Proper mixing of air and woodgas

Welcome to the site Steve. It’s our rather unscientific opinion that the soot is harmless to the engine, some of it gets burned in the engine, and some is collected with the oil and changed, perhaps more regularly than a gasoline engine would need. The carbon is a lubricant, and shouldn’t increase engine wear. However like Brent I’m very interested in a centrifugal filter to extend the change intervals (even on my normal vehicles).

This could also possibly provide some pre-filtration of the woodgas, using an oilbath air filter and cleaning that oil with a centrifuge or similar. Interested in your opinion.

Depending on options we mix the air fuel remote from the engine. If the media filter option is purcahsed we have a simple mixer that is placed just after it with a built in flash back. (See first pic) On other machines where this is not purchased we offer a final stage filter/mixer/dryer. It works like a cyclone and the intent is to introduce the intake air to the gas for a final cooling stage and also use centrifugal force for a last chance effort to separate any tar that may be left over. Still working on the water drive version. This will sort of work like the centrifuge.


Hey Matt, you have neat ideas! I also was impressed with your flanges when I stopped at your shop a couple of weeks ago. Your guy there (sorry I forgot his name) explained that you weld your flanges from the back side and then grind them flat. They are really neat in appearance as seen in the first picture above.
Don M

Not that we cant weld purdy, but any chance we have to not show our welds we take it. Just makes the stuff look better. Plus if there are any leaks then fixing and still making it look good is not an issue. :slight_smile: We are now working on have some of our stuff lazer cut now too. For now we use a turn table on our plasma cutter, it does a nice job but is too time consuming. Thanks for compliments!! :slight_smile:

chris, I saw my brother clean the oil slinger on an old fiat long ago. He removed a plate on the fan pully and scraped off the
oil clay and put the plate back on. that was it. Seemed pretty effitcient to me.

Fuel /air ratio setting,

My trucks seem to run best on wood gas when I run two bars on the lean side of the scale.

On gasoline the setting will dance back and forth about mid scale.

Hi guys, just logged back. Centrifuge is one method of filtration however after close review if you track the data from Noria (free online-machinery lubrication and oil analysis magazine) you will in fact discover it is clearly an outdated method for filtering oil. Many old timers swear buy them, but the fact remains when you send a oil sample to the lab and ask for accurate fuel dilution, Soot acceptable range, TBN , oxidation ,nitration and ISO code at 4/6/14 Parts per million you will find a distinct difference.

In simple terms or an analogy centrifuge technology is like a old school 2 barrel carburetor…Wouldn’t you rather have fuel injection computer controlled for a fraction of the cost? A good fine micron bypass filter the one I prefer cost 39 dollars and filters to .5 micron. the additives in oil do not get removed and basically the oil can function in a clean environment, so literally every second my vehicle is running it is running on oil cleaner than it originally poured out of bottle. For engine internals thats quite COOL! I teach 5 key things make up vehicle or equipment for lubrication Oil-Filter/Fuel/Air/Coolant/Drive train. By the way I also filter my transmission at .5 micron on one of my filters and use premium synthetic. The van Is a 1996 dodge caravan 287,000 miles 3.3 original engine, trans rebuilt by me and friend at 190k.

Soot and the fact that unless it is conglomerated is a sub micron product and has been a lubricating element for years. Where the challenge is is when the TBN of oil tanks meaning goes close to acidic and then viscosity becomes affected. I am looking forward to getting a Wayne Keith plan, building one and doing my own testing. I fully suspect that wood gas runs so much better,cleaner that diesel thus the soot level will be kept at bay especially with a fine micron bypass filter.

I have read on some post that wood gas lacks get up and go in some applications, would it make sense to have some form of moonshine injector for such events? Like up hill and passing situations? Just a thought, has any body experimented with the idea just mentioned?

Sorry I did not answer the oil bath air filter. If i was to do that I would obtain a low rpm gear oil pump and circulate oil through a CCECO EX 200 filter This would give you way better filtering than a centrifuge and would be a heck of a lot of fun to build. When ever your going to use oil for a filter leave a test port so you can get an oil sample. I have a portable oil tester so i can test oil out in the field works quite well. Also I am sure you would save money if you used the EX200 with pump.

Chris I like your thinking of addressing this issue, all the more reason i need to build one of these to be a fellow experimenter.

Hi Steve,

Couple answers to your questions:

  • Get up and go: Woodgas accelerates slowly, but has plenty of power at cruise. This is due to several factors, mainly the low energy density of the gas. Some of our members are actively fine tuning the engine performance for woodgas.

  • Dual fueling with alcohol, great idea if you have already raised the compression. Woodgas can tolerate 17:1, alcohol around 14:1. However gasoline is stuck at 9:1 or so, and if you optimize for woodgas you lock yourself out of using regular gasoline.

  • Soot is present in fairly large amounts, mostly from the gasifier carried in the gas stream. I think a super fine filter like you mean would fill up in no time. Maybe precleaning with the centrifuge and then the micron. At least take the load off.

  • Oil bath filter even more so, why filter to a fine degree if all you’re doing is cleaning up the woodgas? The oil is not lubricating anything, just catching soot. Even the centrifuge might fill up with soot pretty quick. If you did manage to filter the incoming gas, you could probably get by with just the micron filter on the engine, since all the soot would be from combustion, and very little of that.

All speculation though, until someone tries it.

Wayne’s Ford has run 6 years everyday doing farm work on woodgas without a rebuild and still runs. My Ranger bearings show no sign of any wear after one year on wood gas even though I would not do another overhead can engine again with wood gas. Doc Read’s book claims they test ran engines with wood gas so full of tar that the intake valves had to be cleaned EIGHT TIMES per 1000 hours…that is dirty stinking gas and no where as clean as what comes out of the WK design. They found no abnormal wear on the bearings. Page 116 at 11.12.2 under sticking valves.

My oil pressure is higher than when I started and my compression in the cylinders went up 15%. Just reporting what really happened in my engine.

The Ranger died from a DFM that I accidentally caused. So far I see nothing in the engine that wood gas did to it. I am not going to rebuild it because the rebuild parts are junk and the re-builder won’t warranty them. How bout that for progress.
Old steel works. Stick with it.

Woody, the system works great as-is, no question about that. Soot is not an abrasive factor. However it does degrade the oil and make a mess in the intake. Not everyone can burn out the intake, and even those who can may find it a hassle. If there’s a good way to filter out soot, we should at least know about it and make an informed decision.

Good Morning Woody,

I checked the compression on the old ford several years back and then again a few months ago. It checked out with more compression after years of wood gas but I was afraid to say much about it because folks would think I was lying.

Hi woody and wayne
When i was in denver i got to know tom reed pretty well back then was before i was interested in wood gas as a fuel i was into his little camp stoves but one day at his house when he was doind a lot out of his garage he showed me a genset on a trailor we talked a lot about it and i think he said the tar just stuck the valves asuming you change the oil and ash would take out the rings but waynes system i don’t think would ever hurt an engine
Now that i’m into fuel gas Wayne , Chris and the guys on this site are my real world help and Tom reed is the guy i go to for the numbers side of it
I need to look him up when i go to denver this fall someone told me he had been ill i haven’t talked to him in a long while Has anyone on the forum heard from or about him?
Thanks
Tom

How about encouraging all the soot prodution you can on to a target plate.
To clean it you spin off a fillament of carbon fiber
make your own fishing rod

Carbon doesn’t hurt the engine from what I have seen. Multi port fuel injection washes the intake vavles clean to the metal. My exhaust vavles had a slight coating but it was soft and there was no build up.

The Ranger had 220 psi per cylinder last Feb. Last week it was up to 270. Still, stay away from these engines on wood gas. Stupid is as stupid does.

Tom Reed moved to Massachusetts to be near his daughter. He suffered a fall but is still active.

Bump to bring back to top.
S.U.

I am still learning about this project with great Interest thanks to Chris telling me on how to get on this site and thanks to everyone on this forum for shearing there experience withothers
Aussie Paul

Bruce and Wayne have both comented that there compression has increased . this tells me that the combustion chambers are getting a carbon build up. This may be good for wood gas combustion but will cause predetonation on low octain gasoline limiting ignition timing advance when running on gasoline.Water injection would help to clean the carbon if it got to thae point where it becomes an issue I would think