Woodgas 2020.....AGAIN!

Some real nice driving if you are on 98 west of Perry :grinning:

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Yes sir it is. Just went through the appillachicola national Forest. About 45 minutes from Alabama line. if the Lord is willing we should be home in about 4.5 hours. Only human contact we had was with a reporter asking questions and taking pictures from about ten feet away. I drove past my mom’s house down here and didn’t stop. Given the situation and her husband s health, she didn’t mind.

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Wayne, or anyone else, has anyone had trouble getting char down stream. ? My truck has never had any problem with it. This one is sucking char down stream. We have been considering solutions. Other than the obvious, stop pulling on it so hard. Some kind of grate or cyclone with a drop box?

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Hello Billy

The velocity of the gas should be so slow going through the drop box and the condensate tank that any air born char should fall out ??

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I think he has pulled enough char down stream that it is acting as a filter and heat x. Huge power under load on the top end. Hard to idle through town s Hard to start. Gas way to o rich. I think the char is cooling the gas much more than normal and shrinking it. System is full of char so all the heat is making char gas.

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Once filled up with char, paths get narrower and the velocity of the gas increases, making char flow even further downstream. As long as an empty space is maintained under and around the grate the char should stay put.
Since I’m running grateless I have this problem all the time. Also, the cyclone can’t handle sudden heavy bursts of char and I do collect some char in the rear tank.

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I do also get char in my condensate tanks. Occasionally. But Jakob is getting a lot of char down stream. We are currently running slow and easy to finish this trip because char is causing puffs and blowing some pipe caps of f if he pushes it too hard. I think it needed cleaned out at about 500 miles. Trying to do 900 miles without a real clean out is too much. Local trips of 30-80 miles at a time doesn’t let the char get too tight. Jakob had put 1900 miles on this thing before this trip and never once had to shake the grate or dump char until this trip. Running continuously through 1200+ pounds of wood makes lots of char that builds up. But we are back at Roanoke Alabama which is only about 25 miles from home.
Looks like it will end up just under 900 miles. We won’t know final wood numbers until after sleep. But the initial numbers we had I think worked out to 1.17 pounds per mile. The entire trip is going to end up being 24 hours 20 minutes. From home to the Atlantic ocean at Atlantic Beach east of Jacksonville Florida to the gulf of Mexico West and South of Perry Florida, then to the gulf at the top of appillachicola Bay at St Marks Florida to Dothan Alabama through Auburn/Opelika Alabama and back home. Lots of fun, but time to sleep. 16 more miles

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We made it home. Turns out it was 901.4 miles. 24 hrs & 24 minutes
goodnight

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I had the opposite driving to Argos in the Ranger, it seemed to use up all the char. 400 miles to Argos no char to clean out. :astonished:

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Good to be home and rested (resting) now. We’ve been looking to this trip for a while. It’s a bit of a relief to have it finished. I can’t remember when the last time was that there was no deadline to meet.
Jakob did a great job building and operating this truck on this part of the trip, even under less-than-ideal conditions. Perhaps the virus problems will go away and make it possible to do the rest of the trip. I have my doubts that will happen any time real soon to be honest, but we’ll see how it goes. Obviously, it’s not realistic to cross the country these days. A long one-day trip to Florida where we can stay away from people for 24 hours is one thing. But several weeks travelling through infected/quarantined areas is completely unrealistic, even for us country rebels.
So we’ll pray and see how it goes. I am confident that Jakob will get it done sooner or later.

In the mean time, with the boys home from school and the whole country shut down, we’re looking forward to locking the gates and going nowhere until this is all sorted out. Maybe get some more projects finished.

SO anyway, good job Jakob!

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Thank you for the repotage about your first trip, I think you are brave, and very interesting to hear about your journey.
Would be interesting to see what your aggregate and filters look like, which brings char downstream,

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Love the pictures.
The one with the white sand beach really takes me back in time.

Amazing wood fuel mileage especially while towing a trailer.

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Thanks for the pictures and updates

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We actually were not towing a trailer, but it was still not bad for mileage.

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Why is there a sign on the gasifier top?

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I put a board up there to help with aerodynamics and I had the sign just put it on there as a Joke.

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I think Jakob is enjoying a break. He’s been pushing to get ready for this trip for months and now ready to relax some. He hasn’t even cleaned out the truck since the trip.

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Thats a long trip on petro let alone bio fuel on the fly. Dont forget too inspect gasifier hot spots or leaks, before takeing the out west trip. Thats a interesting trip, you could pull the unit out the top with the WK design and look for stress cracks on the outer air sleeve, any way wouldent hurt.

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