Hi y’all! I’ve been interested in woodgas for a while, not specifically because any of the applications would be extremely useful to me, but because I think its small scale application is is a promising technology which deserves far more development, attention and activity.
An engineer by trade, I can’t help but be drawn by the allure of fiddling with filtration and heat flow to try and create as light, inexpensive, and efficient a system as possible.
First step would be to make a simple woodgas generator which works at all as a proof of concept, and with which I can fiddle to fully understand the underlying principles of wood gasification, probably gumming up a small predator engine’s valves multiple times in the process.
Second step would be to build an existing, and well understood woodgas generator design which I can modify for use as a test-bed to riddle with thermocouples, test ports, and semi-standardized interconnects.
Would you have any recommendations on which designs these should be?
I currently have my sights set on the FEMA reactor for prototype #1, and have been dreaming up some cost saving and modifications to the Peterson design in this book I was gifted to act as a test bed for Prototype #2.
I am open to and interested in any advice and recommendations.
Thanks!
To get your feet wet, it is simplest to use a charcoal gasifier. What you will find is particle size and fuel source matters. I wouldn’t use a FEMA, it was literally designed for emergencies, using commonly available materials after a natural disaster, and it tends to produce a lot of tar which eventually gums up the engine.
For all the fiddling and sensors, there was some research done I think in India, where they added probes all over the place to a gasifier to examine the various characteristics, and posted their findings in a research paper, along with most of the dimensions and probe placement. I posted the link here a couple of years ago, but some posts disappear. I will look again when I get a chance.
Welcome to the DOW StriperooH.
Very good statement of purpose first post.
A number of initial decision points for you to think about.
Raw wood fuel inputs . . . or pre-made wood charcoal inputs desired?
Raw wood as your fuel inputs you really, really want to use a system larger for fueling a loaded minimum 500CC IC engine loaded at a true ~10 horsepower.
A raw wood gasifier is a very internal heats needed converter. You need the size and fuel consumption to generated the internal heats you need for the conversion steps from a solid fuel to gaseous fuels.
For true small engines under 1000CC actually a pre-made wood charcoal fueled system will always be the simplest and lightest.
And for making wood charcoal for later in IC engines use you better have access to true hardwoods. Only they have the cells/grain structures to make a handleable charcoal.
Soft woods/conifer woods the made charcoal is lighter, less dense, and crumbles easily into char dust clogging the filtering systems. Made inside a true wood gasifier you disturb the least, the very necessary made in place wood charcoals.
For a raw wood 500-1000CC engine system Ben Petersons book-system has proven well.
And example:
Dean Lasko is a DOW member and has posted up his system building and running.
Found on his topic, “Newbie from Canada”. Found in the General Discussion at May 2022. Use the magnifying glass shaped search tool in the tip of page search bar to find this.
Hi Striperoo,
For small engines, 20hp and below, charcoal is usually best. I think Tone Šuštarič’s ‘Fergi’ tractor project in Tractor with gas? is the most interesting. If you are going to make charcoal there seem to be three basic methods: flame cap, TLUD, and closed vessel. @Chuckw has a tipped barrel basically a flame cap. I use a tank from an old 50gal water heater as a TLUD (Top Lit Up Draft). And @KristijanL uses a closed vessel to make charcoal for restaurants. The fines he can’t sell he uses to power his Skoda pickup (similar to rabbit pickup).
I haven’t gotten to the point, yet, where I will use a bunch of sensors. But Design of Experiments was very interesting to me too and I plan to start doing that kind of thing soon.
Fuel prep is time consuming so depending on how much you do this you will probably want a chunker. There are two basic types that I’m aware of one is the rotating guillotine that @Wayne uses, the other is the screw type.
Best of luck and welcome to us.
Rindert
I’d ideally like to build something which operates on raw wood. But based on what I’m hearing, that sounds like something I should aim for on the second prototype.I should have access to enough oak and walnut for smaller scale testing. But definitely not enough to continuously run these things as a permanent piece of my home infrastructure. I’ll look into a junkyard options for larger engines to use then. Or maybe a few smaller generators might give the gas throughput required to pull as if they were a 500 cc engine. I think I saw someone else doing that on here where they wired a few electric generators in parallel. (I have a plethora of sacrificial small engines to play with, just not as much wood)
Maybe I should talk to some of the local lumberyards and tree removal companies to see if they’ve got any bulk waste they can dump on me, or sell for an okay price.
Those simpler charcoal options might be great ones to try messing around with filtration on a smaller scale.
Thanks for directing me towards the charcoal generator and chunkers.
The screw type definitely seems less terrifying. And probably better for the kinds of wood I’d be collecting.