Steve; your short hand is loosing me. “DYI gasifing”? “diesels that do not need ‘DEF’”? TomC
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hi TomC
Do It Yourself gasification, for use by yourself and those in your immediate care.
Diesel Exhaust Fluid. The additional must-use urea additive you must buy and supply for metered injection into all road diesel exhaust systems since . . . .?? These “modern” diesel vehicle electronically controlled diesel engine systems Will sence and scream loudly to the point of removing engine power and trans gears if you do not supply them.
Ask your friends, neighbors with within the last five years bought personal road diesel rigs.
S.U.
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Hey Steve I think you misspelled “DIY”. I didn’t know about DEF. I do remember when I was on the Town board and we planned to get a new dump truck. The dealer advised us to find the money somewhere and buy one before the new modles came out. He said the new computer system would just shut the engine down if you weren’t very nice to it. TomC
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Thanks. Corrected.
S.U.
Another base design choice set:
where will you get your woodgas information from??
Read EVERYTHING published?
Read selected works of previous efforts?
YouTube videos?
Forums trolling?
A published plans set like F.E.M.A; Mother Earth News, VesaM’s book plans, BenP’s book plans, Wayne&Chris’s book plan, etc.?
A pre-made, bought system?
Each one way will have it’s Pro’s and Cons.
The way you choose will depend more on you; and your way of thinking; than the actual validity of the material presented.
Me? When I decided to pursue woodgas for engine shaft power (to make home power electricity) back in 2006 I intentionally for two years just would use Internet sourced information. I wanted to see if Google-Info-the-World would really work.
It did not.
At least half of my first two years was Net/Google wasted chasing down woodgas fairies, woodgas myths, and high change-the-world woodgas social false hopes.
The best I got from that time period was references to the actual published books.
One by one, I sourced, and bought these books. Much, much better for me.
Ha! Then spent the next two years wasted trying to make actual heating stovewood firewood stick forms work not going through the chunking step. And pursuing a mass-thermal approach to wood into fuel gas making. Very, very difficult. Very heat conversion inefficient overall.
I did learn much though.
And that actual learning involved making (by invitation) others gasifier build-ups function. And that was from the books having studied the needed internal process steps needed to achieve true wood gasification.
And a willingness to bang with a heavy rubber hammer. Hand shake the whole hearth system. With my hands feel the heats system traveling. Tape up joints with adhesive, aluminum tape. Pre-hand load char beds. Select and dry wood chunks as their system builds demanded.
Good 'ol boy - Cheat-with-the-fuel, works.
For lower moisture content; true wood in-place char-abilty; ash percentage; and that ash’s resistance to melting.
And all of these I found that I could pre-trial in my home wood heating stoves. Made me a much better wood stove user. I now use 40% less wood. Less sooting… Much wider range of woods and wood portions able to burn clean with.
So no one way will be best for ALL, or even the majority.
Cut and weld. Try. Observe. Recut and reweld, try again, and again works too for your information learning too.
How Mike LaRosa became the very first American to woodgas drive modern electronic fuel injected vehicles.
How Wayne Keith evoled himself to become the longest and fastest driving daily woodgas user in the world.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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I wanted to offer up a Third-Choice to home-power using woodgas.
Four-hour batch cycling/producing.
The other Choices pursued are continuous gas producing for as long as awake hours; and/or Grid feedback favorable. Gets really really complex.
The other Choice pursued is big batch making and then storing that “power” in a storable form for as-demand use needed. Has inevitable conversion state&storage energy losses.
Four hour batching evoled from my still working days with early morning firing up and heating up the house with the in-house woodstove. Leave. Be gone all day. Returning home from work doing this again, evening until bed time.
Wodgas making four hour batch systems can be more simply and easier make to work than any variation of the other two Choice approaches.
Ha! Four hour batch system stops making engine grade gas and the engine stops. Make easy air-in and gas out cuts offs. based on the engine stopping.
And this is not head noodling armchair speculation.
Been done. Used.
Why not you?
S.U.
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Steve would this be a way to covert diesel to wood gas ?
A hot-tube ignitor was an early device that fit onto the cylinder head of an internal-combustion engine, used to ignite the compressed fuel/air mixture by means of a flame heating part of the tube red-hot. A hot-tube ignitor consisted of a metal or porcelain tube, closed at one end and attached to the cylinder head at the other and an adjustable burner that could be moved to position its flame at any point along the length of the tube.
The compression stroke in the cylinder pushed some left over combustion products in the tube, followed by fresh (unburned) fuel/air mixture. When the compression was enough that the fuel reached the red-hot area of the tube, ignition occurred. On early designs, ignition timing was adjusted by adjusting the position of the red-hot spot on the tube—this was accomplished by moving the burner along the length of the tube. Most later styles used a fixed burner and varied tube lengths to change ignition timing.
Actually battery storage is much more efficient than taking oscillating power loads from a generator directly. This is unless the load is static and is matched to the static charger load.
I run the business off grid and I go through a third of the fuel if I charge verses I would direct power from the generator. Most of the time the generator is only loaded from the shop lights and this is wasting fuel away at this load. However my system is not capable of running the CNC machine or the 220 welder. So most of the time I dont have much of a choice. I do plan to change that as I will be working on battery storage systems for market. Big systems!! 
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hi i was wondering why wont a battery supply run the cnc machine mine runs 72 volt DC the gecko drives work well at that voltage.
I dont have enough battery storage or an inverter powerful enough
ordinary deep discharge batterys will work when we designed the system we used 120 toeid transformers droped votage to 72 volts put on a condincer to level out the power surges they only use a couple of ampes they were designed to use battery backup for off grid use. the only thing you need to worry about is the router it uses power.
The Berkley California APL folk did run their shops and living spaces habitat systems for a while on PV solar with battery banks and banks of inverter converters.
They were trying to go Grid-Free in a formerly Navy industial area.
They did show their large battery bank for sale once they changed back to Grid use for the big use stuff. It was just more economical/practical for them.
Jim Mason claimed that they learned to bank/inverters power up some of the largish inductive loads by first powering up to speed one particular old Grinder? and letting the stored momentum energy electrical surge from that get their old big stuff going.
I think they still did PV solar generate and at times woodgas electrical generate for the lighter scheduled loads.
My main point in my previous post was that we all use and need heats too.
If you use the heats from wood-for-power processes as a benefit then absolute finite % effnecnecies drops out.
A living in Hawaii guy frustrated with system heat loss finally took my advice and uses his heats for any-day, all-day-around drying of fruits and nuts now. Become an income stream business.
Point. A neighbor, the one who introduced me to Honda inverter units was, and is still disappointed that his small 600 watt Honda will not operate his hunter trailer space heater or electric drip coffee maker.
So I introduced him to the LIttleBuddy propane space heaters.
My oldest B-i-L took my advice and got a larger 1200 watt Yamaha inverter generator.
Ha! Insists on 800 watt plug in electric heating from that for their utility hunting trailer.
Why not engine and gen heat divert and utilize? I showed him the videos of others doing this. Too complicated he says. So his electricity making heats just blows away in the wind.
Sigh.
S.U.
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Agreed HenryB.
This has been done.
All of the later compression ignition diesel engine for better all-load and lowest emmisions use now use a minimum three phase injection spray.
And these engine do not want to play well with alternative fuels.
My point: better ignition point and controlled pressure rise controllability yield better results.
ALL diesel engine manufactures when suppling engine for gaseous fuel usages do convert their engine supplied to electric spark ignition.
This gives the true controllability for the engine damage reducing results.
Hot loaded engine will need a diferent ignition starting point versus a still cold/cool engine.
Ignition staring point changes from early morning cold air to late afternoon hot air.
Excreta. Excreta.
Love is being able to grow harvest and refine your own motor grade fuels for fuel freedom.
Frustration is loving a refined pump grade system and trying to get it to feed on something else. She will fight you every step of the way.
Choose the right love, and treat her well for the happiest results, and happiest life.
S.U.
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Yeah this is where Im gaining a very new perspective with Charcoal gasification.
Raw wood processing for direct wood gasification requires energy in. Energy inputs to break the fuels down, then energy in to dry the fuel. (Regardless if the drying comes from the sun or air, this is still energy input)
Charcoal is a different animal. For fuel break down you can implement multiple fuel processes some requiring more energy than others. break down process only needs to fit what ever process you use for Torrefaction of the fuels after initial break down. This step is where charcoal gives energy back in its process where typical wood gasifier processes can not. In this process heat is given back and this can be used for heat, hot water, boiler system, all sorts of stuff. If this heat is used, charcoal is quite a viable solution.
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Torrefaction leaves more tar in the fuel compared to charcoaling but definitely drives out any water and keeps it out. The extra tar isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That’s energy (hydrogen) staying in the fuel vs getting carbonized away.
As long as a gasifier can work hot, the remaining tar is converted to producer gas, and the lack of moisture in torrefied fuel lets the gasifier do just that, work hot.
You end up with a good compromise: most of the consistency and low tar of charcoal while preserving more of the embodied energy in the raw wood. I guess if you can use the waste heat from the charcoaling process it’s not a loss.
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Is it open yet ? Plant already cost much more then original price . Also producing something no one wants to buy seems to delay opening of plant until it goes bankrupt . If you call it an essential business then you can change that and keep the forestry industry . I think natural gas interest would lobby against it .
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I think industrial scale biomass has a lot working against it. Solar panel based production is so cheap and efficient. Once the cost and energy budget of harvest/transport/process/generate is tallied for biomass… it’s rare for it to come out ahead vs alternatives.
Now all that can be true, but the sun doesn’t always shine while a torrefied wood pile can sit at the ready. And if that wood is a waste product? Well the numbers might work, but it is an edge case - not broad advantage. Natural gas is so cheap right now. It’s actually free at some pipeline feed-ins. Of course never to the end customer…
House scale biomass energy, the focus of this website, has a lot going for it. Personally my off-grid power plan would be oversized solar generation (cheap), modest battery backup (expensive) and a gasifier generator (fiddly in a fun way). The generator takes care of those short/dark winter days and cloudy ones that happen in the other three seasons. Make it a CHP system and you’ve got all your needs covered right there. Anyhow - that’s where my head’s at.
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If you use biomass for primary heating you can easily make plenty of charcoal for daily off grid. Use enough solar to sustain and maintain the battery bank while the sun is out. Use the gasifier to bulk charge at night.
Most homes will consume 24 kW / hours pr day. So for solar work you would need to produce that in the 8 hours the sun is out plus battery storage to sustain 16 hours of stand by.
So if you design biomass energy, (primary heat, Hot water and Power) into the system, You can get away with less solar and smaller battery bank. If you do use 24 kw / hours daily. A 1000 to 1500 watt solar set up, combined with 12 kW battery storage would be perfectly viable with a bio fueled heat system for primary heat and hot water. If you had a system that could produce bio char as it heated it would easily provide fuel for the power generators daily usage. This is without too much sacrifice of fuel used for heating. You would most likely have a surplus for warmer months.
This is my plan and path forward.
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I wonder if it is possible to out live an age . We still have pipes in the ground carrying water for whole municipalities That are well over a hundred years old . Solar panels you should expect to replace inverters you should expect to replace , Batteries you know you will have to replace . There are some very old gasifier plants , town gas coal . Very old engines , do Edison’s dynamos still work ? Edison Jumbo Enginedriver Dynamo - ASME
There are is more planed pumped hydro storage then we have electrical capacity . We need water , we need to store and circulate water more then we need power .