My Personal Small Wooden Collider

Everyone who solves the problem of renewable energy sources, as well as cleaning nature from pollution, is a real scientist. And a real scientist must have some kind of accelerator of some particles. :wink: Here I am, for my experiments I decided to weld a collapsible experimental gas generator.

The goals that I plan to achieve on it:

  1. Test an electrostatic precipitator with dimensions of 20 liters for gas purification with a flow rate of 100 cubic meters per hour. It should work out. :slight_smile:

  2. To force the gasification chamber, that is, to obtain 100 cubic meters of gas per hour with the dimensions of the gasification chamber according to the second line of the Imbert table.

  3. Debug the automatic control of the temperature of the reaction zone of the gas generator by supplying condensate in the intake air.

  4. Debug an external monorator.

  5. Check the screw feed of fuel from the tank.

  6. Check the air cooling of the throat and grate.

  7. Debug the supercharging of the gas generator from the electric turbine.

These are our goats for which you need to mow hay.

This is a machine to which you can attach a mower or hay baler.

This is an experimental gas generator for a car with an engine capacity of 2.4 liters and a power of 100 hp. Upper side branch pipe for wet smoke outlet to the moderator for dehumidification.
Bottom side branch pipe - hot and dirty gas outlet.

Disassembled gas generator.
There will be a throat temperature sensor in the lower round cover. Instead of the top cover, a fuel auger pipe will be connected.
The seals in the lids are either asbestos cord with graphite or aluminum foil for baking food.

The plate for the neck and grate is removable. Still have to weld all this to it.

The fuel tank will be secured at an angle. A screw conveyor will emerge from the bottom corner.
There will still be many holes in the side wall of the cylinder for different purposes … :slight_smile:

This is an electric turbine for turbo charging from a washing vacuum cleaner. It has a separate impeller for cooling the electric motor.

To be continued inevitably …
For, as Steve Unruh said well, “If you ain’t burning - you ain’t learning!”

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Hello Marat,
Welcome to our small corner of the world. I am jealous because you have land, and goats. Are you a farmer?
Do you know @Joni. He is in Ukraine also, but maybe he is far from you. I don’t know Ukraine, but it looks beautiful in your pictures.
I have made a small beginning. I have learned to make good charcoal using a tlud (Top Lit Up Draft), and I have made a generator run on this charcoal.
Rindert




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Hello Rindert.
I am an electronics engineer who wants to become a farmer.
In the future, we will have 50 milking goats and about 100 young goats (Peas are better than tortillas!) for sale and for meat.
We have 4 hectares of our own land, and there is still a lot of free land around us with lush growing grass in ravines, near roads, etc.
Therefore, we need our own machinery, and machinery needs fuel. Preferably free and environmentally friendly.
Yes, I correspond with Joni on one of the Russian-language social networks, in a group dedicated to gas generators. But we, unfortunately, are divided into two parts by the war. And the quarantine further exacerbated the situation with trips to free Ukraine. And close people live there…

Joni thinks that I will not be able to create a compact electrostatic precipitator for such a high gas consumption. But I’m full of ideas how to do it or I have to admit that Joni was right. :slight_smile:

Yes, Ukraine is green and beautiful. And there are even more beautiful places in it!

In the East of Ukraine, there are mainly steppes. And very dry in summer. And a lot of cold and strong winds in winter. But we came here to improve this place. We will have our own piece of the forest and I am already digging a small lake. Its our Maldives for all the centuries to come. For children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And they will improve this place with their ideas and efforts. And when all people want to do so for their descendants, then on Earth there will be paradise gardens everywhere.

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I have a few friends in Ukraine, I feel terrible about the war going on there. My prayers are with all of you. At least there is a way to communicate among like minded gas producers!
I am trying to do the same to my family property here in North Carolina. 40 acres mostly trees. I have about 8 acres I can’t do anything with because a neighbor rents it to grow hay for his cattle.

We used to maintain a tree farm for lumber but we let it lapse and now is mostly wild woods. I hope to begin a sustainable coppicing project this winter to harvest wood without clearing sections of my forest entirely.

I can’t wait to see how your project comes along.

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Marat,
I also will pray that war does not touch you.
I am a mechanical engineer. While I was in college I started an alternative vehicle club. Really it turned into an electric vehicle club because of a tradition at my school of the SunRayce.
But I think Dimethyl Ether is the fuel of the future. And this can be made from woodgas.
I am in a hurry, so I will close for now.
Rindert

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Guys, thank you for your prayers!

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I worked with goats all through my youth, and think the ukraine is a wonderful place all the videos I have watched.
8 wish I was able to write code to create a program to automatically regulate my AFR , air feul ratio on my gasifier…

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I created my first project using programmable microcontrollers 19 years ago. On the urgent recommendation of an old and very experienced electronics engineer. At that time, he was about 60 years old and had several serious commercial developments based on microcontrollers behind him. From idea and initial layout, to the very last detail, to the last line of code.
From my experience, for the easiest start with microcontrollers you need to learn how to programmatically turn on and off the LED, and poll a regular button (pressed or not pressed).

For this you will need:

  1. Arduino Nano (it is easier to make your own device on it in the future). But for better compatibility with many video tutorials, Arduino UNO is better.
  2. Solderless breadboard
  3. Wires
  4. Two buttons
  5. Two or three LEDs with resistors
  6. Installed on your computer free program Arduino IDE
  7. And the desire to learn new things. However, the absence of fear of the new will not hurt you either. In the end, learning new things can set a great example for your children and grandchildren!

Not to mention the fact that the transition from feeling like complete mediocrity to feeling almost like God is a huge pleasure in life.

I will also be faced with the task of regulating the gas-air ratio, but I do not even have a gas generator now, so it will not be soon. In addition, I will also need to make a servo valves for the entire gas generator, electrostatic precipitator, and mixer on the engine.
But you have already found on this forum a topic dedicated to Arduino!

My eldest son and I were taking a course at the Moscow University of Physics and Technology. https://www.coursera.org/learn/arduino

https://d3c33hcgiwev3.cloudfront.net/0syHP_jkEeaI9Q7Pym09lA.processed/full/360p/index.webm?Expires=1633651200&Signature=GldZkUKFgXQJVTFfhyqxIaDE~BfdY2QIQ8QsvFuBrtWxxLq4dFzuEFdKYMuAtmzwC2hno~pRVm-D~CMEEsLRQpbUfugpHfkDy0ttqjdcVqYOmUCpoZYuUyRxJSXdKY4Ru9xFKQNRaMI3VfKYCoF3gcyvwIy1gMGw8EGOk3EwqM8_&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLTNE6QMUY6HBC5A

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Yesterday I had to use MAG welding. I decided at the same time to do a little detail for wooden freedom.

Details of the gas-air mixer. Flaps from the bottom of the carburetor. The car still ran on propane. Now she will have a choice: either propane or firewood. The question arose in my head: is it possible to get gas from gasoline (or alcohol?) If it is fed into a hot gearbox instead of liquid propane? Perhaps an experiment is needed. :wink:

The gas and air dampers will be driven by servos. I’ll take a picture of the electronic gas pedal sensor a little later. Firstly, you need full control over the composition of the mixture on different gases (propane, firewood), and secondly, you need cruise control and electronic clutch control. The machine will be used in agriculture - it will be easier to make an emergency stop in case of an obstacle in front of the scythe, as well as with frequent start-stops during hay baling.

The hexagon on the welding mitt is the future neck of the air-cooled wood gas generator from the inside.

The half-finished box with six tubes is the future air-cooled grate. Let’s see how many kilograms of firewood it will have time to burn out.

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Some people have tried with vaporization of petrol/gasoline. The only application where it worked is stationary engines with fixed RPM. You essentially have no accelerator pump and are at the mercy of flow. It’s also quite dangerous depending on how the gasoline is heated up. Many tried heating with engine exhaust but that can be catastrophic.

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Hello Marat, do you have a sketch on which to build a gasifier? Sorry, but I’m very curious. :grinning:

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Hello MaratL.,
Your air cooled grate looks interesting. With some forced air flow it should be successful.

And I wait to see how you develop further your hexagon tube. How some were making an internal air distribution, air nozzle ring.

Vaporize propane sure. Easy. And propane vapor has predictable characteristics.
Vaporized gasoline is wildly unpredictable. Every modern 20 years someone, and someoneS insist on relearning this for IC engines. The badly burned scarred men I’ve known from the 1970’s attempts with heated gasoline vaporizing carburation have now all aged out and died prematurely. Without their scarred faces and hands and arms the youngers now with worldwide petroleum prices will turn their faces to vaporizing gasoline again.
Do not let yourself be sucked in by this truly evil demon of vaporized gasoline.

In the 1860’s-1890’s the earliest internal combustion engine developers were held back by liquid surface, and up thru liquid fuels bubbler “carburation”. It was air flow spray droplet carburetors the made IC engines loads changing useable; all-weather portable practical.

Even the alcohol vaporizer guys of the 1970’s here found lower engine power, much less loads and rpm’s use flexibility, and loss of year around usage flexibility.
But at least they did not flash burn themselves up.

Here US/Canada the newest produced propane fueled engines are injector electronically controlled. Some liquid propane injecting. Others vaporized propane controlling. For better tail pipe emissions control.
Regards
Steve Unruh

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I took the dimensions of the neck from Imbert’s table for a maximum gas flow of 44 cubic meters per hour. I also looked at some other sizes in the same place, but basically I did not compliance these sizes, because I will have a central air blowing, like the Soviet engineer Rybnikov, but within a very wide range.

The fact is that this is a completely experimental wood gas generator. It is not intended to be installed on any vehicle. His main task is to produce dirty hot wood gas (in forced mode to 100 cubic meters per hour, if he can handle it) so that I can practice the design of a compact and lightweight electrostatic filter. Well, I would also like to see some technical aspects in practice. And although now, after 7 months, I see what exactly will go wrong, as I expected, I need to see it with my own eyes, so as not to be captured by the abstractions of my brain.

A teapot with sawdust on a hot stove also makes a great combustible wood gas. So this project is my teapot with sawdust.

In the best case (but only if I can find a way to guarantee the elimination of oxygen from the gas!), I can use this wood gasifier to pump the purified gas into a propane tank for use in the kitchen. With all safety precautions: gas sensor, exhaust hood, etc.

After all the planned experiments, I will make a completely different wood gas generator, but I would like to tell the details about it on the Premium side. It will be too innovative (for example, it will not have a real neck - the most overheated and most important part of wood gas generators). By doing this, I want to support the development and popularity of the DOW forum.

In the meantime, I still have to get real measuring instruments: a water pressure meter and a flow meter from 1 to 100 cubic meters per hour.

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Steve, I’m afraid to disappoint you with my decision, and in order not to keep the intrigue for a long time, I drew how the pipes will be welded to the hex neck. Cold air inlet on one side, hot air outlet on the other. It will be the same with the charcoal grate. They are made from 1/2” water pipe. And of course, erosion will eat them up, most likely very quickly. Outside - hell, inside the air in which 21% oxygen. But it will be possible to try cooling with pure nitrogen.

Both of these streams in this version will be connected (after measuring their temperatures) and directed through the central pipe to the hearth. The design of the body of this wood gas generator allows various schemes for connecting all these streams. It will be possible to make a separate cooling of the neck and grate, and a separate air supply.

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Cody, I just looked at the specific heat of vaporization of gasoline (230-310 kJ/kg) and propane (484 kJ/kg). It is strange why gaseous propane in a short hose from the gearbox to the mixer inlet is not dangerous, and gasoline vapors in the same scanty amount, in the same hose from the gearbox to the mixer, without the presence of oxygen (where does it come from in this hose?) suddenly become explosive? In no case did I suggest heating all the gasoline in the tank of the car. A conventional injection pump, together with a pressure regulator, creates a gasoline pressure of 3 bar in the injector line.

It is these 3 bars that could be supplied to the inlet to the gas reducer, which, under the influence of the temperature of the antifreeze, turns liquid propane into gas. Well, he would turn liquid gasoline into gaseous - there is plenty of heat and heat exchange surfaces for this.

The unused gas goes back into the tank with no effect on my car. I don’t even have a charcoal gas evaporator installed, although it is provided for by the design of the injection system.

But these are just abstract reflections on the topic: how not to return to the carburetor with its jets, nozzles, accelerator pumps and other systems? And how not to install nozzles for liquid fuel, but only an adjustable gas mixer for all occasions? But it is unlikely that I will want to return to someone else’s gasoline after my firewood …:wink:

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Marat the gasified gasoline has a wickedly variably fast combustion speed. The engines intake valve closing timing set for more normal predictable combustion speeds will warm running often backfire flash-back into the intake.
Retime the intake valve closing sooner for safety. Kills the engines power.
Or just one hot carbon particle in the combustion chamber, on the valve edge, will set it off. vaporized gasoline.
Not be a woodgas Whoosh. Be a, whump-Ka-Boom high energy pressure wave searing flash.
You’ve been warned.
I will say no more. My moral conscious is clean, now. Settled.
Those having to learn the evils of vaporized gasoline; if they live, get to live with the nick-name of Mr Krispy; or Krispy-Critter, forever on.
Steve unruh

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Thanks for the reply Marat, I do not fully understand your gasifier concept, I imagine you plan to supply air through a central nozzle that will point downwards. Will the air be preheated first in the tube grille and higher in the ring, which will also serve as a constraint for you? An interesting product will definitely be created. :fire::+1:

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The air flow from the turbine will diverge in two directions. One part will go down its own separate tube and pass through the throat hex. The other part of the air flow will also go down its separate pipe and pass through the six tubes of the fire-grate. Further, both parts of the heated air will again go up through two separate pipes, and up will be connected using a tee into one stream, which will be directed again down the central pipe to the hearth.

All these complexities are needed in order to be able to switch these flows on the relatively cold side outside and at the top of the wood gasifier, using plumbing fittings. And also install temperature sensors in the required flows, an automatic ignition nozzle, switch the cooling of the tubes to a closed system on pure nitrogen, etc. For many experiments without a strong alteration of the wood gas generator.

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Thanks Steve!

I completely forgot that the intake manifold contains a mixture of fuel and air. And even with propane, sometimes it loudly pops! I think that this little discussion of ours, and your warnings about the danger of gasoline vapors mixed with air, will save many from transplanting skin from the ass to the place that will remain from the face of such an experimenter.

Sincerely. Marat Lysenko.

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Marat,
This video may be useful to you.
Rindert

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