Not so sure thats much help Matt.
Wood has more moister locked up in the cellulose than we need.
Even bone dry wood has more than enough moister to fully convert in the water gas shift.
This is precisely why you need the condensate tank in the first place
Now if you could increase the temperature and pressure at the same time in the reduction zone ( operate above atmospheric pressure ) then I bet you could add more water/steam.
I am still convinced an exhaust driven turbo could raise the pressure and heat inside a conventional down draft gasifier to do these sorts of things, but I ain’t got a big enough engine or turbo or the welding skills to try ( you DO !! )
Doug Williams eluded to an issue with some tropical hard woods being so dense and hard they burned like coal and these did need some extra water to control the temperature.
What I mean is for the water supply for steam injection. My thinking is different because Im thinking in terms of wood gasification vs char coal. So in my system I would not be injecting the wood gasifier, I would use any moisture it created to feed the charcoal unit in its lower to control its heat.
The problem for this concept; is the new pellet reactors have a very near 100% water shift. I showed the guys at Argos last year, what it dropped after running all day. Only a table spoon of condensate after something like 8 hours running non stop. Core temps are beyond steel melting point in this reactor. How I am getting away with this is because when these temps are reached is after the bottom of my restriction. Its just open at this point no metals come in contact with the gas at this temp. From here we start the endothermic reactions and the gas is much cooler by the time it reaches the grate.
While Im on this subject. my gas exit temps are much higher. The reason this is note worthy, is because dry gas is much much harder to cool than gas full of moisture.
Some things i can not post on a public forum ( due to big company’s seeking for profitable know how ) however i can show/teach/share them when we meet in Argos…
Picture yourselve being a person with a big imagination, then find a person that trusts your knowhow and provide you with tools to pursue your dreams/idea’s
Think what can be possible… and i am not talking about free energy… but just plain old knowhow combined with new technology’s
I am privileged coz i have DOW, the drive and some education about the old knowhow + i am that person with the imagination mentioned above…
Its not what i think that is right… its what has been done by people with different opinions that will lead to the solution needed
Most of my work is based on the words from SU: “blowing smoke thru a pile of glowing carbon”
Finding out how much smoke i can blow thru how much glowing carbon is the path i have chosen…
Try to find a way to use the heat of exhaust pipe to superheat water into steam, then pipe that into your reduction zone…
( i am there and i am doing that , just i don’t show everything and certainly not my failure’s on the way… )
Matt I have been trying to understand this.
Why would the moister content make that much of a difference?
Is this one of those states of matter energy transfer things?
Going from a gas to a liquid sheds heat?
Koen ,Wallace, @pepe2000,
One great thing about the folks on the DOW forum, they fire up my curiosity and cause me to research and learn new things continually. You can teach an old dog new tricks, if the dog is willing! I followed links which added up to more links. Read a bit about Fischer-Tropsch and Thaddeus S.C. Lowe. Learned about Hydrogen, and superheated steam. Hot carbon and coke. Ammonia and methane. Early refrigeration. Steam reforming. Thanks to all!
Wallace, I learned something also. I would have thought that the moisture in the gas would have a lot more latent heat than dry gas, thus making it harder to cool.
So here is the wiki explanation of this. So when we have a gas that has the potential to turn to a liquid in a cooling environment. The latent heat is given up and shed. In the case of gasification this is the h2o that is suspended in the gas for the most part.
In my case I do not believe there are any gases within the temperature range of ambient external cooling for this effect to take place. The due point for H is - 20 C and CO is something like - 190 C. With out any or very small amounts of h2o in suspension I am getting very little effect. This process starts immediately after leaving the grate. especially systems that have large ash bins.
So those that see higher temps, this is something that needs looked at first before further trouble shooting. How dry is your gas, if your not making tar, this is most likely what is going on. You have a good water shift going on
Automakers are now playing with systems that remove the humidity out of the intake air. This humidity saturates the intake air volume ( Less O getting in). So by removing the h2o in suspension more air gets in. Then there is also the cooling effect as the air sheds some heat allowing even more volume to get in.
How are they doing this? They are using a cyclone!! This is exactly what I have been doing for a few years now. The new system have two of them in series. I have to wonder if the condensate I am finding, is condensate at all. It could be from the humidity in the intake air!
Not saying you are wrong necessarily, but increased water content in the charge air usually causes an increase in power and performance. Why would they want to take water out of the air?
I’m not too sure Matt. A lot of street roders have been doing it for a very long time. Here Pat Goodman has aimed the nozzle straight into the carb. He calls ith injection but you have to actually look at what he is doing. Some of the old WWII fighter planes would do much the same thing
GM had water methanol injection in the 60s on their first turbo car.
It let them use boost with a relatively high compression engine.
But when you ran out of “turbo rocket fluid” you could not run the turbo.
This was the down fall of the system you always had to top up the injection system with more water/methanol.
The idea of getting your water directly from the exhaust is a very interesting one
Did you watch the video. What he is talking about will make sense. The idea is to cram as much oxygen into the engine as efficiently as possible, with a separator plus some cooling, this is basically free. Then when you get into the water system, the water system is direct injected to get those benefits.
Olds were such innovators of the day. A lot of 442’s in the fam sort of my roots as my Dad and Uncle restored those old cars.
Yup note the turbo again. Cram it in!!
On this newer system the turbo is also required for this. Think about boiling water, if you want to boil water at lower temperature you can put into a vacuum. Its the same when you are trying to condense it. In a vacuum the moisture will want to stay in suspension. So a turbo add pressure to alleviate that issue.
The less water i have in my gas, the less heat gets out of my gasifier, less heat creaping into the gasifier metal encasing, the cooler my gas stay’s, the more power i get into my engine…
If i try to have real bone dry wood into my oven to turn into charcoal… it takes much longer for getting all volatiles out coz the heattransfer inside the retort is less rapid…
However, if i want to enhance cooling capacity / heattransfer rate inside the combustion zone of my ICE, then water injection helps a lot, preventing pre detonation, more optimal ignition, more torque
So much we can learn from each others experiences/failures/successes/sharings…
)
This is easy!!
