Vulcan Gasifier

Quite the line up Matt. Are you running stock time on these engines or advance time?

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Nope I just leave em stock :slight_smile:

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New Utility machines coming along.

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The Evolution Series I proto should really start to take shape here in the next week. I will be cutting the skins for the auger feed tomorrow and hope to have that complete and mounted up here pretty quick. My customer has been great and patient. The slower we are the longer it takes to build. But things are ramping up here and fast. This is a very strange business, we get small orders here and there and is barely enough to keep things rolling and then in a weeks times we get slammed. This is one of those weeks and projections going out further are going to be very good. We went from projections that would have made this our worst year and now this will blow all previous years away, We may quadruple our best years gross sales now.

Anyways the enclosure is turning out very nice and such a big improvement to what we did in the past. The sliding panels work great and you can access any part of the machine with out any tools needed. This goes for the gasifier too, the only thing that needs taken apart is the cyclone for cleaning. All the rest of the components have a door or lid giving you direct access. The cyclone will soon have a revision that will allow it to be accessed with out the need to wrench it apart.

So for now Im just roughing in the panels for now. Ill be dolling it up with some paint here in the next few days. I cant wait to see this with the auger hopper, charge controller and battery shelving installed. :fire:



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Looking very good Matt. How will you keep the sliding doors from becoming rattling noise makers ? I do like them and the access they provide .It seems half of the noise comes from rattling of associated equipment rather than engine exuaste.

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OH yes this is something we learned on the very first one. That was rattle making machine and that is one the main points to daaden the sound!! Ok for this machine the panels have nylon glide strips is the tract and also on the center edge of the backside panel. Each panel will also have catches, this should also help keep form rattling. Never the less it will not rattle when complete this is one of the criteria we have to meet for CE approvals.

There are a number of reasons for the enclosure. One is for sound deadening, but also to help keep the eliminates off, to the guard from moving parts and hot surfaces and it gives us the structure for mounting our auger hopper. :fire:

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I was just wondering Matt. Since going off grid the main thing I miss is peace and quiet. I only run the genny when I absolutely have to for this reason. I am a long way from set up proper. I am not one to spend money till I am sure it is used best. At this time I am learning first to cut my dependency, then I will invest in what will best suit my needs. The only thing I hate more than the sound of my fuel to noise converter if the neighbors food to noise converters.(barking dogs) Do you use any sound absorbing insulation of any sort? I am I my head trying to design a genny shed in an attached sunroom/ greenhouse with a hot water storage tank. Much to consider to make the most of shed off heats and proper units cooling.

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Haha, yeah if you get an automotive exhaust for a small car (Honda Civic or something) that will greatly help. But I think on the single cylinder engines part of the noise is coming from the intake side. The twin cylinder engines we can quiet down to nothing. At least this was the case with the Kohler twin we built long ago. The Muffler quieted down the engine to nearly nothing, but like you stated there was a lot of noise coming from other places on that one.

Indeed this is something Im thinking about now as we will this system with CHP for our shop before winter. At least I hope we get one haha. The noise is going be a big factor and will need to be dealt with. This will be inside in the winter to capture as much heat as we can. The engine exhaust and flare tube will piped outside. the nice thing about the auger hopper is the gases inside are very little to none.

As for the insulation, not on this one. I may go to wood panels with a laminate that will not only fit better but would also work better to combat the sound issue.

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MattR you make some excellent points concerning small engine system noise abatement.
Going from a single cylinder noise-maker to a V-twin WITH a good counter flow exhaust is amazing.
One aircooled motor cycle technquic on singles was they found that the cylinder housing and head fin END/EDGES were combustion event vibrating noise broadcasters. You saw elastomer “rubber” block spacers inserted at the fin ends to dampen noise broadcasting on Hodaka’s, Yamaha’s and Suzuki’s. One of the reasons most motorcycles evolved to water jacketed cooling - noise abatement.

Take some engineering from the Honda/Yamaha inverter generator people and use vibration neutralizing thick plastic panels as your sliding door panels. You can buy this stuff by the sheet used as truck/trailer van box lining in chip haulers.

Regards
Steve Unruh

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Working on a side project that could evolve into another company. The CNC company, I have a guy that is going to do all the marketing and will be our national distributor. So this is happening in the background but slow progress. That machine is now in full production and running great! So this other project is just a fun project and not sure what will become of it. But if its marketable then of coarse we will be build them and make something from it. What this is, is an RC off road truck, it is in the 1/4 scale and would be the first of its kind on the market. It is pretty big at this scale; its about the size of one of those ride in Power Wheels cars. There are smaller 1/5 scale trucks but no 1/4 scale. So anyways this is something I have tinkered with many years ago when learning CAD systems. I could draw it but at the time I did not have the resources to build one. Now I do and Ive designed specific to our manufacturing abilities. We joked with possibly building a tiny little gasifier to put in the back.haha that just might happen it surely would get us some attention :slight_smile:

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Looks wild, Matt. Is that going to be line of sight driving or an on board camera?

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Yeah Doug, thats what Im thinking, I think the technology is here for that now and I have 5 acres to build a huge track for these. A friend of mine owns House of Hobbies here in Muskegon, he may help me in my efforts with this thing.

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Im about as far as I can go with it for now. The rest is all vendor bought items I need to order yet and then just install. I will need to figuire out how im going to steer it, stop it and absorb all the bumps and abuse I will put it through :fire:

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We finished the first stage of the new Utility Series I builds, they are coming along very nicely. I think these are going to be very useful and very versatile as they very compact and the wheel kit is working perfectly. They are not very heavy and its a breeze to move them around on those wheels. Im waiting on some parts for the next part of this build. I am working on the next phase of the blower development and waiting for the blowers to arrive yet. My plan is to use a diversion valve to run in either a vacuum mode with ejector for lighting and then switch this valve to supply air to the gasifier for positive pressure run modes. I have pwm on order to try out so the gas output can be metered for possible cooking applications. One of these machines is getting the optional gasifier management system and the 3 kW generator with auto mixer controller. This one will be complete turnkey ready to run off the truck. I think its going to be a really neat little machine once complete.

The Evolution Series I we also making some good progress on. We should be ready to mount the auger feed hopper on in the next few days. Things are finally ramping up here and we will soon start cranking on the next gen 25 kW V8 machine. Might work on the automatic modes on that one :fire:

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Nice looking units Matt. How much are they? How big of an engine can they run?

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For now pricing is $1850.00 plus shipping. Im trying to keep the cost on these smaller ones down. The original ran our 10 HP proto no problem. For practical use that is about the max if you are looking to get any length in run times with it.

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Good price. What kind of gas outlet temp do you get runing a 10hp engine? What kind of range in engine power do you expect?

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Well we are not sure yet on the gas temps. We have not ran one in this format yet, We are going to offer this standard with an ammo box filter that will mount to the cooling tubes. I would expect to see temps in the range of 120* to 160*F. We are going to offer a small additional barrel filter with these as an option. This should knock out the last bit of cooling.

I always figure a 50% power loss on all machines. Even though more can be achieved this covers any fluctuations and then you are not pushing things to the edge of its limitations.:slight_smile:

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They are looking sweet, Matt. You do nice work.

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Ok I got the hopper up on there!! Just about complete with all the major build components. Just the loading platform to build yet. Then it will be all the fun little tedious items that take up all your time and at the end of the day it looks like you did absolutely nothing. haha. But is it is getting closure.

The first Utiity Series I should be ready to run this weekend I got the blower in today and put together a plan. Parts ordered and those should be tomorrow morning. So I should be able to finish final assembly on the base unit. and the one with all the bells and whistles should follow along fairly quickly

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