Wayne's V-10 Ram

[Wayne]

Hello Mr. Dan.

Let me answer the simple question first .

I also thought of this with respect to a genorator. It would allow you to shut down to refill without having to stop the generator.

No need to shut down the generator to refuel . You can keep the motor running as slow or as fast as you like .

I was wondering have you ever tried a system with two smaller gasificers? I was wondering if 2 smaller gasificers would work better. A setup where if you planned on working the truck hard you could start the second one.

I have never tried it but have given it a lot of thought and there will be a lot of devil in the details .

The state of the gasifier never stays the same pertaining to how dense or coarse the char and ash is in the burn tube and grate area . As the char and ash builds up and purge the amount of vacuum to pull a steady amount of gas from the gasifier will change. Sometime we may need 10 inches of vacuum to pull a given amount of gas from the gasifier and other times it may require 30 inches to pull the same volume of gas. In short if you pull two gasifers from one vacuum source one will over heat while the other goes cold . However you could put valves or a Y type butter fly so the operator could suck heavy on the lazy gasifier and less on the hot or coarse gasifier . This would take a lot of attention from the operator and would have to watch temps of each gasifier and keep them synchronized

One other issue of two small gasifiers vs one larger is with the expense of building the gasifier .The 55 gallon drums and seals work very well and are cheap. Even though a 9 inch fire tube is half the volume of a 12 inch tube one would come out cheaper to use a 55 gallon drum even if he could get by with a container a little smaller . In short two small gasifiers may take up twice the amount of bed space as one big one.

It has always worked for me to tune the gasifier to make clean gas with the vehicle working at minimum loads and let the high end work out where it falls, and if more power is needed add in a little gasoline. On the other side of the coin if a gasifier is tuned for heavy loads but run at minimum loads you will end up with tar and motor problems. ( a little gasoline is much cheaper than motors )

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[Wayne]

Hello Kevin .

Thanks very much for the offer but I have an extra 240D that I am keeping around just in case I need parts for my mill. It seems like the old 240D that is running the sawmill will out last me

[DanNH]

Thanks Wayne that makes since. I can see a couple of projects to add to my never ending project list. The more I read the more practical wood looks as a way to save some money on the farm.
I was also wondering some setups use chips and some chunks. Is the idea behind chunks to avoid bridging problems? I ask because I have a 3 point hitch chipper. I just haven't seen anyone say why some setups use chips and some chunks.

[Wayne]

Hello Dan .

There is a certain relationship between the surface area of your wood, the physical area of the burn chamber and the volume of the air passing through it. The more surface area of the fuel the smaller the burn chamber should be. The bulky chips will cause bridging if gravity feeding because of the reduced size of the burn chamber, compared to more dense blocks fed into a much bigger chamber.

I have very little experience with chips except before I learned this relationship between surface area and burn chamber volume I dumped a 5 gallon bucket of chips in my gasifier and drove home from about 15 miles . The next morning I had a 460 ford with bent push rods

I have seen the below Biomax 25 demonstrated several times . It is fed chips on demand and is an open top gasifier. It does use chips but has to be sized just right .

One note of interest , Talking with one of the operators ( Christian Brodbeck) he told me the machine could never produce enough power it it's life time to pay for it's self

https://www.fs.fed.us/t-d/pubs/htmlpubs/htm10732315/

[Wayne]

Good morning all.

Rough weather this weekend in the Southeast US.

Lot of wind and rain but the wood is still burning good.

[kmrland]

WOW Wayne you folks really got nail'ed with rain we all thank god you missed the Tornatos, GA certenly needs our prayers and or help if posible.

[Wayne]

Hello Kevin and thanks for the comment .

Yes we had wind and hard rain but the bad stuff missed us. Our prayers are with the communities that got hit.

[DanNH]

One thing that I am grateful for living in the north east my biggest concern is how long does it take to shovel out from a big snow storm. The weather is just isn't as dangerous as some other places. My prayers go out to those who have been in harms way as well.

[Wayne]

The wood burners are running great and driving daily .

[Strawman]

I love these driving vids you do Wayne. Your YouTube vids made me a believer in the real practical everyday use of wood gas. Please keep SWEM, and recording it - inspirational stuff for us guys just starting out!

[Wayne]

Thanks for the comment Mr. Will .

Wish you were down here so I could take you for some rides . The pictures and videos are OK but nothing compared to setting in the seat and watching the countryside go by

[kmrland]

The old v10 is racking up a lot of trouble free miles on wood gas, exoust sounds good and the grass looks like its turning green. A lot of Nice back country you have out your way, i have quite a bit of back roads out here i can use while dow driveing Happy SWEM.Thanks

[Chris]

How many miles does the V10 have on wood now, Wayne?

[Wayne]

Good morning Chris .

I have put 28,000 miles on the truck but a lot of these miles are with the truck working ( hours) . The amount of hours and wood run through this truck would equal 40-50K on one of the highway driven dakotas

Uses no oil between changes

[kmrland]

Good morning Mr.Keith that was the country vidio i was looking for keep them comeing.BBB

[Wayne]

Out and about in the V-10

[Strawman]

Man, you are just swimming in fuel down there!

[pepe2000]

That's got to be a real pain for the seeders to wallow through. Too bad someone didn't follow the cutters with a chipper operation.

[TomC]

I saw a couple of guys walking with buckets. Are they seeding that field by hand??? Is that your field? I don't know whether pulp wood is up or down but they have been clear cutting the H--- out of our woods and nothing is getting re-seeded. The DNR who owns a lot of the land tell us, the trees will reseed on their own just as fast. Everyone else use to reseed. I think they are just getting greedy.TomC

[DanNH]

Around here we don't reseed old forest stands they do come back quickly. I think it depends on the types of trees you want. Black cherry trees around here seem to pop up out of the blue everywhere. I asked the forester about it and he said the seeds for black cherry and some of the other really hard shelled nuts will last up to 70 years in the ground and start to grow when the forest opens up enough that they get light on the ground. So with that in mind an old forest stand has alot of seeds waiting for the light of day.