No budget Non-premium member build

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#41

Yesterday, September 16 I repaired my ash clean out port by scraping off all the melted goo and creosote, wire brushing things clean again, and then I screwed the bare metal door directly to the housing. Then I laid a thick bead of caulking on the outside of the seam. Photo 1. Note the blackened and whitened paint from the burning yesterday.

After things got hot yesterday, the ash clean out port again got too hot and melted the caulking. I let the reactor keep going, though, because it wasn’t spitting sparks this time. My flare was a pure bright orange colour again for about an hour with no change. Photo #2.

I tested the turndown ratio a little tonight. Had the blower on high 1440 watts with the valve to the reactor wide open. (I have a ball valve in the PVC line between the blower and the reactor intake to control the airflow, and i have a T in the line before the valve to bleed off air and keep things easy on the blower.) Then I turned the blower on the low setting and opened the valve just a crack. 10 seconds later I decided to simulate a stall and shut off the blower completely for a full minute. Then I turned the blower on high and opened 'er up. The flare stayed lit the whole time, but I could see the gas was weak. So I cut the blower down to low, and the gas richened up a bit. Then back to the high setting and it was as before. I would like to do more of this kind of testing, but it is a bit meaningless on the ground.

Next I will have to permanently repair my ash clean out port and hook up my sight hose to the clean gas line.

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#42

Not sure what you’re using to seal the ash port up, but this is rated for 2000 degrees. I found something similar to it at Menards. I will be testing it this weekend.
http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1275997&cp=2568443.2568453.2627947.2627970.1260920

#43

All right, now I’m up to date. Today I repaired my ash clean out port. Photo 1. After I welded it shut I pressurized my reactor and sprayed soapy water all over it. I found 11 air leaks. So I fixed them, and soapy water tested things again. I found 2 leaks. So I repaired them, and tested it all again. I found one leak. I fixed that leak, and tested it all again. No more leaks. And no leaks when I ran the machine tonight.

I probably have some internal air leaks since I never meticulously tested all my welds like this. And even if I don’t have any leaks, I think that the heating and cooling cycles will be hard on my welds. I have plenty in there. We will see how it runs the truck.

Photo 2 shows my clear vinyl hose that I installed after my filter to examine the filtered gas. I’m looking for residue and dark coloured bad stuff.Soot is fine, but tar is not. It is weird how fearless I was regarding tar when I first installed my FEMA gasifier on the truck, and now I am very cautious about making sure there is no tar in there. I thought that a blue flare was all I needed this time, but it seems that flares can be deceptive.

This afternoon I opened up my hay filter to see what was going on. There was no mold, and things were very wet and very dirty. So I added more green hay and closed it up.

I didn’t get a photo of my flare tonight, but it seemed very yellow. Not a trace of blue in it. Very bright. Very yellow. The vinyl tube had condensation in it, and that’s all I think. Just water.So far so good. The clean PVC fittings now have black soot in them. I think it’s just soot. Smells like soot, and it’s not sticky. It’s water soluble. So that must be why my flare was bright yellow.

I think I need to test my reactor a few times using only very low airflow to test the low end and see if I can make tar with a cold reactor.

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#44

One good test for tar is to blow the gas through a cloth rag, and see what collects on it. You could even place this somewhere in line and flare afterwards.

#45

Chris, will a unit make tar on initial start up until the gasifier gets up to temp?

#46

For a new charbed, yes. If things are too loose or not enough char, the tar will cruise right on through. On a WK unit with well established charbed, there should be no tar even from a cold start. It only makes tar if the charbed is messed up.

#47

Chris, you said “For a new charbed, yes. If things are too loose or not enough char, the tar will cruise right on through.”
That is only if there is wood above the char rightaway? The first time I lit my gasifier, I filled the hopper about half full with charcoal
and ran suction blowers and reverse blowers a few cycles before adding wood. Did I do that wrong?

#48

Correct Don. Charcoal won’t make tar. I meant if you were first starting up, and you hadn’t established the char bed, using wood to do that will make some tar for a while.

For example Wayne’s 92 Dakota break-in, he was running that back and forth, with wood and store-bought charcoal. At first it was still making tar, but eventually the gas cleaned up. Only then would he run the motor off it.

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#49

I’d say any gasifier can make tar… I think you did it right Don… if the char is hot and you add wood there shouldn’t be any problems. I don’t typically have problems with tar on start up either… but them I pull on with a shop vac… it gets hot fast.

#50

Good for you BrianW.
Yep stretch out that system into failures! Best way to learn the Real Needs and Conditions.
YOUR Operator capability Will be directly proportional to your varied operating times and experinces. PERIOD. You cannot read, or think your way to becoming a good Operator. ONLY experience learn into it.

Filtering material you’d want water/sap removed dryed cured hay/straw. This is actually more an impingement (surface coating) filter rather than an absorption (wood chips or strands) filter material. A good Tip from Gary Gillmore a Charcoal gasifer guy is to use some layers of loose woven real SHEEPS WOOL blanketing layering too. Gas porous. Pretty good heat and moisture resistance. And washable/reusable.

Ash doors are best offset out or down so they can be internally ash shielded and insulated. Close coupled they will prove to need an internal stand off metal radiant heat shield.
Overlapped plate sealed like you did use stove/furnace slathered between cement. Will work alright. You’ll hate chipping scraping it off each and every time opened up enough that you’ll then make up some type of stand-off rigid enough door grooved for durable/reusable fiberglass stove rope!

Can’t remember you saying your fuel wood used? Sizing? Dryness?
Conifer woods figure 1% or less ash.
Most true hardwoods figure 2-3% ash by volume of wood ran through.
Bark content on either will up your ash % considerably. From this your can calulate your ash removal needs.
Think you are beds/grate flow cogging? Gloved hands shake the whole damn hearth and watch for changes!

“Quite a character”
Steve Unruh

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#51

Somebody has a lot of faith in you. Hope you can get started soon, and don’t be tempted to make “large” changes. Even small ones, in my case, were a mistake.

#52

SteveU, the fuel I’m using is circular saw cut up chunks of shipping pallets. They were free. They were stored outside in the rain for a few months, and now they are mostly under a tarp, but I have a stack in the dry for rainy spells. I will say they are less than 20% moisture air dried mostly hardwood. My long term preferred fuel would have been green wood chips, but that’s not possible, I hear. Too much water and too much bridging. So I will have to process my wood, probably with the bundle tied up on the back of the truck, sliced into three inch chunks with a chain saw method, then covered to dry and bagged and stored.

I got an infrared thermometer and I tested the top end of my gasifier to see how hot I can get things. I had the 1440 watt leaf blower on high, and I even blocked off my bleed-off port (the T in my intake air PVC piping.) I know that my gasifier housing gets over 1000 degrees F because it glows red hot in a ring near the perimeter of my grate. I have sheet metal insulation wrapped around my fire tube (facepalm) and a 1/3 section of 55 gallon drum internally around the middle 1/3 of the housing. It is from the exact same section of 55 gallon drum that it is pressed up against (facepalm) so it’s probably not insulating very well. The hot gas seems to be exiting the grate, moving around and up toward the connection to the cyclone filter/heat exchanger, and in the process it’s (the gas is) heating up the housing. The top of my drum housing is still over 500 degrees, so I will need to insulate the outside of my reactor. I need the temperature to be below 570 degrees because that is the flash point of wood.

I don’t have any photos of my flares tonight, but I could see them colour change a little. When everything was up to temp and the char bed was cooking, I would describe the flare as bright, pure yellow, with some blue barely visible in the base. Toward the latter end of the burn session, the flare got more and more orange. I would interpret this to mean that I have a good charcoal base, but without any shaking at all, just a reactor sitting on the ground, and with the blower on full tilt, the char bed is being used up and more raw wood is being burned, so the gas gets dirtier and dirtier. The yellow in the flare is the fine soot particles that flow right through my green hay filter.

I was surprised to discover that the temperature of the gas exiting the heat exchanger was around 400 degrees. And a few inches up the pipe, it was down to 300 and 200 degrees. It seems that I won’t need as much cooling capacity as I thought. I have over 120 feet of cooling pipe for my cooling rack, and now I know that I definitely don’t need any more. My heat exchanger is working better than I thought, and this single improvement, in my opinion, is the difference in my machine being a total flop, or not.

The heat sinks that I (have never talked about yet, but are in all my photographs) are working great. With the housing of my gasifier hotter than 1000 degrees, I can hold my hand on the heat sinks welded 10 inches below the 1000 degrees, just below the bottom rim, and keep them there indefinitely. The feet of my gasifier are cooler than the housing of Wayne’s gasifier. Not bragging; just happy. The ground (from the red hot radiation) around my reactor is hotter than the feet of my reactor. This means that once properly insulated on the outside, my unit will be safe to install in the wooden bed of my truck.

Looking for materials to begin building my WK reactor. I won’t be retrofitting my design with any more upgrades from Wayne’s design. It’s not worth it. (Well, maybe a grate shaker. I can easily add that according to Wayne’s design.) I just need to finish my cooling rails, condensation filter, and all the plumbing to hook it up.

I got an apartment sized water heater tank last week (free! Didn’t even have to travel, just showed up to work, did some negotiating, and before I left the job site I loaded it up into my truck.) that I think should work well for my condensation tank. It’s 28 inches tall and should fit sideways between my frame rails. I was thinking of using an old junkyard gas tank that I have for condensation, but the flat shape and excessive width made it too big for the frame (I know! Weird. I thought I removed it from between the frame of the 1975 that I took it off of.)

I would LOVE to run around collecting parts on wood. I still think that my creation will be able to run the truck enough to save on fuel. I don’t think tar will be that devastating on the motor. Just have to be careful when starting in the morning.

Next things to do:
-Now that I tested the top end, I want to test the low end and check for tar in my sight tube. I am in need of a suction blowers for decent starting. Also, the lid on my hopper is not ideal. Passable, but it’s a bit of trouble to unscrew and then secure the lid using sheet metal screws.
-Finish the condensation tank with suction and pusher blowers.

#53

SteveU, I have a magnesium flint fire starting device, and I tried to spark ignite my flares a while back after I got things up to temperature. They ignited with ease and stayed lit.

I can’t wait to get suction blowers so that I can light my char bed with a torch. Maybe even try to use my ignition port. I have never used my ignition port. Now that I know why Wayne doesn’t use an ignition port, I may never get to use mine. Well, probably will.

#54

Sounds good BrianW
My first 3 years I did flare lites with open flames/torches. Had lots of mystery made gas that would not flare lite-off. After my first year I would just engine run with these usually anyhow.
It was one of the Euro woodgassers tipped me to spark ignight lite to test. Apologisies - I forget now which one.
That has been a 100% engine capable fueling test for me since.
We all do try and help each other past the hurdle points.

Now making some kind of woodgas - before you burn though some where aren’t you just a bit curious to hear an engine run on it.
Got a sacrificial “goat” lawnmower just laying there waiting?
Both my 94 Ford PU 302 and our old 97 Plymouth Minivan seen their share of blown-in “confidence building” made-gas while I’ve been visiting.
Just do not fuel long past 20 minutes. And ONLY on a fully pre-warmed up engine. And follow up chase with some SeaFoam brand aerosol cleaner down the throttle body. This last probably needed, and do 'ya some good anyhow.
Regards
Steve Unruh

#55

Other than my tired 360 ci 1973 FE engine. Plan on testing the low end of my gasifier a bit as I build the cooling rack and condensation tank. Then I’ll PVC pipe in some gas and see how it runs.

My concerns for tar are much eased, thanks to Wayne’s Premium Member section video called, Detecting Tar.

I haven’t really tested the low draft side of my gasifier yet: most of my test runs have been with a strong leaf blower. I have found absolutely no sign of tar post the hay filter, so I am quite confident that my current setup will not produce tar. Knowing that a Keith gasifier operated by Wayne can possibly produce tar, and that a Keith gasifier makes no tar, even from a cold start, I believe that this is a 75% operator item.

I am also thinking of cutting my reactor open just one more time to properly install the insulation and reinforce my hearth with concrete. Keeping a cool outside is important to me, and it would seem rather foolish to know how to fix the problem properly, and then just band aid it. There is the potential for much regret standing in the ditch a hundred yards away from a burning truck.

#56

I tested the low end of my gasifier today. I had the blower valve cracked as low as I could, right from lighting, through warm up, all the way to flaring. I was really happy with the results today, because as it was warming up I watched the flare get stronger and stronger. Photo is of the early flare. It’s very yellow. I was testing the temperatures, and the gas temperature out of the heat exchanger was about 120. The hot spot near the bottom of my reactor stayed around 400 F most of the time.

About 20 minutes into flaring my flare went out and the gas quality continued to diminish for a few minutes until the flare wouldn’t stay lit at all. I opened up the valve wide open, blower still on low setting, and a few minutes later the flare lit again, similar to how it was warming up.

Some good things: I understand that charcoal won’t make tar, and when I shut down with fuel in the hopper I have a deep charcoal bed that I’ll be able to light once I get blowers. 75% operator.

Some bad things: I think that I am going to have trouble with this gasifier at low draw. When I’m idling and under low load conditions. This is definitely a bigger unit for a higher top end. I know at wide open throttle the temps at the heat exchanger don’t get to 650 degrees. Also, from what Wayne says about smoke versus haze, I might be producing tar at the low end. Not sure, and I’ll have to watch that. I say that because I get smoke out of my unlit flare pipe after the hay filter.

I believe that if I strengthen my hearth with concrete, and insulate the reactor properly, I won’t bleed off so much heat, and that will improve my turndown ratio. So I will definitely be gutting my gasifier once more to properly insulate, and reinforce the hearth. If the performance increase after insulation is comparable to the performance increase after adding a heat exchanger, then I believe my unit will be ready for the road.

On the WK side, I got some malicious software from a bad person on Craigslist while looking for a burn tube which messed up my Internet connection. I hadn’t been too worried about security on that particular computer. I know it was probably compromised before then, but now the Internet doesn’t work. Might be time for a new computer. A bit of a pain. Oh well…

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#57

Take flare photos without flash, it messes the colors up. I can’t tell but I think I see the reflected flash on your pipe.

Yes, imbert-based gasifiers commonly have a narrow output range, aka turndown ratio. And yes you can improve this somewhat with insulation.

If that was a secondary computer mostly for browsing, wipe it and put Ubuntu on there. No more bugs, and it’ll be faster than Windows, too…

#58

BrianH wrote, “I believe that an “updraft” wood gasifier is NOT reducing the Pyrolysis gases/tars so you are just burning the Pyrolysis gases, much like a campfire. I’m fairly sure that this either won’t power an engine or, if it does, it would only be a “one-way trip” before one needs a new engine.
Such gases need to be pulled through a hot char-bed to Reduce the gas molecules and crack any tars made in the Pyrolysis phase. This is why raw-wood gasifiers are almost entirely down-draft, with a very few “cross-draft” designs thrown in. I wish I could help more, but I just don’t have the experience for it.”

Now that I understand more about gasification, I understand what you are saying here, Brian. Last week I let my reactor burn down with the hopper lid off. While the raw wood was burning it was real smokey. Then after it all turned to charcoal it stopped smoking completely. I even thought it had gone out until I looked down the wood hopper. I could see the glowing char in the hearth. I sealed the top, turned on the fan, and lit the flare. There was no smoke, and in the daylight it burned invisibly. It wouldn’t stay lit, and before long it wouldn’t light at all. Maybe a couple minutes later. This is the kind of gas I need for my truck.

Since making the nozzles I have learned that the incoming fresh air is less than the produced gas because of… GASIFICATION, of course. So my nozzles are way larger than I need. I believe that an important flaw in my design is that I’m burning the producer gas down below the grate because I have too much airflow into the hearth. I have six 1-1/4 nozzles. And Wayne thought his were big. (keep in mind I lowered my grate and installed a collar-restriction to give me about 12 inches from nozzles to grate in a funnel shape with 6.5 inch restriction.)

Also, I have just come to the realization regarding what SteveU was telling me pretty early on. John Stout stopped working on his nth hearth redesign in favour of a Wayne Keith hearth. That was all he needed to go from a flop to fantastic. So, since I started with an 18 inch water heater tank, a WK hearth will drop right in, almost bolt in from the factory. I won’t need a baffle, since my preheat air is injected into the housing right near the restriction. I can later install an engine exhaust heat exchanger; I already have a form of the ‘drop box’ heat exchanger, and then I have preheat with my six pipes that feed the housing. Adding a WK hearth will allow me to get the proper hearth dimensions, and my preheat air will be restricted down to the proper size (smaller nozzles.) If JohnS had a lot of success just by adding the Keith Advantage hearth, I should also have good success.

So, I just need to pick up an appropriately sized pipe for the hearth, and if it’s thick enough, I won’t even need heat transfer fins.

Thanks all.

#59

I heard that some designs are adding air at idle too keep heat up . not sure on that one ? or whare the excess gas would go ?

#60

Seems to me, from watching Wayne’s videos, that his design has such a good turn down ratio that idling for 25 minutes or more and then going wide open is not a problem. No stalling or tar or poor quality gas.

As far as improving the turn down ratio for idling, I would say that a bladder with a fan tee’d into the line after the filter would work. Or an air compressor with computer controlled actuated valves for even higher volume. That’s my thoughts on that. But I’m just getting started.