I was able to make good, reliable butterfly valves with my angle grinder and welder out of steel.
Rindert
https://forum.driveonwood.com/uploads/default/original/3X/b/6/b69bca2dffdb01a95f932d96970b95edc11fb1db.jpeg
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Most of my flares were done out in the sunlight so I couldn’t hardly even tell they were burning other than the smoke went away. No idea what color they were
This was one of my tests. Looks like an orange color. A lot of changes happened to that gasifier since that video and that was with charcoal and no filtering at all.
This post and the one right above it might help.
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The first thing that every successful gasser does is over complicate the crap out of this. I think many of us come into this and think; holy crap this is possible?? Really??? You can run an engine on wood?? Ok whats the catch?? There must be something wrong with this technology therefor it would be main stream right??
I must make it better!!! < nah dont do that, just build a simple unit and learn before you start creating those dreams. What you going to find is all these ideas you may have either wont work or wont improve anything.
The reality is this WAS mainstream technology. It is what ran the entire world at one point in history. It later evolved to running running engines. But you see the human race also evolved, we are lazy!! Therefor this technology does not fit!. The only way to make it practical for the comon person is to automate. Averyone that enters this commercially will eventually automate the systems as this is demanded by the market.
The issue is not the technology, its the persons willingness to follow directs, put in the work and opperate the machine with in its capabilities and then expect nothing more from it.
Buiild a basic gasifier, learn how to produce fuel for it, learn how to opperate it andforget trying to filter tar!! You can not filter tar period… You cant filter a gas out of gas with the filters we are working with to run engines. Tar has a wide range of dew points as there are a ton of different products produced. Under engine vacuum some tar will drop above ambient temps and some tar will not. The reason you see tar at the throttle is because there is massive and fast pressure switch here., Tar will imiedatly drop. Ive done experients with this in a clear vessel you can actuallly see. It will blow your mind how fast that can convert from gas and drop out like pooring water!!.
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Michael, there realy is something special about the comunity. And it seems to atract good, honest people just like your self.
Matt, your post above shuld be framed. I could not agree more. I too fell in the trap at first, well, kinda. I had to do the impossible and had to think out of the box with the in the trunk designs but l agree for sure. For start, keep it simple! It WILL work fine.
Michael, the talk about flame colours is a neverending one. But generaly, CO burns with a blue flame, hydrogen gives it a slight orange tint. There the facts end and “personalised” flame colours begin. Water content, trace minerals, soot, etc etc will make the colour wary a lot.
I never look at the flare colour nowdays but its sound. It shuld stay lit blowing out of a 50mm pipe and have a roaring sound to it. This indicates high flame speed → lots of hydrogen → good conversion in the gasifier.
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Lots of wisdom presented here lately.
I can only add the importance of fuel supply. If anyone feel itchy to throw automation in - that’s the area to focus on. It’s the most common area of failure.
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This is a great observation Matt and one I should have recognized as the culprit in my carb issue. The carburetor works based on the venturi effect. As air passes through the restriction in the flow channel, it speeds up and the pressure decreases as you point out. This is what draws gasoline into the flow. But it also decreases the temperature of the flow. This effect can lead to carb icing (the evaporation of the gas also helps in this). The point is, there is a temperature drop that will condense out tar and water.
As long as wood gas entering the carb is saturated with water, the temperature drop there will condense out water. The gas will always be at saturation. As it gets cooled by a radiator and piping its temperature lowers and water is released. It is still saturated though, just at a lower temperature. However, less water will come out at the carb the more the temperature of the gas is lowered. The closer the gas is to ambient, the less moisture is released.
The only way to keep any water dropping out at the carb is to lower the dewpoint temperature of the flow enough so when the temperature drop at the carb occurs, the lower temperature there is above the dewpoint temperature of the gas.
There are a couple of methods to get the gas dewpoint temperature lower. One is to cool it below ambient with a cool water heat exchanger and then let the gas get back to ambient temperature through more piping or a radiator.
I think an easier method could be heating the air intake to the mixing valve with exhaust heat from the engine. I think I will try this method. I’ll run a copper pipe through the muffler and then to air intake valve. I may have to have an additional cool air inlet to regulate the amount of heat added.
The first method preserves a cool dense air/gas mixture, but loses its effectiveness as ambient temperatures drop to the cool water temperature. The second method will always work, but at the expense of a slightly less dense air/gas mixture.
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Good. Good. You can think yourself out of box-traps MartinS.
One central Canadian fellow and in the Lab works of the CGPL of the IISc they actually mechanically refrigerated their stationary use produced gas to really wring it out. CGPL even showed using multiple staged refrigeration. Expensive. Complex. More maintenance points added.
Max gasman promotes overcooling then engine exhaust reheating the produced gas before the engine mixer stage. Trick is you must also match heat the engines incoming air too.
Many of the tight compartment V-8 engine guys are doing this unknowingly.
The efforts are to first get all up to stable operating temperatures. Then keep stable in variable in-use temperatures. Regardless of loads demands and outside ambient temperatures.
I’ve not said much, only reading because this is a charcoal-use gas topic. I am a raw-wood’er guy.
I do think the approach concern is a bit back-asswards.
The engine; any engine, is a tool to make work. All tools working used will wear. Need restoration. Eventually need replaced. All fuels have adverse effects inside of internal combustion engines. Just the nature of these beasts. Internal. Combustion. They have proved well for eating up many industrial and land-fill wastes gases. Made to eat well head sour gas too in remote pumping stations.
So . . . I began with how hot of made gas supply could and engine stand?? Using the least gas cooling. Intentionally destroyed a couple of goat-engines to find this. Internal wears gets dramatic above an ~175F air/gas mix.
Way before this the charge density thinning-out will make especially small engines nearly power unusable.
S.U.
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hello michael, welcome in the forum…
with the question about flame colours i have made this observation:
i have relative dry charcoal, when i use the gasifier for my gasometer, the flare is more orange…
when i use the same gas, stored in my gasometer with " water gasket", there the flame is absolutely blue…
i have no explanation for this, maybee it is caused by gas temperature, or because the gas has contact with the water in the gasholder…
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Automation does seem like the best way to hekp a novice run a gasifier. I woudl agree but as for building my own automation anything, i think that is beyond my skillsets.
Tyvm for the warm welcome, thats Super interesting, so could it be that you want tar for optimal IC engine running? Because then even if you did filter it out through settling like in your tanks are settling out but not the Hydrogen? I do wish i was smarter towards the melecular mols and table of contents stuff but ill wish for some more IQ this christmas lol.
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Michael , speaking as some one that for many years has only ever run a charcoal gasifier based on a simple fire updraft design i can say that no Automation was ever required or needed .
Once you have a balanced system sized to the power output you need it just works , my old systems were turn key and walk away , so much so that come evening time when it time to collect the wife from the train station i would leave it running and drive there and back in 40 mins coming home to a purring inverter generator still charging my batteries .
Moving on to this year i was fortunate enough to be able to buy 3 fully automated wood gasifiers ,so us old men could have something new to play with in our shed , the first unit i decided to try running needed the filter material removing the feed stock that was in the hopper still looked good so i left that in there , we checked the lines the control valve for the throttle ,engine oil, water rad all the normal kinda things you do with a new engine , the rest of it we knew nothing at all apart from online video’s of starting and stopping the machines, so replacing the filter media and putting it back together in a air tight condition i put a new battery onto the system and turned the fan on and opened the lighting port , the display was reading cold system and a load of pressure reading that to me were above my pay grade at the time , but watching it change as it was getting up towards the 850 deg c mark and knowing we were at a stage of clean tar free gas and seeing the stunning blue flame gave us the confidence to try firing up the engine , so yes automation in that moment in time was very useful and also when trying to fire up the 2nd unit 2 weeks ago i was getting reading that did not match the other machine , but with a short know how on the other machine it was kind of second nature to look at the system as a manual one without the aid of the electronics to track down the cause of the fault as to a non combustible gas , and that lead to a big blob of tar stuck in the bottom of the heat ex , caused by my guess a compacted and under charred charcoal from the initial start and commission of that machine by the previous owners .
So in my case Automation was useful for getting to understand wood gasification from the transition from charcoal to wood , but having run the 1st machine several times i feel confident that i could now run these machines without the electronics if needed .
Dave
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Yeah you dont need automation. Im speaking as a developer / manufacturer and deal with consumer markets.
As Brian mentioned, charcoal will run very stable and is why its the best place to start especially with small engines. A small scale wood gasifier on the other hand is subject to flow issues. This is where automation maybe desired to maintain grate flows and to agitate the hopper to keep that sticky fuel flowing. Inconsistant fuel flow is the number one reason tar is produced. It has nothing to do with the gasifier its self in many cases.
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I just love the discussions here on this DOW site. In years pass and not recorded, I sure these things have been talk about by other great minds in the gasification world before us all.
Full circle in the conversation we have made it again. This is proof that 100 % charcoal will not make tar. But you still need to filter out ash materials that are harmful to the running of engine parts.
If you add any amount of raw wood, partially pyrolysis cook wood or what we call brands, it will have tar still in it. Now this changes everything, we are not in the Charcoal gasification process of no tar.
We have just stepped into the world of wood gasification and having to deal with tars and the complexities it can cause. Making sure it does not damage your engine if running on the producer’s gases. If just using it for other purposes it can have some tars present. Give the tar gases some time and under certain conditions you can remove the tar or with very hot heat and a shorter time convert it to a non-tar gases.
It all come down to the operators choices of what he wants to do. Driving, genset, cooking, heating, and so on.
100% Charcoal is the easiest way of not making tar, there is no tar in the 100 % charcoal fuel, this is the Dark Side of Gasification. If you add raw wood there will be tar to deal with. And with that we enter into the world of raw wood gasification. They both do and can make gases, but are very different approaches in doing it.
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Giorgio, have you observed the water in your gasometer after use? Could it be there is soot on the surface of the water? I have found a very fine soot on the surface of my carburetor despite filtration.
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I agree, i should know basic cleaning of engines. I may just run this lawnmower i got for testing and if I have to clean it thats part of the process of getting better at this passion hobby.
Very well said too about coming full circle to early greats restricted conversation that helped communities continue at high lveeks of productiveness, saying that this group has surpassed in many ways too through doing and sharing along with the amazinv feats of people like Wayne and his land record. Speeds that would have blown the vintage caps off the guys in early day lol.
Part of the reason I have a foot in bith wood and char world is the dream for the basic burn areas in series “burn chambers” or “constance as Northen self reliance gyy calls it” is to work with any HP. From 5 to 50 ot even more. To back up the truck with a small few burn tubes going in series and just plug in a Gen at the little camper or if needed for someone in need. But to be only depandant on chipped or or just Char makes me think i only have 1 flat bed or back seat (or with motorbike even smaller hauling space) worth of fuel before Id have to start chipping and drying and then heat back on the road, that or always be close to home (which makes sense for practical uses ive seen here like sawmills or cattle ranching or farming). I am a country boy but I also love the roadtrip life (if even jist to dream) i also like not being dependant and if that means I gotta be by my chipper or forest, my mind starts thinking about solutions (overthining, probably hut still) saying that i think ive figured out pellets and dino fuel are similair is cost per Km/mile, so I know it woudl be 90% for the love of wood and hobby but still… and I would bring a chipper and find sticks but i think i remember reading on this site that someone said there was no good fuel in old dried uo firrest droppings/dead branches.
Question, so could a second tube of white burning char (after my pellet burn) work if all grates were being cleared consistenly and flow was continuously same. So the tary wood pellet gas would be ran along hotter Coals and tubes inches down the line, maybe preheat the air and yes great shares and ty foe thise about cooling and then uncooling.
So yeah, would/could a char tube or two down the line help to run a pellet only first burn tube virtually tar free? Because then maybe I could get close to 5050 or 66:33 pellets/chipes?
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marty, i have not controlled the water in the gasometer about soot, it is inside and not easy to see, but that can be a good explanation of the different flame colours…in the orange flame the soot burns, in the blue flame the soot was collected on the water surface before…
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Giorgio, I’ve been thinking about this more. Apparently, soot is described to be sticky. It would have to be if it is coating the inside of my carburetor where the flow rate is high. If so, when char gas is in a container, perhaps the soot is just collecting on metal surfaces due to settling, natural convection or even brownian motion for smallest particles. It would be very interesting to see the interior of your gas collector…
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marty, the gasholder was an experimental project of me as a newbie for storage cooking gas…
but , overvalutating the gas power of chargas , or better to say not having idea how strong it is, i thought maybee for 3 days of cooking could be sufficient…but it was not so, more near for 1 or 2or 3 pans with eggs it would be sufficient…volume of gas inside is near to 480 liters…
in moment it is not in use, i left the water because of eventually frost danger…
the project for the future with the gasholder is to use the storage with a gas light evevtually,
the stuff with the gas socks on it…there the consume could be moderate and the stored gas could last longer…
because of the experience with the gasholder i have built than a gas-cooker unit, what runs with one load absolutely relieable for 4 hours…
you can find all fotos on my topic about " indoor cooking…" pictures from the gasholder, from all the different trials and from the at least working cooker
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Ok so not to buck great advice but to more entertain all side alleys or unturned rocks for interets sake,
My mind has been thiking about when i ran a waste oil burner which turned waste oil into a bright blue flame when just a tiny fan is pushing air at it, and with a comment earlier of help mentioning how a bit of oil (sprayed after runs) into carb to help with tarry build up is a good idea… and i do respect the fact that the main above all best thing is running a gasifier the best it can is the biggest way to get least tar (Just thoughts because this thread id think is the place to ask to throw an idea that i cant rule out alone and maybe could help to reduce any left tar on a gasifier). Could i create better gas with waste oil and maybe even help burn off more tar before the engine or if a furnace filter can filter supposedly 99 percent of all things including even pollen, couldnt I just create a large surfaced filter box and add a few of those to trap needless tar from the engine? Or am i missing that tar is actually needed inside the IC engine for best gas (that purple roaring yellowish).
Also how a wood stove catalytic converter doesnt get all tared up i cant fully understand, but could that not work to remove tars? Sorry if my question is way off ideas or ibviously cant work to help.
Example,
V
burn chamber (maybe waste oil add?)
( catalytic stove burner )
Cyclone, or water bubbler
Cooler
Drum hay or chips filter
( Furnace filter ) maybe some how oil add here?)
Engine carb
?
= minimalist tar?
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Martin, charcoal gasifiers do not produce actual soot. Only charcoal dust and ash travel with the gas. The real, actual soot is only produced in a wood gasifier as a byproduct of breakdown of tars. Its much finer and yes, sticky. Think candle soot.
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Hi Michael, welcome to the forum.
Speaking as someone that has no gasification for ic engines under my belt yet but has done quite a bit of reading and learning here.
Wood pellets is something I would not go into as a first build (in fact I would not go there at all), too many other problems you would not have with either wood or charcoal.
As for tar it should not ever pass the grate in the first place, and it won’t with a good design of a monorator together with a good design gasifier, tarry gasses are not filtered out easily, either the tar plugs up your filter or if it doesn’t, well then you are letting tar through to your engine.
There are tons of information on this forum, lots of gems to learn from in a lot of the threads. And of course the library too.
I hope I understood your train of thought correctly and that I gave a correct answer, someone with more experience will opefully also chime in 
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