Woodgas cooking apparatus

Woodgas has a stechiometric gas/air ratio about 1/1. Propane on the other hand has a gas/air ratio about 1/10 so the difusor ( the part where gas mixis with the air) has to be adjuated. The small gas nozzle must be made larger or the air inlet choaked.
I made a water gas reactor once… Just CO and H2, no nitrogen. Not practical for an engine powering gasifier but might be ideal for compressing in to gas tanks for cooking. Picture the flame trugh a 4mm pipe:

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Hi Kristijan,
Nice picture…
How did you build the watergas reactor?
I would like to build a simple system for making watergas, thinking about a dual reactor system (patented in 1890)

Hello all
I thought maybe a good way to introduce myself would be if i had a little something to contribute. Ive built several FEMA units over the years and used the gas for a whole gaggle of things, including fueling a standard propane/nat. gas stove. Ive also used it to fuel my torch for brazing and cutting, although thats a little tricky getting it adjusted. Theres no reason why a standard propane burner cant be used, the size of the holes in the burner assbly. isnt as important as the size of the jet and the air adjustment. If itll burn propane, itll burn woodgas. If your stove was setup for natural gas it may work fine without drilling the jet,the jets already bigger than a propane jet for the same stove. The standard jet will get you cooking if you choke off the air nozzle and restrict the airflow. If you need lots of heat, say for boiling peanuts or shrimp/crabs/crawfish.... youll need to drill out the jet. Or you could build a burner with some pipe and a drilled out grease fitting or similar as a jet, but the gas will work fine. I got the gasifier bug again while searching for info on building a rocket mass stove/heater a few months ago. Thats how i found DOW , i saw one of Waynes videos, and here we are. I never powered a vehicle with the FEMA units, but played with the stoves, torch, and ran lawn mowers directly off the gasifier, and on gas stored in an old propane cylinder. Ive got enough material on hand to build a couple of WK units with the exception of a few things, soon as the weather warms up a little. Here are a couple of videos i ran across of people using woodgas in propane stoves. There are others, this is the only ones i saved the link too.

I wouldn`t recommend storing the gas in a balloon or air mattress though. LOL

Nice job on the plans for the WK gasifier and the build videos.

Thanks
Warren

Hi Warren
Nice:) cuting torch on woodgas? How hot does it get?

Koen
I built it for my gas to liquid proces as nitrogen is unwanted in the reaction. Used a modified charcoal gasifier. Heated the charcoal white hot then closed the air inlet and the water drip opend. Useing a refridgerator compressor i compresed it in an expantion tank.

Hi Warren,
Storing the gas in a balloon is a great idea… function similar as an accelerator pump on a carb…
S been done already … :wink:

Kristijan,
I will look up a drawing i studied about, alternating with 2 reactors,also changing the dirrection of the gasflow in the gasifier.

Since you have a poisibility of useing pure oxigen in your gasifier I wuld recommend a steam/oxigen injection. With a dual reactor you stil get some nitrogen and burn a lot more charcoal as the reheating cycle burns a lot of fuel.

Hello Koen
Yeah, the balloon and the air mattress both are good storage devices except for one thing, the saftey factor. Static electricity, especially in the winter, could be a problem, with the rubber balloon or the air mattress which would most likely be made of plastic. Both could hold a static charge, touching a charged balloon to something grounded or shuffling your shoes across the carpet and touching the balloon could get exciting real quick. Or accidentally rupturing either one some other way, like hitting it with something sharp, or accidentally hitting it with a lit cigarette. Probably wouldnt be a big explosion, but most likely a big whoosh and ball of flame.Saw it happen to a friend who was experimenting with hydrogen generators storing it in party balloons burning it in a bunsen type burner. Static electricity set it off and burnt his beard and eyebrows off. LOL Ill stick to storing it in old propane bottles or air tanks dedicated for that purpose,

Warren, what compressor setup do you use to fill propane bottles?

Hello Kristijan
The torch cuts ok, once you get a big enough tip and get everything adjusted properly. You have to use a propane tip and use one bigger than you normally would with propane. You also have to run your fuel gas pressure higher than normal to get enough gas, and it takes longer to get the metal hot enough to start the cut. Once you get the cut started, the oxygen is doing most of the work anyway. It takes more oxygen than with propane or acetylene too, its a bit aggravating, but it will work. I suppose if you get enough fuel gas and the right amount of oxygen it would get nearly as hot as propane. Soon as i get another gasifier built ill try it again and measure the temps, i have an infrared thermometer that will go to 2600 , didn`t have that 15 years ago.

Hello Don
I just used an extra 2 hp , 2 cylinder, single stage compressor i had and rigged it up for that purpose. I dont remember how many CFM it was. Built a filter box that was airtight and installed fittings, valves, and quick couplers so i could use the suction to pull off the gasifier, and had the discharge from the compressor plumbed up to my storage tank. The compressor didnt really have enough suction or capacity to really keep the gasifier putting out well, i had to run the fan and pull off that discharge. Once i did that, it would fill a tank as fast as the compressor would fill its own tank if you were pumping air. The bigger the compressor the better though. I was pumping to around 150-200 psi, never went much over 200. I dont remember just how long a small bottle would run the stove, or know how many cubic feet of gas i was putting in the bottle, but i could cook breakfast and still have some gas left,

Looks like a good start to a wood gas cooker. Look around under the top good when you take it apart. Some of them had the extra jets stuck under there somewhere to convert it to a different gas. If it was set up for propane, you may already have the larger jet for natural gas and it may work ok with the woodgas.

Paul Anderson just posted a link to a simplified construction article on his latest version of a natural draft TLUD Champion Cookstove. http://www.drtlud.com/troika-tlud-stove/ Martin Payne obtained two of the previous versions (Quad 4) that were kitted in Uganda and hauled to the U.S. by Dr. Anderson in his personal luggage. Martin and I spent about half a day assembling the kits into finished stoves, and (thanks to Martin), I carried one home to add to my collection of TLUD stoves. Making gasifier fuel blocks or chunks is WORK. These stove will get the job done without wasting fuel, and will make charcoal or biochar in the process. (One can never have enough charcoal…) I have been saving my charcoal from the cooking sessions for several months in a stack on the patio. The stack is now a cone of engine grade charcoal that measures 18" high and 36" at the base.

Its not only Driving on Wood what can be done with your gasifier…
Using the flare-mode for:
Cooking
Heating water ( household boiler )
Heating your house in the winter ( Central heating unit )

@Warren,
Yes the Hydrogen is very sensitive to any ignition, it needs the least energy to ignite and has the fastest flame speed
Hydrogen goes with a “bang”
Carbon goes with a “woosh” :slight_smile:
but… put the most igniteable mixture (any combustible) in an enclosure under pressure… “the big bang theory” :stuck_out_tongue:

@Steve U, Strange, i share the same , nothing beats the smell of gunpowder fumes… ( 708, 3006, 300WM and many more :stuck_out_tongue: anything between 7 and 1000yards, reloads only )

from my friend Stephen Abaddess, he pushes on his little units with a 33 watt aquarium pump…

it works :stuck_out_tongue:

Nice work Koen. I want to try that myself now… :slight_smile:

I searched the “cooking” threads looking for where to put this. Life goes on maybe, not a TLUD, not exactly cooking on woodgas. But I guess a rocket stove, when built and used properly, is just a really simple on-demand wood gasifier so I decided to put it here.

Had a big canning day. Our family except Jakob and also had a few people show up to learn how to make apple sauce and can some other things. Made a big pan to fire over Jakob’s charcoal hearth. (three built-in rocket chimneys).
The pan is made from an elevator cab roof that we took out during an upgrade in a hospital in North Carolina when I was about 18. I think it was a 1957 model Otis. It has those rounded edges which was really nice. Has to cut it down to size and put a plate on the bottom. Anyway, it turned out a lot better than I expected, and with no leaks, and it works better than I ever dreamed as a steamer and steam canner.

Also tested using some of the waste heat on top to dry some apples using an old bed frame with window screen.
That worked out super well too, except that they got smaoked some from the exhaust. It would work very well if it had piped-away exhaust.

Ended up with 108 quarts of really good thick apple sauce.
10 qts of sliced pears
11 qts of canned figs
5 qts of pickled okra
about 1 gallon of dried apple slices.
about 12 gallons of skins and cores for the bio-gas digesters (decided against making vinegar this year)

Fired the pan to cook the apples and to water bath. Cooked from 6 AM to about 3 PM using the equivalent of 80 linear feet of 2x4’s (spruce and yellow pine) and a small bundle of sticks to get started.

Only Lost 4 quarts to breakage.

We cooked (steamed) the apples in floating disposable (to other people) aluminum casserole pans and the black rings are slices of a barrel used to keep the jars from moving around. We can easily fit 6 barrel rings in the pans with lots of extra room. Three rocket chimneys 7"x7" made just a little shorter than by the 2/3 principle took about 50 minutes from cold start to rolling boil.

Here are a few pics.

DSCN9514DSCN9500DSCN9507DSCN9512DSCN9522DSCN9585DSCN9590DSCN9591DSCN9592DSCN9593DSCN9594

Sorry, we apparently didn’t get any pics of the actual cooking.

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Well, i’ve Bobbed for apples, but we never climbed in the water to do it. Almost like cheating.
Nothing like having a 3 rocket stoves Ganged up in your back yard!

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This guy has a rocket stove kitchen.

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