Woodgas electricity and heating for a small community

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#41

I’m here :slight_smile:
I think there are two options

  1. modest one. Power for lights laptops and Internet provided by a gasifier running for 8 hours every day during winter. Solar in summer. Supplemented by gasifier on cloudy days.

  2. luxurious variant. Small hydropower turbine on a nearby stream. Running freezers and refrigerators by compressed air. Providing power for laptops lights and internet. Gasifier only as a backup option, and for more laborious tasks - sawing wood, mixing concrete etc…Turning on gasifier on demand

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#42

I’m not familiar with running refrigeration with compress air. Until you have tried to run a gasifier and generator for 8 hours a day you will not realize how much effort that requires. However with a good battery system it would not really be necessary. I can comment on what is involved with operating a wood gas fueled generator but have not gotten into battery back-up yet to know how many hours it would take to keep a battery bank happily charged. If you can get the electrical load required for refrigeration out of the equation the powering lights and and other lighter loads would not be a problem. As you mentioned, larger chores could be done on demand.

I believe there was a member here who was getting hydroelectric power seasonally from a small stream fed turbine. I’m not sure if he detailed it’s operation or not. He was from Oregon and now I have forgotten his name. A lot of things can be run on compressed air but it takes a lot of it. I have wondered if a water pumping windmill would have enough torque to run a decent size air pump. Anyway, any effort to free yourself from the grid, supermarkets, outside control is a blow against the empire and I’m pulling for you.

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#43

To me it seems that a charcoal gasifier would be appropriate. I was surprised at how easy it was to make an engine run the first time I tried to do it. I studied Some school in Thailand. I think that one 55 gallon (200 liter) barrel of charcoal and one simple updraft gasifier should not be unreasonable to have at each of 10-20 houses. Charcoal does not rot or degrade with time, so in some ways this is easier than maintaining a supply of gasoline (petrol). Perhaps the 10-20 houses can share one charcoal maker.
Rindert
DSCN3211
My tlud (Top Lit Up Draft) charcoal maker.
DSCN3221

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#44

Good! I thought we were annoying, and drove you to some other forum!

If you have access to a stream with enough flow and/or elevation difference, that might be the first thing to harness. (permanent magnet rotor+ wire wound stator connected as a dc battery charger).

So many questions I have! do you have any exposed and windy places for a home-built wind generator? Are your dwellings going to be close together for easy sharing of utilities, or like a group of mini-homesteads, separated by a greater distance? (much more wire, pipe, etc.) you may just have to begin construction and see where practicality leads you! :cowboy_hat_face:

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#45

That is not luxurious, that is basic energy available more reliant then the sun! Wow, good for you, but forget compressed air. That way you only make heat instead of power. Small electric turbines are available. Batt bank can be smaller and also you pv array. Does the stream freeze in winter?

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#46

I was thinking about this - using compressed air to refrigerate food.

Not sure if the stream freezes - we are still searching for a suitable place. But that’s an important think to ask locals when buying.

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#47

Low tech and robust ok, but also low efficiecy. If you make calculations for real life I dont think it will make a chance.

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#48

The idea is to avoid converting hydropower to electricity and then run freezer or refrigerator. Instead
hydropower can run air compressor and when compressed air is released into the freezer it will cool. Like when you open propane valve it will freeze.
But, it may be that refrigerating fluid in modern refrigerators is more suitable for the task, and even when loss of energy when converting from hydro to electricity is taken into account, it may be still more efficient to use electricity. Who knows… We will have to find someone qualified engineer to make a couple experiments and /or calculations

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#49

Hydro power plant, windmill with mast, solar panels, chemical batteries, converters, battery chargers, wires, pipes, etc. And in order not to sit idle, you can still add a compressor, cylinders and pipes for air! :wink: Will it ever pay off at all? Using such complex systems, is it possible to earn money working as a welder, miller and turner?

I wouldn’t want to be an engineer in a settlement that needs to maintain this every day at any time of the year…

Why do people still not like leaves as solar energy converters and wood as solar energy accumulators??? Only by the fact that there are still no converters of this energy into 10-20 kW of electricity with an accompanying amount of heat, and sufficient durability of the installation?

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#50

paying off and money is now not an issue :slight_smile: Serbia being in Europe, we are certain that at some moment electricity will go off due to war or side effects of war. At least supply wont be stable …

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#51

In this case, you should not be interested in electricity for refrigerators and freezers, but in ways to grow food and preserve it, preferably without refrigerators and freezers, for example, stews and cheeses made from milk.

And the fact that firewood is the only civilian fuel during the war was clearly shown by Europe during WWII. Do not waste your energy on high-tech technologies that are not available in times of crisis and war.

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#52

Marat, I dont want to argue with you because I think you are a very, very wise man. WW2 showed a lot. The big difference with the present is the cheap available PV. If the waste bothers you, buy it second hand and help not wasting wast :grinning:. It will still outlive you and hopefully some of your children.

Waterturbine can still be lowtech.

Nothing beats a simple humble life, respect. I really do, says the pizza eating couchpotato.

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#53

That was a very interesting article Veljko. At one time I worked supervising the installation of automotive paint systems. We used a lot of air motors to avoid the possibility of a spark from electric motors. This was in large auto plants and a massive amount of compressed air was required to run tools as well. Scaling any of this down is problematic but not necessarily impossible. At one time I had a compressor in my shop that would produce 24 CFM. I was run by an IC engine. It produced a lot of heat between the pump and storage tank and required a cooler. I never got a chance to explore how that heat could be put to better use before I burned that shop up. Since you have not yet purchased land and you are willing to go into the wilderness I would make it my first priority to find a location suitable for hydro power. I am not opposed to PV but it also has limitations that will become more drastic in days to come. Even where I live we can go for weeks on end without seeing direct sunlight due to the moisture from the Great Lakes. I don’t think anyone is trying to discourage any of your efforts. Just wanting you to go into it with eyes wide open.

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#54

Complexity and availability would be my guiding principles here. If I had a small hydro electric source to trickle power to a battery I would go straight electric with a solar array and a gasifier for backup with some way of capturing heat. Perhaps air powered machines and more importantly people to install, service and maintain them are common where you are but here the driving force is a lack of qualified people. So in my world it makes more sense to invest in a well engineered off the shelf solution with a proven track record and a service infrastructure behind it rather than create a technology suite from scratch because it might be more sustainable long term. If you are building a community from scratch you will have enough to keep you busy without recreating everything. My two cents
Cheers, David Baillie

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#55

Here is a relatively low tech way to make compressed air directly from falling water.
Rindert

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#56

More then the things said is what Marat pointed at. The basics. My kind of bible, The Good Life from Helen and Scott Nearing. When purchasing a landplot, the first thing was drink water. Still the most important thing. If it streams you get energy also. Before that comes good soil.

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#57

It is easy to become wise if you live in a place where there has been a war for 9 years, and you do not run to where there is no war, but instead you are looking for an answer to the question: what to do?

Relying on a hydro turbine will drastically reduce the options for choosing a place of residence. And, right away! Moreover, the sacrifices for the sake of this source of energy may subsequently be huge, and the source itself may eventually dry out or become banned. :frowning:

Behind the beautiful abbreviation PV lies a real horror: the limited charge-discharge cycles of batteries (from 400 to 1200 for lead, and up to 3000 for new lithium), short circuits of some battery cells, power electronics of a powerful DC-to-AC converter, controller malfunctions battery charge, failures in the lithium cell balancing system, lack of sun, especially in winter, etc. And all this will take place in the realities of war, when none of this nearby can be obtained, bought, or brought …

At the same time, cars without fuel are usually worth nothing. And many of them can be damaged, as was the case in Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities. In this case, the internal combustion engine can remain intact or be a donor of spare parts. Not every abandoned house has surviving photovoltaic systems.

I am not a supporter of the apocalypse, but it looks like the war will go on for a long time, because there are still a lot of resources for it, and its real goals, hidden from people, are terrible in nature, and have not yet been achieved. :frowning:

I vote for a comprehensive and integrated approach to solving the problem of “where and how to live”! And not just for beautifully advertised temporary solutions with a bunch of pitfalls. Different conditions of peace and war dictate different concepts of the beauty of the energy supply system. Coal dust on hands in peacetime looks ugly, but the electric light from the same charcoal in wartime glows with magic in the darkness.

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#58

Tom, I didn’t take the time to look back in your posts to find out how that happened but I am always dreading the thought of that happening to me. Tom Collins burned his shop too. Maybe the name Tom has something to do with it?

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#59

All living-it-truths you point out Maret.

And it doesn’t have to be war that comes.
We have earthquakes here. Other places too.
We are again having out annual drought season wildfires. Used to be central grid power was only cut off in actual fire damaged areas. Large lawsuits to the supplier power companies attributing then for wind caused fire starting . . they now proactively cut power to wide areas.
A primary USA thing - annual reoccuring Tornadoes.
Worldwide hurricanes and typhoons.
Ha! Good news; except for the wildfires these all mostly put trees onto the ground more easily made into fuel woods. Sap green, wet woods! A whole quantum level up to learn to using these directly without a year of drying and seasoning!

Once the Event happens you only have what you did have on-hand. And you own ability to keep it functional.
Woodstoves for space heating; foods cooking; and water heating are as simple as a provider technology can be. Their operations, maintenances, and fuel suppling are not an intuitive thing.
Books only give general guidelines. Brainacs always overthink these.

Do Now. Today. Before the forced needs. Learn these skills. Real. Now. Before the sudden forced need. Keep your tools simple. Robust. Repairable. Maintainable.
Your own individual physical strength and stamina should become a daily worked on, continually maintained thing.

Make sure those two philosophers; all artists, and all leaders do daily productive work humbling.
Gardens tending. Plumbing and electrical repairs. Carpentry and painting repairs, and restorations.
Child, elder, and sick tending all are needs any&all must participate into.
And these are how you sweat earn your way into a community.
S.U.

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#60

I overloaded the wood stove because I was taking the dogs for their walk and wanted it warm when I got back. Never figured out exactly what happened but it was early April and all my hoses were frozen. The volunteer fire department couldn’t find the access to my property. We had lived here 17 years and not one of them has any idea there was anyone back here in the woods. Then they got their tanker stuck in my crappy road and couldn’t get anything past it so they had to get a big loader from one of their barns about three quarters of a mile away. By the time they got here it was all gone. That was seven and a half years ago and I still get a little misty thinking about it. It was a benefit for Harbor Freight though.

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