Im using an Amteck blower on a 420 cc engine. Those blowers are crazy powerful, it may not be boosting the engine but it is surely helping feed the gas to it. The generator dont care if it is plugged in or not. But more test need to be done.
My plan for this spring is to get a small bottle of oxygen and meter small amounts into the gasifier. I will do test without and get fuel and water consumption data first then run test with the Oxygen metered and see what happens.
Right off the bat I will tell you what happens when you do thatā¦
You will melt thingsā¦
Get some 9% hydrogen peroxide ( 30 Percent YIKES thatās dangerous and not from the beauty supply but available the chemical supplier ) from the beauty salon supplier and drip that for a bit better control.
You really want to build a much more stout gasifier and boost it to see what I meant beforeā¦
Yup so I will increase that so I can get more in. That is the plan, may need to go to bigger jets. Wait till you see how much water drain into these things. Im not dripping it in: Im pouring it into these machines.
That is the limit, you can only poor so much water / steam in before you crash the reactions. If you can keep it hot you can keep pouring it in.
Its not a question of get more inā¦
Get more compressedā¦
Its like the difference between Thermal cracking heavy oil at atmospheric pressure and then seeing how the efficiency goes up when you do it under several atmospheres.
We canāt do that on a small scale at home. But one atmosphere will give you double the amount of gas from the same hearth while using less wood. Add some steam to that with heat recovery and can you see where I was going?
Its just too hard to make a fluid bed under presure that works, that is the ideal you know that wold make the best water gas and best conversion of wood solids to CO without all the fused ash and melted parts.
Its just beyond my ability to design and build. A good midstep is the boosted 15 PSI gasifier with a single central twyre and steam temperature regulation.
OH YA I almost forgot.
DO NOT blow oxygen in a gasfire unless it is absolutely hot and ready for it.
You think you have seen some pops on a regular gasifer wait until you see a oxygen induced detonationā¦ Hearing and eye protecting requires, I would also suggest you have the wife standing by the water hose in case things really go sideways. Stick with the peroxide dripā¦
That is sort of what Im doing with the versifier. But Im not boosting the gasifier been done all that and wont ever attempt that again.
Im not theorizing Ive already done some of this I know it works. Ive dumped 6 ltrs of water to less than 10 gallons of charcoal. Ive ran 2 ltrs water to the more than this. At the end of the day I get more power with the same or less amount of charcoal. Tested in the world but Im only getting started and as Ive said I need to test further to make sure I can repeat these results.
One thing I must note is in my test it was coooooold out. So I was running a mixture of RV / Marine antifreeze with my water. So Im sure that had an effect. I probably had a mixture of 1 to 3. So it was still mostly water.
Yes I already have a lot of thought into this and have ran oxy, acetylene torches all my life. Oxygen does not scare me. But yes it will not be metered in until the engine is running and it will also still be mixed with atmosphere. Im not trying to feed it purely on oxygen, only small amounts to reduce the atmosphere. Just a small amount nitrogen reduction should yield big results.
Adding the steam will dilute it as well.
Hmmm, seems like that might actually work. Adding O2 will increase the reaction zone temp and steam will cool it. Just some fancy controls needed to do the balancing act for you. End result: low N2 fuel gas, the original goal of this thread.
Rindert
Yes you get it !! Thank you!!!..
Steve, those 2 things go hand in hand! Let me explain what l mean.
I absolutely agree with you, there are 2 factors that limit power. Quality and quantity. This thread is focused on quality but lets leave this aside.
For simplicity sake, lets forget for a moment about all the blowers and superchargers and regulatorsā¦ picture 2 identical size clasical engine sucked gasifier sistems. Same drag on both! Only difference is one has heat pumped in and has the ability to crack more steam, in turn making richer gas with less nitrogen.
Wich engine will have more power? Obviously the richer gas one. BUT not just because the gas has more BTU/volume! The richer gas will alow you to feed more air with the gas and give you better filling ratio, on the same drag/pressure drop of the gasifier! And Steve is absolutely right with how cruicial filling ratio is for engine performance.
And again, l can not stress enaugh. l am not proposing we make nitrogen free gasifiers here. But do our best to make LESS nitrogen gas. The world is not black or white!
Thank you Kristijan, that is all I am trying to do with my new build is make it better on making a richer gas and keep it as simple as possible.
Bob
This all seems to be circular logic. What is the purpose of water injected into the nozzle as far as increasing power goes. Seem to be to break molecular bonds between the Hydrogen (fuel ) and the oxygen. ( fuel accelerator) My original reasoning was that if H2O did this job then CH3OH provided twice the fuel but possibly not sufficient additional accererant to make full use of the potential in the two extra hydrogen atoms. My idea was to inject the methanol into the reaction so that it vaporized possibly picking up extra O from the air feed. This was rejected here as of no real benefit. Now we are talking about H2O2 so you are picking up an additional accelerant atom and actually two more fuel atoms but a weak bond so that they may just react as just H2O in the reaction. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the only thing that really seems to make a significant difference is pressure. Matt talks about blowing pure O into the reaction. Again pressure. The question then is will there be enough available fuel to allow the oxygen to work. Dumping a 120 shot of Nos into an IC engine will be less than useless if you are feeding fuel through a 450 CFM carb. Having been convinced by wiser heads here that my original ideas about the methanol injection were wrong Iāve shifted my attention to just supplementing the producer gas as it enters the intake stream of the engine. Iām glad itās too cold out to do any work on this. I may have saved myself wasted effort. Iāll wait and see how the brain trust works this out.
Bob:
Your going to want to make steam and preheat your inlet air to 100c.
That is the practical limit. More heat will not make more gas because the air and steam expand too much.
Enrichment is the only un-boosted alternative. O2 or Peroxide. O2 is dangerous, you have been warned. I will tell you a secrete about peroxideā¦
It has a higher boiling temperature than water and a higher heat absorption ability than water. But its really not cost effective to run the roads with a tank of high % peroxide.
Also trying to buying it in quantity will get you on a no fly list without a bloody good reason.
There remains very little research into CO as fuel.
This is a crying shame because you can make it from sunlight.
My path down the rabbit hole as not completely of my own creativity. This technical paper opened my eyes to the possibility of harnessing other heat sources to make fuel out of thin air and carbon, with a little help from water.
Try and find this paper now.
good luckā¦
It discusses among other things a project in the 50s that turned air, carbon, water and solar collectors into gasoline ( no BS ) but at 100 dollars a gallon. We are not blazing any trails here, we are just discovering what we already knew and trying to do something with it.
Okay, so if I just get my nozzles air temperature back down to 100* c or 212 * f my Gasifer will make better quality richer gas and more of this richer gas in my WK gasifer? This is confusing to me. Because when my gasifer is at operating temp of only 800 * f or 426.7 * c at my grate coming out of the firetube. I can drive on down the road and go out on the highway. My drop box temperature is only at may be 200 * f or 93.3 * c coming out to my cooling rails. Now to drive it at 75 mph or 120.7 kph no way, 50 to 60 mph or 80.5 to 80.5 yes I can do that. If I keep my speed up with in a minute or so my grate temperature will climb up to 1300 * f or 704.4 * c and it will not stop there I have had my grate temperature up to 1760 * f or 960 * c going down the road faster and faster. Yes at 70 to 75 mph or 112.6 kmh to 120.7 kmh. It slows on acceleration but it is going. It might go to 80 mph. Our speed limits around here are 65 mph or 104.6 and I do not want a speeding ticket.
I am sure the air coming out of the gasifer nozzles are more than 100*c when my gasifer was at 800 * f at the grate because of the three incoming air prehearters that the air goes through. The air out of the first mufferpreheater is at 205 * f or 96.1 * c. I have thermocouple to read the these temperatures. And when the grate is at 1760 * f the incoming air is now in the 500 to 600 * f or 260 to 315. 6 * c.
The WK design is for having a good turn down ratio for idling at stops signs and really slow traveling. But it is also doing something else here. It gives it the abilities to hold the world land speed record that Wayne holds in His truck, 75 mph and doing it in only 1 mile. My truck will not do that. My auto mixer limits it so it will not over pull my gasifer.
So my question is this why am I able to make more shaft power to my wheels going faster and faster by making everything hotter and hotter, even the incoming air?
See I suffer from something good, I do not do all the math or believe what the great teachers of the passed have said, that we can not do with their so called proven mathematics. They were wrong and the great true inventor and genus Nicola Tesla was right about them, saying they are a bunch of purple robe very smart in their own proven mathematical equations. He did not agree with them and was never part of there club, and he did not want to be. Now Nicola Tesla designed most of what we use today and patent it, and others stole it from him because he was a true inventor and wanted only to better mankind and did not want to make massive profits. He died a poor man but he was the greatest inventor of our time and still is.
Bob
There are a lot of variables here not even yet discussed like hearth load. There is a sweet spot where your gasifier makes its richest gas, but that might be the cleanest tar free gas ( if purely fueled by wood ). This is where your turn down ration and wood moister content and quality, size of wood all come into play. All these things have an effect on performance. So you need a good gas analysis. A white cotton cloth in the gas stream will show you if your gas is richer because its full un-cracked tar, but it canāt tell you if your running above your best levelā¦ pulling too hard and hot on the hearth and thinning out.
How much preheat helps and how much has no pay back?
tough call but hotter thinner air will require larger twyers and these will not perform as well at lower power levels ( see superficial velocity hearth load ect ). TOO cold us bad too, sure its dense but it acts as a drain on the process heat ( 20 years ago Gregg Manning in Manitoba did some video and showed the cold runs VS some preheat VS too much preheat on his. I have no links to this ).
In my experience with good dry charcoal, once you get to 100c and you have dry steam mixing with your air your not going to get more benefits without tuning.
Maybe you could run radial twyers at low power levels with lots of preheat and open up a secondary central one to compensate for the thin hot air/steam at high loads.
There are probably solutions and compromises. Btu throwing more heat at the problem does not directly improve things without other changes to compensate for thinner air.
Again this is a thermally driven process and there is an ideal temperature ( range ).
Added: Preheat measuring at the inlet from a heat exchange or other method to warm the air before its sucked in. More heat will be added as you have measured before it get to the heart of the hearth just by absorption from the twyers
I am going to blow the main ballast tanks now and descend back into the sea of madness that is my " tinkerins " in ye old shop of stationary stuffā¦
I am building a new gasfire, a pure central down draft unit with some very specific goals around steam and preheat as discussed here. And it will be a pull not a pusher until I figure out some solutions to problems not discussedā¦
At the last Argos Wood Gas Event traveling down to it. The truck develop a hole in one of the exhaust muffers. This caused hot exhaust gases to go into my preheater box where the air normally comes in. I had a flapper valve to block air from going out my intake air with the two inline blowers. I was running on dino fuel only traveling down. But the heat was so intense it melted the blowers and plastic flapper valve. It was raining hard that day and thank God the truck did not catch on fire. When Michael and I stopped at a rest area I notice this melted mess hanging down under the truck and pulled it off what a melted down mess.
When we arrived at Argos I had no #1 mufflerpreheat now. I brought with me extra charcoal this came in handy. I noticed a difference when driving my truck down there with out the preheater with just using the other two preheater it took a lot longer to get it up to temperature.
This is when Kristijan came up with the Idea. I started making rocket fuel for my truck. The charcoal had gotten wet from all the torrent rain / snow/ tornado storms we drove through. I mixed it with the wood and it change everything truck was running great. I let many people drive the truck. Even Wayne got to drive his old truck again.
I didnāt plan it but this was a experiment.
Wood and wet charcoal going into the firetube with less heat coming out of the nozzles. My Question is this, is this proof of something here. I am going to check your theory out more. Is there a point where adding more heat there is no gain. I might even take out my other preheater in my drop box and test this out. I need shaft wheel power to the road proof.
The one thing that was proven was wet charcoal is great for giving you more power.
Even when running on wood. I also have used dry charcoal with my dry wood we have here. It is at 10% moisture or less at times. The wet charcoal works.
Bob
Hi Henry, was this done on a small scale gasifer or a large scale gas works plant using gasifers. I think I have seen these figures before reading about the Seattle Gas Works plant that ran from 1909 to 1956 and they used coal. It was a big operation. Some of the plant is still there. They call it now Gas Works Park, cool place to visit.
Bob
It would be very interesting if you want to try without preheating, I have for me that Tom C, said that his car did not go better with preheating, JO drove well faster too, but there I think it was the resistance that changed as well.
