Real nice machines there matt, I wounder how one might use heat from the unit too distill water,suppose just use the grait burner unit.Any water distiller ideas ? THANKS
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I donât see why you couldnât just use the burner and set a small distillation unit on it?
This little unit is now my very favorite machine. Its just so useful, with the add on burner.
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maybe a foot pedal or hand crank for when you have no powerâŚ
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I have another product ready for production. This is another camp stove, this one however, fully collapses like the fire pit. If you have seen the gasifier camp stoves made out of soup and coffee cans this similar to those, just more refined. I have the test mule already in scrap and produced the first production version. My camera was dead so I wasnât able to get a picture of it. I get pictures and hope to do video on this one soon. Weather is not nice here in Mi so Iâm staying inside haha.
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Damn weather, I hear ya Matt. We got about 6 inches of snow yesterday evening and over night. I really donât want to shovel the drive.
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We at least had some sunshine today, but still cold and windy. I did go out and play with this one, but wind and wet fuel was an issue today. So Iâm going to put the video off for a few days, hopefully our sticks out back will dry up by then.
The last pic is the new Micro with the mixer plate installed in burner. Im going to attempt modifying our BBQ next 
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Looks good MattâŚ
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How much does it weigh and what are the dimensions (assembled and flat)?
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Its about 10 lbs, nothing you will want to carry in your backpack. Its 8" X 8" at the base and stands 13" tall. Im planning on retailing it for around $80.00
Collapsed it will fit into a 9" x 9" pouch that we will supply with it. It will be around 1 1/2" thick
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So probably not for backpacking, but it wouldnât hurt to leave it under my truck seat or pack into a campsite a few hundred feet off the road.
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Exactly, its not a small stove. But its much more capable than a pocket stove and you can use as a personal heat source too. You can take out the inserts and run it with out them to run in a campfire mode. It collapses for storing along with the rest of your camp gear.
If I had to rely on one of those pocket stoves I think Id just make a fire instead. lol
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I generally use the soup can stove for cooking and make a fire next to it for general warmth/light/spirits.
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So up next is a hand chunker processor for the Micro. It could be used for our larger machines as well.
What Im trying to do is build this so it will be universal with many kinds of trimers, bolts cutters and cable cutters. So this is one of the challenges I need to meet. This is still in the prototyping phase and another thing we need to work on is adjustability so its more ergonomic to the individual user. So we will make this the height adjustable and the shear holder plate will be able to rotate as well.
So far this is working quite well, its not very ergonomic though and we will need to work on that. Im thinking of making it so it can work horizontally but also in a vertical set up as well. So more to come on this
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Great idea Matt.
Iâve barely gotten my feet wet in this stuff, and I have already figured out that fuel processing is probably the key component to making a realistically usable system for the long run.
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Yup, and I never learn. My time is so limited I try and push the boundaries of our machines and I get burned every time. The fuel has to be the right moisture level, it has to be consistent. In a wood gasifier, switching fuel types can cause some headaches sometimes if your try to engine run during the fuel transfer throughout the processes. I dont know about a charcoal unit, but when you run into issues on a wood gasifier, those problems can compound and create other issues. So it does all start at the very beginning creating a good quality fuel for your machine.
Our little micro unit is working so well, I ran that little green generator yesterday on it and cut up a bunch of pallets with our electric chain saw. Arvid was my inspiration for that one, but yes indeed you can run a chainsaw on wood gas. It was a good test for it as the chain saw pulls 1100 watts and the little green generator only puts out 1500 watts on gasoline. The saw was really pushing this system to its limits, it was a bit underpowered but was doable. Since I have this system dialed in Im going to revisit adding in the updraft simple fire concept into the ash pot of this little guy. Hopefully it will reduce ash yield and boost the gas density some. I never made it as far as load testing with this set up as the original system I was using didnt make all that great gas to begin with.
Just for fun today I tried running the 13000 watt Predator with the new Micro. It ran it!! haha well until the gas out port turn cherry red lol. shut it down asap, I hope we didnât melt her down inside.
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Prototyping the BarBee!! It works!! I have some tuning to do yet, it does not quite have enough velocity, Im going to plug weld a set of jets from each side until I get it right. First issue I had was the jets were spread too far apart so the individual flares did not touch one another. This is important that they touch; it keeps the whole thing lit. What I did on this one is I put a piece of angle over the top to fan out each individual flare so they touch one another, that worked. It burned very clean with this burner, no soots or smoke, this was something I was concerned about. So I put together a brand new dish, I call it woodgas chicken haha and it was delicious.
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Ok so much going on!!! So Ive cooked on that grill for three days now. I ended up taking out more of the jets and I think we will have to manufacture a small grill to offer. I was really concerned with soots and tars after seeing what the rocket and other stoves can do to the bottom of a pan. If youve seen my pot in the pictures its supposed to be shiny SS not black lol. But on the burner of the Micro its pretty limited if at all, its hard to tell now that its as black as it is. I whipped some burgers yesterday and today and they seem fine and were actually pretty good. But Im still a little cautious yet; I want to learn more about cooking from a direct wood gas flame a bit. I dont see why it would be any different cooking over a campfire though.
So another test I did was revisit the charcoal reactor integration. Much of this is only speculation at this point, I still have to run a lot more in both modes to make any real determinations. The flare seems to show more orange in this dual mode. This may be as the upper reactor is now running more rich. I think the air ratio is split 30/70; 30% going to the charcoal reactor. When I performed an engine run my observation was the air metering was about 20% further open from previous runs. I need to run on the single reactor again to verify this further. But if this is the case a smaller gasifier will be able to run a larger engine.
Condensate was as clean as all other pryor engine runs. The hose collects moisture and it is almost clear when I dump it out.
I think this can be set up three ways, with jetting balanced in one direction or the other. if the jetting is more focused on the charcoal reactor, The ash yield will be less but you then run the chance of running out of charcoal if the upper reactor can not keep up. If you can find the sweet spot with the ratios then ash maintenance will be reduced greatly and possibly down to a weekly check or longer. If its set up to the top reactor the char yield will be still need to be checked but still reduced. In any of these set ups the machine will gain efficiencies. I think there is a lot to discover here, this is a bit more of tuning but I really think this is achievable.
The Biowind project is starting to come together, I should start testing as early as late nest week. Now that the weather is getting nicer we may set up the wind turbine on a short mast for testing.
To add to my projects both of my JD round fenders are set up on stands getting rebuilt. The one many have seen is just getting put back together stock so we can mow the lawn lol. but I have an identical one that was equipped with the hydrolift. Im going to retire this as a mower and completely tear it down repaint and update the engine with the Kohler we have on our test mule. Im planning on this doubling as an inverter generator. It will basically get all the components from our test unit. Not sure what Im going to do with the hydraulic unit but Im going to leave it intact. Im sure I will think of something. Might get the plow attachment for it
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Ok one of the John Deereâs is coming along. This one some of you may remember some videos I did way back running this on our original M-1 gasifier. This was the very first engine I have ever ran on woodgas, the little green generator is the first generator I ever ran. But the John Deere is the first engine I ran.
Well anyways I ended up mounting a system on this tractor and ran it for a while mowing the lawn on wood gas and driving up and down the road with it on woodgas. The engine on this is only 8 horse so it is underpowered even on gasoline. So later on I installed a larger 14 horse clone engine. It was not a very good install and I never really ended up with the needed time to do it right. So out with that engine and Im putting it all back together to its original condition. Im not restoring it, I might do this one later on. For now I just want to get back to working order.
Ok so I installed the original engine, this is the one I first ran wood gas in. When the other engine was in this thing, this engine was moved around from inside to outside and eventually sat outside all of last year. This thing was in many pieces and I managed to get it back to the way it was. So when I finally got it back in and everything hooked backed up, I tried to fire her up. No Spark!! fiddled around with it, changing out coils, condensers and then finally found a broken wire at the the points. So I got spark now, but this thing was full of some unidentified gunk, So the plug had to be taken out and cleaned numerous times. The nice thing about the generator starter on this you can crank it indefinitely. So I cranked and cranked and cranked until it finally started firing. It came in really slow and then finally it started to take off. Then it started to sound like the rod was going to bust out the side of it. I started to worry and then just thought well if its doing this now it toast anyways. So I just let it run, after a min or two that noise completely went away and this thing is as smooth as ever. These old Kohlers are just the smoothest running engines, it really amazes me it even works after all its been though.
Will it get another gasifier installed? You betcha!! haha
Pics coming soon
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This is exactly how I want to restore the other one I have. If you notice the belt drive is conveniently off to the side to run stuff, plus this one I have has the hydraulics as well.
Any one know where I can find tires and rims exactly like what he has there. That thing is just too cool
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