That might be the place, I thought they also did construction scrap as well.
I see propane tanks pop up on craigslist every once in a while. The well contractors I know used to have a whole bunch of them, they might just give you, because they have to cut them up. Just be =very= clear you aren’t going to use it for a well. The propane people are the same way. I get it, they sell new stuff.
Used 100 pound propane tanks go for about $12.00 at the local online auction house in Baldwin Wi.
Some even have gas in them.
Your ;where live live, evolution exactly mirrors mine here in SW Washington State too close to the Portland Or spillout zone.
Just a couple of counties farther out and could be back to reasonable. Wifie three family generation’s property entrenched here; was a no-go for pulling up stakes.
Anyhow TomH with your shop fire you have already had your life altering wake up disaster.
Two others here on the DOW have had the same shop/businesses fire disasters in the last three years.
The “new” cast away scrap sources in our gentrified areas are replaced out clothes washing machines, clothes tumble driers, automatic dish washers, cooking ranges and such.
All thin metals. Quite a few now with stainless steel drums and liners. Internal high temp insulations and oven door seals.
Charcoal gasfiers are the thin metals types.
Rivet seams and seal to avoid having to weld the difficult SS and enamel porcelain white metals.
And the newer variable speed permanent magnet drive motors in these can be remade as charging generators.
Net search this up and paper print out the conversion variations.
Evolve to turn these modern household lemons into Grid-Down power makers. With you the clever Crafter able to make this power making lemon-situation aide.
Regards
Steve Unruh
It is mostly tourists and vacation properties that drove up the price. They had a lot of people from grand rapids, but then they expanded the airport, which made it popular with people from chicago. waterfront property on even some of the lakes jumps into the million dollar range. TC itself is a mix of places that cater to high end vacationers and normal people. Mission penninsula has multi-million dollar wineries built next to a residence or a small family type of farm. And most of the farmers sold out, because the soil is sandy and isn’t really that good. That has happened over the last 30 years as well.
Portland spill out is more typical suburbanization or urban sprawl.
I am building a dryer to dry the fuel for my gasifier. I’ll go into the details when I get it done but basically I’m heating a 55 gallon barrel of processed wood. Some opinions please. If you had a barrel full of hot wood and you wanted to vent the hot moisture laden air would you think it would be better to have the barrel open at the top or closed with a flue to induce a draft. If a flue then would a larger pipe be better that a smaller one. I’m talking like six or eight inch or the size of metal five gallon cans.
Air movement to carry away moisture is necessary but you don’t want to lose too much heat in the process. Maybe a damper in the 5 gallon size chimney would allow for adjustment.
What is your heat source going to be for drying the wood? I experimented with drying chunks in a barrel where I had replaced the bottom with wire mesh. It turned out that it was surprisingly easy to catch the wood on fire, even when it was green. My impression was that drying wood slowly is the way to go - if you try and rush it, some of the wood will burn before the other stuff even starts to dry. Forced air might help - but even with added heat, I suspect it will take a day or two to drive off much of the moisture in a 55 gallon drum of chunks.
I had more success drying wood in baskets in a greenhouse, but that is of course a lot slower.
Well, that’s the real question. I’m building a small rocket heater that will sit In another partial barrel below the 55 gallon drum. They will be separated by a foot or so with a removable skirt connecting them. From my experience with the Rocket Mass Heater in my greenhouse I can keep the temp in the heater barrel between 3 and 4 hundred degrees F. May require a while to dry the wood but it will be faster that letting it air dry. Anyway, the rocket stove is done and the top barrel is done. I just need to cut up a barrel for the bottom and vent it. We’ll see in a few days if it will work or not.
I’ve run my 1960s Briggs flathead on that charcoal four times now, about 3 hours runtime. I haven’t had any problems with tar. I think I DID make engine grade charcoal. I think it is just so dry here in Colorado that you sort of can’t miss. Yeah, and it’s wild fire season again. Did I ever tell you that everything living eventually burns out here. I know, back east in Vermont (and probably PA) where I grew up everything eventually rots, but here it burns. You take the good with the bad, I guess.
Rindert
P.S. Here’s an old wagon that someone keeps as a yard ornament. There’s a plaque on the underside of the bed that says it was made by John Deere. The owner doesn’t know how old it is. Just to give you an impression of how dry it is out here.
Here in northern Minnesota, it goes from green to frozen under snow, usually overnight.
“Frozen In Time” ?
S.U.
Tom Holtton I did picture up my wife’s saved from a garage sale yard charcoal BBQ grill.
40+ years old now.
Anyhow. A charcoal gasifier able to ash and inactive char insulate made from appliance fused enamel “white” metal panels and drums should be able to last at least 1000 to who know how many more hours.
Vehicle terms that’d be 20,000 to 35,000 miles.
O.K. for free cast off metals.
I’d like to do a little brain picking here. I’m starting to build a charcoal gasifier, modeled pretty much on this Troy Martz design with a few changes.
Not sure about all the terms. I’m using a 50 gallon water heater cut down to about 30 gallons. The reactor pipe, if that’s the right term or what they are containing the gasification core in the picture is a piece of 6 inch Sch 80 pipe, 12 inches long. The grate will be at the base of that pipe. I want the nozzle installed in the side of that pipe rather than up from the bottom. What would be the optimum distance up from the grate for the nozzle and with a side mounted nozzle would I still need a lighting port? If so would it be directly across from the nozzle?
I have watched the off-grid pro videos of their start up tests for the cross fire gasifier. That seem similar but an improved version of this concept drawing. The mentioned that they had trouble drawing steam into the nozzle but went to larger diameter tubing and eliminated the needle valve. Not much follow up to that other than to say it solved the problem but It seems to me that with the reservoir well above the coil and the outlet that the water would just pour through the tubing without flashing into steam. It seems like it would be better to have the reservoir below the the exit tube an have a metered amount of water pumped through the coils. Of course that adds a small pump into the mix. Am I confused about this?
Hi Tom, Just a few comments on your intended build of a charcoal gasifier. If you place the nozzle 90 degrees in the “reactor pipe” it will get that pipe red hot on the opposite side, causing the steel to oxidize away rather quickly. The charcoal burning at the tip of the nozzle will be around 3000F, just like in a blast furnace. I’ll bet the water filled pipes will not be enough to prevent the pipe from getting red hot. If you build according to the diagram, the carbon monoxide being pulled off will be very hot and need cooled down. Why not have the gas outlet at the top of the gasifier, forcing the hot carbon monoxide through the rest of the bed of charcoal where it will lose that heat? Monitoring the heat of the chargas is also a good way to determine when to refuel the gasifier.
To make an even easier unit to build, may I suggest scrapping the “reactor pipe” and go with a nozzle placed in the side of the water tank, about 4 inches off the bottom. Dave has had good success with a ceramic nozzle (I’d look up the post under “nozzles” and give you the link but I’d probably loose all my typing :frowning ) I’ve had good success with a water cooled nozzle that actually makes steam that can be directed back into the nozzle. I’ll see if I can dig up a photo.
Once again, just my 2 cents worth.
Gary in PA
Hi Tom,
I have a few links to the origine of that coil
And the why to use that:
pay attention to the air intake of the gasifier, the color of the glowing changes when the water steam enters, the engine revs up from the hydrogen formed in the reduction with the glowing carbon.
This is a clip to demonstrate how far the red glowing zone reaches in this simple build with an horizontal nozzle.
I keep my charcoal small sized, bamboo charcoal, then that hot zone stay’s in limits
I am with Gary on this one , have the gas outlet as far up as possible allowing the heat to dissipate and will also leave a lot of the fine charcoal dust from being sucked up into your filter .
I think you will also get a longer run time from 1 filling , another thing i have noticed in the past when running a full 55 gallon drum of charcoal with a nozzle around 4 inches from the bottom is that it runs out of cool decent gas when my drum is still half full of fuel , but that could be because i do not use a water drip to help richen my fuel or cool my nozzle . plus the dia of the drum is on the large size .
Dave
Gary, do you not run some of the engine’s exhaust into the nozzle?
I will contribute my 2 cents: charcoal is very forgiving, so the level of complexity in that diagram is not really needed. You will learn a lot by building something simple and playing around with it. Adding water in did boost the output of my little generator prototype, though, so it is worth considering in my opinion. The biggest problem I had was dumping all the excess heat - as I ran a very small hopper and it quickly got hot enough to start melting my plastic tubing. 55 gallon drums will give much longer run-times than the little 5 gallon metal pails that I used. Also, if the reaction is not tempered with steam or exhaust, the heat will be enough to fuse the ashes into a glassy clinker. This clinker does not flow well, so it will probably not go through a grate. Adding steam makes a crumbly white ash that should be easier to deal with, but if you include a grate, maybe think about a way to give it a shake now and again. If you are not going to clean it out after every run, make sure you can poke a rod or something up the air inlet to bust up any ash and clinker - it will make relighting it a lot easier.
If you have not done so already, read the threads on charcoal Nozzles. The first one goes off into the weeds a bit, but it still contains some interesting things people tried. Besides Gary’s water-jacketed and Brians’s (tungsten?) carbide tube, I highly recommend the heavy steel pipe nozzles like the one Mr. Leitinger invented. I suspect it is using the same principle as the side-nozzle Koen developed in Thailand, where the incoming air is speeding through the hottest point, and managing to keep the thick steel from overheating. Anything made of mild steel that gets to a cherry red heat will be toast before long.
My guess would be that the diagram you posted is going to have ash problems. Since the gas is going in the opposite direction of the grate, the ash is not going to be able to work its way down. It will build up, probably fuse, and that will in turn push the reaction up out of the core. As the hot lobe rises, it will probably eat up the gas outlet pipe (I agree it should be at the top). It might work as a down-draft; putting the nozzle where the outlet is shown, and pulling gas out of the ash bin, but that mucks up the whole steam generator design. @KristijanL did a downdraft for one of his charcoal car projects, maybe he will chime in with his take.
I haven’t dried chunks but I dry brush in a 55 gal barrel with slits in the bottom propped up on old patio blocks. I put a pipe nipple into the bunghole of the lid of the barrel, then put a coffee can over the nipple to help induce a draft. (it also blocks most of the rain). There is plenty of heat from the sun. Then you can do a bunch of batches at the same time, and not have to worry about fire quite so much. It also makes handling it quite a bit easier.
You could put the rocket mass heater under a barrel and just do a closed retort if you are aiming for charcoal.
First off, I highly appreciate all the advise you guys provide. Years of experience and I’m sure a lot of trial and error to get to where you are now. I’m gomer Pyle.
Having the gas exit pipe so low was one of the questions I had. Didn’t make much sense even to me. I thought this would be a good design because of the cross fire videos but putting the nozzle in the hopper would be a lot easier. The water heater tank is 4.5 feet high. I was going to cut it down to keep it from being too high with the reactor tube and ash cleanout. I assume the full height would be an advantage. Would four inches up from the base be the best position for the nozzle? I think the tank is about 17 inches in diameter. How far in would be the best place for the nozzle. Is a grate an advantage or a needless complexity? I’ll have to rewatch your videos Gary. I must have missed the part about how your water injection works. I did see you were using exhaust gas for cooling. I haven’t seen your videos Koen. I see from other posts I’ve read that you are a well respected builder. I’ll go back and look your post up. I’m glad I’ve be redirected. I would have spent a lot of time and ptobably ruined a couple of hole saws trying to bore an inch and a half hole in the six inch heavy wall pipe. I’ll regroup. Still have lots of questions.
