Consider that except for 1955 and 56 both Ford and Chevrolet completely changed body styles every year from at least the end of WWII to at least the 80’s. I was installing conveyor systems a lot of that time and every summer there was a change over and whole plants were refitted for the model change. It was nutz. All the hours you could stand up. A good summer could get you through a long winter.
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Shipping out the Spring / Summer builds this week. Ill be updating the site for the 2022 model year this weekend and start planning for fall production. Here are the (M-1 thru M-3) 2022 models. Things are cranking back up!! Paint supply issues forced some creativity that will now be standard offering 
2022 M-1 SE Gasifier
2022 M-2 Mule Gasifier
2022 M-3 Utility RTR
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I have found nut shells to make tar worse than tree bark…
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Woohoo weee
How much did that set you back goodness gracious. Even the clones of those cost about 800 or more.
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Not mine its for a client build. This is the power plant for the new 5 kW power unit with automation. Believe me Ill post a lot on this one. I have the power head here as well
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Oh yeah forgot it was $1700 shipped and I think this gen is done. I more than likey will not be able to touch the new ones for less than $2500 in the future. But hey its a Honda!!!
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I wish I could find a wholesale place to get the 50cc 4 stroke Hondas or clones. I wanted to tie in 4 to a single drivetrain for a bike idea but to get the kit engines you have to buy the whole kit. Seems like a waste.
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I use Power Equipment Direct and Jacks Small Engine Warehouse. I could not get this engine from either they are basically it at as far as I would put trust into those vendors. I had to order from Northern Tool. They are your next best bet if you can find them from a reputable vendor.
I think there is a supply issue as even Northern Tool had a delay in getting this to me. When I quoted this order I could get this engine for $1100 delivered too. Client drug his a feet a bit due to the Flooding over there in Belgium so I had to wait and now Im eating a lot of cost as a lot of stuff has skyrocketed.
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I was hoping an engine like the GX690 could muster a bit more than 5kw on a woodgas but you would know best Matt. 22hp is ~15-16kw shaft power on petrol but I imagine the hp rating is a bit generous, then woodgas vs petrol and finally genhead (in)efficencies. i was hoping a predator 670, nicely tuned, would get 7-8 kilowatts into a battery charger? Seems now like that might be a stretch.
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It can, I pulled 8 kW out of these all the time. But you cant put your rating the edge like APL does. People get angry about that. You have to factor in fluctuations and find an range that is a consistent.
8 kW is 80% of the actual gasoline output. A dumb system can not sustain this I always cut the rating to 50% of the gasoline rating.
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Under promise, over deliver. It’s good practice that seems awful rare these days.
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Micro Barrel Stoves are now in development. I will be building two versions to bring to market over this week and next weekend. They are based on the 14 Inch barrel drums. I will offer one version with a cook top attachment and a mini stacked version.
The cook stove version will be for heating the RV this year and will have the cook top add on. This will be built using the shorter 10 gallon drum that are about 19 inches long.
Then there will be the stacked version, the plan for that is for heating the shop this year. Seems how I can get free slat wood from down the road and pallets for free that fuel is the plan for heat this year and should work great in these smaller barrel stoves
This here is the base version
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Matt, any idea about the conversion from wood to charcoal and the heatnumbers? Cant get it right. Wood has 4 kWh/kg and charcoal can produce 1 kWh/liter. With effeciency of 25% in ICE the last one would be 4 kWh/liter and char is about 100 kg/liter. If you convert a 55 gallon wood to charcoal, the yield is about 20 gallon, 80 liter? Thus 320 kWh in charcoal. The wood had around 220 kWh if the weight is 250 kg/m3. Rough numbers, but they dont add up, not even close. I cant count, that is for shure, now I understand why I have to reincarnate three times before I am mortgage free.
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Dont forget the energy cost to produce that 4kWh/kg for wood. I dont use the figures like you are. I use BTU and of coarse use lbs instead of Kgs.
You should be able to achieve 50% or better pr volume charcoal production. Factor in your water drip as well. One liter of water = 15,000 BTU roughly Hydrogen production and the O2 CO conversion is another 7000 BTU.
1 lb of wood ranges from 5500 BTU to 8500 BTU depending on MC and Charcoal is roughly 9600 BTU pr lb.
In a wood gasifier you lose 25 to 30% in process losses and heat. Charcoal is probably closer to around 10% and the water drip adds back.
I just bought a new scale and I have a 2016 Utility Chip fuel gasifier here I am going to restore. I plan to produce fuel for this gasifier using it to power the chipper and then run the fuel in a genny under static load and then likewise with the new charcoal machines. I bet it will be a wash and fairly equal but with less hands on labor favoring the charcoal side.
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Ok your 4 kWh/kg is probably gross. Your net that’s a different story. So we take that gross kg of wood and process it; how much did we lose in the process? Now in the gasifier you another 30% and then the engine takes another 75% of what left of that!!
So Process we lost say 25% so we now 0.75 kg.
Now we lose another 30% in the gasification process of that 0.75 kg that leaves us what? 0.525 kg
Now we lose another 75% in engine loss. That leaves us? 0.13 kg.
Generally it takes 1.5 kgs of processed wood fuel to produce 1kW/hr net engine power.
That 0.13 figure fits what I have previously found years ago that you net 1/8 of the gross unprocessed wood feed stock. I should note this is using a less reserved figure of 25% in fuel process. With the chipper I was using my loss was closer to 50% loss. If we use this 25% loss in fuel process that gets us to a net 25% used to produce your net output.
In order to figure out charcoal I need a scale and I just got this precision scale. Using volume is not the way to do this, we really need to be using weight for these figures.
Once I get going with this I can weight my gross raw fuel and put a btu value to it and then get a weight on the produced charcoal and can then put a BTU value to it then figure out kW/hrs pr weight used
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Hi Matt, one thing to consider is in counting up the wood gasifer losses is when you bump the char ash out you get back some very nice engine grade charcoal to burn again in the gasifer or in a charcoal gasifer. In my charcoal gasifer it is pretty much just ash that comes out of the ash cleanout.
So in a wood gasifer there is a little gain back in charcoal. Not sure how you would figure that percentage back in.
Bob
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Yup correct I know I got back around 15% pr hopper load. But that figured down pr kW net produced Id guess is roughly 5% maybe?
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Thanks. Got to start working now. I will convert it to SI and start weighting the wood before and after the TLUD to get an idea what is going through the chimney.
Thanks.
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