… it takes quite a bit more skill and time, and a scrap pile helps. But either way, it would be useful to buy Wayne’s gasification book so you actually have a firm basis of what is going on which will help diagnose problems or potential problems faster.
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It will take a quite a bit of fuel to run that long for consecutive days. Are you thinking for short runs to cover power outage or more long term?
Your intended use would greatly help the people here give you realistic advice.
In my mind, gassifieres for power generation.(electricity) should be sized more for keeping bare bones critical systems operational. Charging batteries, freezers cold, etc… but i might not be in the same mindset as others.
By all means this can be done. There is no dought about it. But ask yourself if you have the manpower and resorses to be able to proccess the needed fuel. If so, thats awesome!
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Hello FranklinD.
Welcome to the DOW.
Any DIY electrical system it always come down to the fueling inputs needed.
Doesn’t matter if that fuel would be tank stored propane LPG; gasoline; diesel; or wood.
On the actual wood-needed/demanded for an electrical system it is easy to advise northern climate fellows by advising them to FIRST wood-stove; wood-furnace for their home/shops primary heating. That will force them to tool-up for wood harvesting; transporting and cutting/splitting down processing. You will learn what kind of gloves to use in your climate by slivers and blisters. (Pig skin for me. Never cotton. Never cow hide. Never modern knit poly-urethane blister makers.)
Now even for a 10kW/el system only operated for twice a day on two four-hour batch generating cycles they will need to annual 2X the amount of wood harvested, sized down prepped, dried and stored as for their northern climate wood stove heating.
Want to be able to drive around moderately on wood too?
Now 3X the sweating labor as just for annual wood-for-heating.
A 30 kW sized systems have been done. “Takes a village” in reality to fuel harvest prep and then operate it.
Or a large family with a lot of put to work teenagers. An unsustainable situation. They will walk away from the slaving work going out to adventure thier lives. As they should.
Read all of the disaster stories: real and the best fictional, and the best of DYI power systems always are just buying time until pre-stored fuel running out.
So down scale your desires to just say a 10kW/el system regardless of the fuel. Florida you will want to go big-time in personal PV solar first. Your 10kW system then will be filling in. Maybe then you personally can wood fuel prep for that. Are your physically healthy?
It will sound trite . . . but you just have to scale back your demands and peoples-expectations side of the problem first and foremost.
Now that is where Florida shines. You get in every 10 years some hellacious storms passing over cutting off easy Grid and available pump fuels for weeks and weeks. Your people-element narrowing expectations training aids.
A 10kW/el system can give some AC comfort. Think in terms of RV travel sized expectations. But in a home with rooms serviced narrowed down.
Regards
Steve unruh
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Hello everyone, and thank you for your advice. It’s been extremely helpful, as I’m new to syngas. I was thinking about purchasing this book, “Wood Gasifier Builder’s Bible,” to get some grounding, thanks to your advice. I understand that starting with a 30 kW system is very challenging for a novice. I think scaling down the system to 1 or 2 kW is more viable for starting out. Thank you for your help.
Which 1 or 2 kW system is recommended for someone like me, since my goal is to grow my own wood to power that system?
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Great your now realizations FranklinD.
For sure buy Ben Peterson’s book “Wood Gasifers Builders Bible”. It will give you much hard experiences learned advices and realties maths.
Experiences says you should think more in a 5kW/el to 10kW/el on woodgas systems.
The small and tiny’s below that, are super hard to operating lacking enough needed wood generated heats. And then having to tiny wood bits reduce down to match the micro system.
Here is a much earlier, large, custom build BenP. system made up for a fellow. A true one-of-a-kind; only one ever made. Watch on YouTube. Then do expanded out and read his “. . . more” below expaination section. He added to that from 11 years of comments and questions.
Do then read back though those 11 years of comments and questions for more perspectives.
This fellow had a large rural homestead generating lot of annual pruning woods. And I think he has an outside contractor business getting wood cut-offs and scraps from that.
The most wood fuel self-sustaining guys are those with tree properties harvesting for lumber saw logs. Their forests harvesting tops and limbs, cull logs; and saw milling end cuts and edging woods giving them the semi-proceeded turn what was a waste into energy. For heating. For AG tractors. For electrical power.
Regards
Steve unruh
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You are wise. Gary Gilmore’s Simple Fire charcoal gasifier is about as simple as it gets. And @Chuckw 's tipped barrel method for making charcoal is very simple.
Rindert
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