I love how streamlined that mixing manifold is John! Good idea.
I’m getting a few breaks in the clouds over here. I’ll try to post some pics of my setup.
This all is friggin great. I certainly won’t be able to keep up with it. I just heard from Dan Elsinger. I met him around 3 years ago and took him for a ride in my 91 olds … His buddy was real pissed about the detour to Linden and he had to wait for us on the way to some kind of sales thing. That car has been shredded and the truck he built up at that time has also been shredded and the pictures he posted of it on Ben’s site are obviously history now. He had one of the weirdest monorator type hoppers I had seen in pictures with lots of screws in it. The truck had a transmission problem so was never quite ready to really roll. He’s back in action so I hope he will find help from the gang. I believe he and Chris are around the same age … Mike LaRosa
Gotta love it. Wish I could weld like that … I have a shakin palsy so it’s tough at times but I manage … I’ve never seen the base of a propane tank used like that. Even have me thinking … M
thanks for the compliment mike! not to much to report … just that I’m going to re direct and shorten my 5 nozzles … they are causing bridging trouble they are too long… I’ve been working on putting the gauges in the dash… ill have to find a new spot for the radio ! but the old one didnt work anyway lol …
John,
Great job your succes gives my desire to build a big boost. For now I’ll keep reading and learning all I can. Last month I would have laughed at someone who said my motor runs on wood. Now I dream.
Thanks, Frank
Hi John; I like your mixer setup too!! How fast will it go on woodgas going through the top of your carb like you are doing? Does it run allright on gasoline also?I put a box under my carb for the woodgas and now it has a hard time running on gasoline at the lower RPMs, so i need to make some changes.
You are welcome to drive your truck or just come to the Indiana Woodgas meeting in May, if you drive your truck I will give you enough wood to get back home !!
Great accomplishment what you have done !! Ron L
Hello John,
I hope to be in Boston July 16-19, 2012; sure would like to check out the progress. Your flare looks promising! As the day gets closer, I will let you know.
Jim
Hi Ron and JIm ! sure Jim feel free to check it out … I’m about an hour west of boston right off the mass pike its an easy ride. and ron it goes pretty well on wood gas … you defiantly notice the power reduction but 0-45 is not an issue I’ve been up to 65 with my setup … i could have gone faster but I was in a 45 mph zone and don’t want to get a ticket! one thing i notice is this thing consumes wood! i used about 2 …5 gallon pails of chunks going about 15 miles… this includes 2 warm up periods of 10 minutes.and 30 mins of drive time. total… is this normal? i was thinking i would get better wood to mile ratio… but i have yet to dial in and set the distributor and widen the spark gaps…mabey the holes in my grate are too large? what size holes would you use in your shaker? i think i can light and burn the charcoal that I’m pulling out of my ash pit… so perhaps i should make the holes in the grate smaller? not sure on the size they are now but ill measure next time i have it apart. . one other thing i was thinking was to insulate my reactor barrel… will this help my wood last longer? am i loosing energy to heat loss through the barrel? or does it matter? my grate temp rarely gets above 1550 f is this too cool for my restriction zone? also my probe is about 3 inches above the 3 " hole in the bottom of ,my restriction zone… “kitchen pot” i have my gauges in the dash now and I’m pleased with them! it helps to see thongs at a glance! i have not changed the nozzles yet and I’m using chunks for fuel at the moment.so far so good …
I can’t make the meet in may sorry guys wish I could. it looks like a lot of fun but I’m a farmer in the floriculture field … may is the crazy busiest time of year for me… if i leave the farm then it means a 2000$ loss every day I’m gone…cant afford to loose that cash! but i would love to check it out sometime you have a meet in hmmm… end of july to middle september… im a little more “free” then. a couple picks from the dash…
ps if any one has a mep-017a military generator and you want to run 120/240v 3 wire let me know you have to find the neutral winding and run a pig tail out for it… that particular generator is set up for just about any current but that one… fyi… ill post a pick of it … its a nice little generator and can put out about 6000 watts although its rated for 5k it can do 7.5 and even higher for short times…in the picks i show you where to put the neutral wire inside the control box … its easy to find it with your volt meter… my finger is pinging to the terminal to use… its a well built unit and pretty cheap from what i can tell. i gave 500 for this one … as far as genitors go i feel thats inexpensive… they are rated for a 10,000 hour life so look at the hour meter … mine has only 300 hours its just broke in… Cheers !
John
OK JohnW.
Enough with the teaser gen-set pictures! Looks like an air cooled opposed two cylinder spark ignition OHV engine?
Please. 1800 or 3600 RPM set up?
Please. And you are woodgas fueling it off of a stationary woodgas set-up. Hows the power difference between the liquid DinoFuel and woodgas?
Details man. Details. Please.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Good Morning John,
16 pounds of dry wood should take your truck as far as a gallon of gasoline. The numbers can really get scrambled if the wood is not dry. Pounds per mile can really vary depending on moisture content. Example, a block of wet wood will not take your truck as far as a piece of dry wood, also the block of wet wood will weigh more than the dry block to start with.
Just like gasoline your speed and driving habits will affect the mileage
BBB
Not to contradict Wayne, but to clarify: Strictly on a BTU basis, you’re actually looking at nearly 22#/gal. equivalent, dry wood. However, Wayne’s truck uses 16#/gal of dry wood. Due to extensive heat recovery, It’s actually 37% more efficient on wood, as verified at Auburn University. You may or may not have some of this same efficiency increase with your system. Depends on the heat recovery you are using and how much heat you’re losing off the gasifier.
Great job!!! Can’t wait to have time to read the details this evening.
Blessings,
Chris F
I think it was Greg M did a study ,test, and every 1% after 9% mc you loose 250 meters driving distance.
I dont think you can dry your wood too much.
My truck (isnt that great but it) travels about 11-12 miles on a 5 gal bucket of dry wood.
Part of the inefficiency may be taking 10 min to flare mine takes 3-5 min if you only travel 10 miles you could be using 30% less wood!! Ron L
Hi Steve, I have run the genet on wood gas but it was just an experiment to see if the concept worked. I’m not too sure how to change the timing in this genet… but I’m sure you can do it.that one runs 3600 rpms… it ran pretty lousy on wood but it was the first motor i saw run on wood gas.and i did not change the timing. once convinced it worked i moved on to the truck… doesn’t mean i won’t get back to it though… i do have a lister 6/1 diesel running a chinese st gen head… i like that set up and it uses little fuel… looks like you have a permanent mag st Gen head in your pic? if i can give you a suggestion … use micro v belts instead of 3 deep v belts . you loose a lot of energy in the friction from the v belts … i have a micro v running from the lister to the gen that one runs 1800 rpms and the lister runs 650 rpms so its a pretty quiet setup … the lister makes about 3500 watts 120/240 3 wire. 60 hrts not much but it runs my house exept big stuff like electric stove… dryer etc… i understand a lister can run on wood gas by metering down the amount of diesel you give it… so 10 % diesel 90 % wood gas … but i have not done it. I’m still tinkering with the truck…i just mentioned the Mep-017A military genet because you have to modify it for 120/240 volts and i know the mod… should anyone have that set. its a potent very well built unit! ill post a pic of the lister when i get a chance …
John
Hi Ronald, i realized i didn’t answer your question about going back to gasoline… when i switch back i pull over change the timing and open the 2 " plug under the hood … and open the 1" mixing vale all the way … turn on the fuel pump and turn on the gasoline solenoid to let the gas flow. then it usually fires up and runs like any other gasoline powered truck… i notice no difference in the way it performs from before the wood gas modifications.however sometimes its a real bear to get her running on gasoline again… but not usually. …i try to go back to gas for a little while after every run to coat the valves and lubricate the top end of the motor… …
John
John
Chris S . can you explain exactly how heat recovery gets better milage? is that keeping the heat in the reaction zone? or elsewhere? i understand we have to remove heat from the gas to make it usable … but should i be re dierecting that heat back to the reactor somehow?..
John
This thing is running great! I’ve used it to commute 2 days now. no trouble… just a little slow to get the motor running … i wonder if a high tourqe starter is in the future for me… the stock one seems to turn the motor slowly… I have 2 brand new batteries too… :-/…5 gallon pail to get there 5 gallon pail to get home… not bad…
John
Hey JohnW.
Sounds great on you pickup performance. Thanks for the gen-set(s) pictures and feed back. I do not want to distract too much from your base truck topic. But you started this and I can feed in some woodgased DYI gen-set experience too.
I’ll re-picture here the gen-set I have ran the most gasified hours on. The 5.5 kW red 3600 B &S unit. All the four different configuration mixers shown along with the double acting zero pressure actuator were an attempt to come up with a bolt on kit for Costco/Sears/Harbor Freight unit owners. Last one tried was an authorized Dutch John knock off done as a baseline. I highly recommend his www.woodgas.nl Microgasifier for his small engine info. My idea failed primarily for woodgas fueling because once under a real Load and Power loaded down at 3600 RPM YOU Are going to have to ignition timing modify for running stability. Not some thing that particular engine owning crowd is capable of. For your engine IF it is opposed and IF it has no visible cast into the flywheel engine balance weights then easiest to do this by offset or re-keying the flywheel. Weight balanced flywheels on single and dual cylinder “scream-a-matics” then you really should leave the flywheel alone and move and remount either the coil pacs or the flywheel trigger magnet. I say “Scream-a-matics” because hours of hunched over 3600 drives me into a frenzy of wanting to kill something, anything. 3000, 2400, 1000, 650 all much, much, much more pleasant. My black Kohler V-twin picture was to show the simplest DYI set up. Gen heads were two pole 3600 RPM Harbor Freight, two out two NFG out of the boxes. My own four pole MeccAlte brushless 1800 RPM head is like yours a couple of hundred pounds and so would have needed a slider mounting.
Yep had a 12/1 (oversized single cylinder) Listeriod I tried using first. See picture. Now sold to a good Idaho home. Wife hated the big noisy “Thing” and would not get within 100 feet of the open spinning flywheels. And with all of the big piston ring drag was all I could do to crank it up to start when cold. Then went to a Changfa-zoid R 180 IDI single cylinder horizontal diesel. She likes this one for the electric starting and it’s small, not intimidating size. I now consider this as too valuable as my “can burn any heavy oil fuel” small engine to even think of gasifng it anymore. The US EPA had made these all endangered now for new replacements.
The actual in India experience and APL/JimM experience when diesel cycle igniting then woodgas fueling these CS’s was an uncontrollable speed run-a-way on a sudden electrical system load dump off. JimM. posted info for this on the MicroCoGen forum. Very dangerous to over speed those 6/1 wagon spoke flywheels. Why the APL efforts shifted to spark igniting them. Be sure and keep following their upcoming Spring CS engine efforts by Ken Boak.
Serpentine (microgroove) belts as you are doing has worked fine for many fellows on thier 6/1’s. But the bigger singles and twin CS’s too often suffer from belt slippage chirp problem. 60-70 degrees of sudden piston/crankshaft acceleration and then 660-650 degrees of generator head pulled slowing down whips a bow of slight slack in the belt down to the gen-head pulley. In my picture is a rare “Double Sidewinder” pulley I still have (FOR SALE!!) to try and combat this problem. Again by the very experienced guys on the MicroCoGen, not the LEF, “V” belts have much better shock load absorbency and with reasonable big pulleys only 1-2% more energy loss in power transmission. Just need to cut a wee bit more wood fuel. Heck of a lot cheaper to play with “V” pulleys and belts too. As the actual English guys explain it on the factory CS Start-O-Matics Power Sets Lister used oversized 300 pound flywheels AND a single narrow stretchy V belt to soften the AC induced light bulb flicker.
I have come to only develop around just DC generating for wood gas home power. Much easier. Woodgas is not at all like a standardized propane or supplied methane fuel gas. “Woodgas! Different every day!”
Bunch more small engines I have woodgased but enough for now.
Luck with your starter. Check your to the starter voltage drops on both the positive and negative side.
Steve Unruh
Hi John,
The heat recovery is very very helpful. Gasifiers require heat to operate, the more you can add the less wood it will burn. Depending on you design it can make the difference in a clean system and one that cranks out tar.
Here’s what it does:
-
recovers its own wasted energy. This increases internal efficiency and means less wood.
-
recovers other wasted energy. Your engine wastes 70% of it’s fuel as heat. If you can put some of that in the gasifier it means more miles on less wood.
-
increases combustion temps. Leads to a cleaner burn, i.e. no tar. Most gasifiers will make tarry gas at low temps.
-
increases turndown ratio. That’s basically how far can you slow down the output and still make good gas. Wayne has a video of idling the V10 for 25 minutes, and then bam, full output.
-
reduces the need for insulation. If the heat is recovered then why insulate it? Wayne uses NO insulation at all, just plain steel.
I can only hint at how much heat recovery Wayne’s running, but it’s orders of magnitude above anyone else.