Wood supply

We live on the suny side of the Alps yes, but the warm air from the sea and the cold air from the mountains picture our litle contry a whole lot of climates. From “Siberia” to “desert”. I live in the middle, in the sweet spot :smile: the summers are not to murderus (we rarely exceed 35c) and the winters are bareable (rarely under -13c).

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this statement does not give me one more argument to convince my girlfriend to visit Slovenia this winter!:cry:

Thierry

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She likes winter? 20 characters

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We like to take a stop in the middle of winter. (We live in Quebec and winter here is very long and cold) .We go probably in Croatia (Istria, Dalmatia). I 'd like to enjoy this trip to meet you and get to know and see your achievement. But my girlfriend is more interested in the heat of the Adriatic coast that the gasifier .
I work hard to convince her … suspense :cold_sweat:

Thierry

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You know, we have adriatic sea too, and not to mention a lot of geothermal spas, 3 are situated just a few miles from my home. Perhaps you can play on this card :wink:

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On the North American Pacific west coast micro-climates pre-dominate due to three north-south mountain ranges.
Here for me and another 11,000,000 other people on the weather “wet-side”, woodheating fighting excessive interior humidity always it is counter productive to top of stoves steam. House sickening to air dry washed clothing inside. We do get very good at understanding relative humidities!
Over the Cascade/Sierra/Rocky mountains crests (90 miles east of me) it is dry-dry, low humidity and they do need to top of woodstove steam too.

October is finishing up here in our mountain valley as 18 inches (45.7 cm) of rain. Portland Oregon just 30 miles southwest is coastal mountains rain shadowed. They will have had only 8 inches of rains.
Ha! No more sunshine for them though! And they lowland/Columbia River fog wet much more than us.
Son-of-a-xxxxx here to outside sun/air dry wood fuel outside of 70-90 days a year.
And for only 8-15 days in the winter do we get an interior freeze drying continental air flow. I love the freeze dryed wood by the 5th day! Our light weight confer woods then burns like fossil coal.

“One-size-fits-all” solutions; will always fit most, poorly"
Steve Unruh

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Hm, is that october alone? That’s about what we get in a year, 550mm.
However Bergen, Norway, 500 km west of here get 2250 mm in close to 300 rain days a year. A wood burning guy’s nightmare :smile:

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Yes. October alone. We are 88 to 122 inches of rain a year here locally. 2,235 to 3,099 mm.
Northwest of us in the Olympia Peninsula and Vancouver Island British Columbia is where they get the 200-300 inches (5,000 - 7,600 mm) a year.
Just east, hi

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I will never complain about the rain here, ever again.
Sometimes a little wet outside, in East Wenatchee, WA.
Bob

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Opps. Interuptis there. Surgery results consult for the wife. Getting old is not for the feint of heart.
Just east of us toward the Cascades crest the elevation rises dramatically. There annual precipitation is between us and the coastal rainforests. In the true mountains more measured in feet’s of snow fall; then the settled down snow pack.

Woodgasing factors to all of this.
The challenge has been to be able to make systems able to fuel with 40% to 60% by weight moisture, low density conifer woods.
Woodstoveing with 20% dried down wood I get 80% efficiency heat into the space heated areas. Have learned to take this up to 60% moisture woods as a fall-back, if/when needs-must. Only ~20% efficiency heating space having to wood energy commit to handling all of that excessive moisture. Still can heat. Just have to chop a lot more wood. THIS IS THE 150 years, generations living here in the wet traditional, have-many-kids-to-work-sweat-the-wood, way. Proven. Creosotes up chimney’s badly unless burnt, high flow, hot.

Engineered designed and built wood gasifier systems very solid at 70% efficiency IF using 10-15% moisture wood fuel inputs. With gasifier total system heat recycling this can be pushed up to ~30% moisture wood-in before too much efficiency conversion dropping.

How to handle the wetter yet woods without the sun: and/or sub-freezing drying days?
Put the IC engines and generators head “waste” to work - not blown away wasted! Predrying/dehumidfy down the wet wood to 20-30% Before going into the gasifier hopper.
Not a recovery system able to do with vehicle mobile systems. The vehicle shed-off heats are too far away , and spread out. The wet wood to be dried additional weight loading on the vehicle gross weight too punishing leaving too little net capacity for usable cargo.

True green 40% wet ; and sat outside, then 60% weight wet conifer wood as an input then take-out charcoal making is a fantasy.
All conifer char will be used up drying down this excessive raw harvested 40% to 60% by weight moisture wood to gasifier useable.
Doable. Proven now.

S.U.

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Kristijan,
I don’t know if you have seen this video, It has English subtitles, and the gentelman states at about 00:59 that “Black Alder is the best!” It is a good video and worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blWVB-JpdEk

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Thanks Mike, wonderful video!
Hm…adding charcoal and a running the blower for 15-20 min… No wonder people were glad to get back on gasoline.

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Talk about weight cast iron a lot of mass to heat up, but I love the tall hopper. That truck got 15 mpg. My 2003 Dodge gets about 16 to 17 if I’m lucky. Not much improvement in all these years. I can go faster down the road. That is a improvement.
Thanks Mike for the video.
Bob

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lnterasting video indeed!
The man is strong for his age! He lift that chunking base with such ease he can be a example for the couch potato kids of today.

lm glad we made progress in gasifier tehnology, 20min of flareing is a big no no for me.

This ading of charcoal l dont understand thugh…

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Thank you. I just love seeing those “actual” trucks that saved Europe — and the guys that drove them and remember how they did it. There has been a '40 Ford flat bed on Craigslist, that if I was a little younger would jump on to convert to wood gas. A lot of those parts were made especial for the gasifier-- those cast caps for the clean outs, and I have asked for years if those 6 volt blowers were available. TomC

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@ 2:39 “The biggest problem with the gasifier is the acids in the gas, they corrode terrible” AMEN BROTHER!

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Puzzled me too. It seems the grate’s main purpose was not to support the charbed but to sift out the ashes.
https://www.google.se/search?q=imbert&client=tablet-android-samsung&prmd=imnv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAjbz65oXQAhWEhSwKHTfkAFMQ_AUIBygB&biw=1280&bih=800#tbm=isch&q=imbert+gasifier&imgrc=umMUNLGsB5MZaM%3A

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Hmm l remember this concept now but has anyone built anything like this?
The first thing that comes to my mind is those shuld have great turndown ratio becouse of the large space reduction front can move on. But l guess if you dont shake the grid you wuld plug the reduction with ash quite fast.

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I thought about that when I saw you cleaning out your ash pit. You did have some char down there, but I guess that amount is near constant at all times. As soon as we are pulling hard slipped char is consumed. The question is, do we benefit from that char when overpulling or is it oxidizing - deluting the gas?

Edit: I think we do benefit. Even Wayne states some of his gasifiers run crappy right after a thorough cleanout.

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Lurking!! The URL (?) has many designs on it. Which are you guys discussing? TomC

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