Woodgas or syngas is a low energy density fuel, and doesn’t compress to liquid untill you get it to something like 3000 psi. Not exactly sure about that number, but I’m sure it is very high.
People in industry have been working on converting syngas to liquid for a long time. Search: gas to liquid, will give you lots of scientific papers. Here are two systems that seem to be working.
Rindert
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Ill just leave this here. https://www.fox17online.com/news/2-injured-after-hydrogen-tank-explodes-inside-vehicle-parked-at-henry-ford-hospital?fbclid=IwAR0gKWYqLxBnbxg1LrAmPtRRSwagXvT5BPXjiRj3GmWwCCmTIILS15CF59Y
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Woodgas contains hydrogen and carbon monoxide along with other gasses. Hydrogen is a very small molecule and thus able to leak through prosity in storage vessels, welds and hoses where other gasses would not. Hydrogen and carbon monoxide do not have an odor to them so it is possible to have dangerous leaks that would not be readily apparent. They are low energy fuels. The cost for compression vs energy return is poor.
The mixture range that hydrogen will burn is wide. A compressor is capable of compressing the gas to auto-ignition point. It would be easy to have an air leak - or low fuel event in the gasifier that would lead to introduction of air (oxygen) in the woodgas. This gas mixture could detonate from compression in the compressor. This would lead to the entire contents of the storage vessel igniting with resulting explosion.
Gasifiers are built with safety valves, blast panels and other methods of safely venting the fairly common spontaneous ignition events in the gasifiers. Safely venting these events results in what is often jokingly called a sneeze. Because the explosion was safely vented - it is joked about because we can giggle about it. An explosion without a safety vent would not be a laughable matter. They are so common that I’ve heard one at nearly every one of our woodgas events at Argos.
A compressed volume of gas would likely contain so much ignitable gas as to lead to a deadly explosion should it ignite…
A decade or so ago a friend of mine was experimenting with making woodgas using wood pellets. I think the gasifier was made using an old 20lb propane cylinder. The gasifier was not connected to an engine. He was just flaring the gas right at the gasifier. He was feeding air to the process using an aircompressor. The gasifier exploded. It launched itself skyward. As he said - it took a while to come down - long enough to wonder where to run. It landed on his shop roof where the damage to the roof steel is still visible today. He posted a photo of the gasifier lying on the roof on the old Yahoo group. He still talks of how lucky they were that no one got hurt.
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Very well said Ron !!
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No Ron no!
Please research the autoignition temperature of both H2 and CO2. Why do you think diesels running Woodgas need a pilot fuel to ignite the mixture? You absolutely will NOT reach the autoignition temperature of either gas with an air compressor. Even a scuba compressor won’t do it because of the interstage cooling.
As far as the flamability limits…the rich end for both is 74% gas 26% air. Any richer and you don’t burn. Just think for a moment about what you are saying. Do you think you would actually be still making gas if you had a hole on the suction piping between the producer and compressor that allowed %26 air in? You said it, it’s a low energy density gas…to make a dangerous explosion, you will need a lot of gas/air mixture. What compressor are you suggesting will supply enough mixture to be dangerous?
Ok Sports fans, I cannot stand to leave false information standing around as fact just because people want to tell scary stories.
Ron, and woodgassers, the reason you don’t want to compress wood gas is because, as you point out Ron, it is too expensive. It takes too much energy to compress enough of it to be useful, unless…you use wood gas energy to compress the woodgas. If you use the same wood gas to run a spark ignition engine to power the compressor, you will never leave the flamability limits. As long as the engine runs, the gas has no air or excess CO2.
Anyhow, I realize this is a sacred cow but the reason you would even consider compressing Woodgas would be if you had no batteries to start your fans. I first used compressed gas to start engines which started producers. Then I found a simple chimney in the hopper lid would start the producer. Combine this with a hand crank on the tractor, and I was good with out a battery.
Now I have Li-ion.
Still, I may have circle back because there is a lot of extra solar power to compress gas with.
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Hi Bruce, I surely welcome your thoughts and opinions. What I was thinking was the possibility of tar building up in a compressor - reducing interior volume/increasing compression and sticking valves to the point of possible ignition of components in the tar and gas. Woodgas is able to ignite from compression. I had thought it was around 17:1. I did a quick search and came up with just such a statement from Chris S. Wood gasifier octain - #5 by kmrland Other sources also list that the octane of woodgas is about 104 octane. When I first heard this back a decade ago I thought of the 68 Corvette I have buried in the barn. It’s 327 350hp motor needed gasoline with over 100 octane to keep from knocking.
I would think that someone with a compressor connected to directly draw gas from a gasifier would not have a means of knowing that the mixure was leaned from a low fuel or clogged feed.
The explosion that I mentioned happening that launched a gasifier happened to Wayne Baker. I can send you his contact info off list should you like to talk to him.
Your thoughts?
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That very high octane rating is why I do not change the timing setting on my 95 F250 when hybrid driving. I believe the anti knock CPU and the woodgas pollution of the auto gas prevents auto ignition. I have never heard a ping.
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You have a 68 Corvette buried in your barn? I think a few sessions with Dr Freud would do you some good Ron.
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Fellows. Fellows. Fellows.
We can go around and around about the Woosh! Poof! KaBoom! flammability limits of any DIY fuels in their making, storing, and using.
Any fuel you would make, and use, will have these hazards. Plus, cellular toxicities. Close-in environmentally toxic pollutions. Ect. Etc.
I will say still the real issue with compressing woodgas for later usage is the severe negative net useable energy density deliverable.
True 2500-3000 PSI (175-200 bar) compressed gasses bottles are HEAVY. For mere cubic feet/cubic meters of capacity. Not at all comparable to a thin-walled aluminum, steel, plastic tanks of liquids fuels.
Here is the real dividing out on these attempts:
Those who will pursue a “Just like . . . gasoline, propane, street pipe delivered Natural gas, pump spec diesel . . . for my engines. For my heating burners.”
And those who will use woodgas as produced, as-is, just-as-it-IS. Adapting over their engines; their burners . . . and especially their expectations. Willing to say OohYah!! at running, working engines. And heating burners.
I have watched these first fellows’ heads beating and grants chasing, live, for 15 years now. Good record of them pursing and failing going back here in the U.S.ofA. for 48 years.
In the meantime an Alabama rural rancher taking his welding and cut’n-fit skills has put down more woodgas powering hours/miles than all of the “someday” talking heads put together.
He didn’t actually inspire the make MY Wood into My Power guys. They were already there. He did show if you carve off all of the High-Hopes; the frou-frous; the unnecessary steps and obstacles, this can be done by anyone with trees-for-fuels and the gut-it-out determinations.
And here is the even more core division between these two approaches:
Ones who want to make woodgas for Others . . .
And the ones who want to make wood gas for themselves, and their own families personal needs.
Oh, yes, yes, yes. I have been called selfish, and uncaring. Even a resource hog, greedy.
Not true. I care. I care a lot.
I care about all things and critters that just need a leg up bootstrap. A chance. Then you can step back and watch them grow, mature, and fly.
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Hi Tom, The 1968 plain jane rag top car was one of those “ME” kinds of purchases back in 1983 when I was 21 years old. I’d been severely burned the year before. I got some money for equivalent lost wages from the vehicle insurance for the 6 months I had open wounds.
The car was a project - purchased for $2400. It was far worse than I thought. Not only had it been repainted with so much clear that the clear coat hung off the bottom of the doors - it had crazed. Someone used 16 grit in a DA sander trying to get the clear coat off. I don’t think they had ever used a DA sander before. They literally sanded through parts of the body and messed up the body lines.
I found the car had been in a wreck. I had to have the frame repaired. There was bondo 3/8" thick hiding holes in the body. I ended up taking the front end off to repair a 6"x10" hole in it. Then once repaired - it wouldn’t fit properly across the front of the hood. The 4 piston calipers leaked. The side pipes rusted through.
I blended pump premium and leaded regular gas along with octane booster trying to limit the detonation in the engine. I changed head gaskets to composite gaskets which only raised the detonation point by 25 rpm. I had to limit throttle from 1600 rpm to 2300 rpm to prevent detonation.
Even though I had returned to work full time at the business - 85-90 hours a week - I worked on the car and started dating a gal I met while in the burn unit. We used the car for camping - yes - you can go camping with a rag top and have the top down…I had a number of folks look at how I packed the car to do that.
I made a trailer hitch that had receiver sockets that bolted to the factory holes in the frame. Then a U shaped frame plugged into them thru the unused dual exhaust ports in the rear valance. I towed my wife’s family owned 4’x8’ Western tent trailer with it. The car averaged 17.5 mpg towing the trailer at 75mph. The car had 60K miles on it when I bought it. We put 8k miles on it 8 months over 3 summers. We got married - money was a problem as I didn’t even have a paycheck. We borrowed money from the in-laws and bought a FHA foreclosed home. The car went into the old carriage barn. We paid the house off in 2 years. I took the car out of the barn twice to drive on Memorial weekend 2 years in a row without even getting it insured or plated. I felt it should have been sold 30 years ago but wifey said no - it’s our dating car. She can’t even drive it. At 4’5" tall she can’t see over the dash and reach the pedals at the same time. I put 3" risers under the passenger seat but she still couldn’t see out very well.
The Vette has a 1974 Fiat 124 sport sitting next to it that had been given to me by a customer back around 1986. It had been stripped of trim in preparation of repainting and the folks lost the parts. I ended up buying another one for part and drove it for 3 years. Then another, and then 2 more of the Fiat 124’s over the years. I considered them more fun to drive than the Vette. I’d kept 3 of them to use for parts to restore the barn kept one. They were destroyed when the plant burned down 3 years ago.
Stuff will be going. Wifey wants to retire in less than 3 years and move.
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Having done time on Dr Freud’s couch myself Ron, here something like what I would do with it. Of course there are hundreds of examples of these vette karts out there. Hell, a dashboard is just bling anyway. Speedometers are for sissies.
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Can always use a Garmin in speedo setting if you’re really curious what speed you’re going. I use that on my motored bicycles.
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In the off road world the big thing for years was being a “rock crawler” enter the southern rock racing series. Crawling is for babies!
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HI, having faced death - I don’t fear it so much - I fear again living through something that really should have brought my demise.
In 1989 I did something else I’d wanted to do - I wanted to fly. I bought a broken Pterodactyl ultralight. Repaired it and taught myself to fly. I made some mistakes over the years. Luckily they were more financially painful than bodily. I helped form a flying club in 1990 and we hosted the Nations largest ultralight competitions during the 1990’s. Made many friends. Sadly many now lost to the inevitability of life.
I came to know the gent who designed and built the Pterodactyl ultralight kits. Jack McCornack.
His company - Pterodactyl Ltd ceased operations when sued after the death of a news reporter who tried - and succeeded - in showing how easily someone could get themselves killed flying an ultralight with minimal instruction.
Jack now owns a company called Kinetic Vehicles. https://kineticvehicles.com/
Jack did something that earned him some notoriety with the folks from All Power Labs in 2008 when he entered their Escape From Berkeley Race with a diesel vehicle. During the race he used a loophole in the rules to obtain additional non-petroleum fuel by hanging out at a grocery store and begging folks to buy him some cooking oil to use as fuel to continue the race.
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CO2 has a hard time burning. What can happen is the seals in the compressor will leak hydrogen, and you don’t have an spark proof motor on the compressor.
around 200psi you have the risk of spontaneous combustion from hydrogen and at will autocombust in mixtures as low as 4% hydrogen. At least that is what I got out of this paper.
The larger problem is there are a wide variety of chemicals in hydrogen and when they get compressed, they can have reactions with each other.
The bottomline is you might be able to get it to work, but it is playing russian roullette. The gain isn’t too terribly much. 200psi is 13.6 atmospheres or 13x whatever tank size you have. A 20lb propane tank is 4.5 gallons, so about 60 gallons at 13x atm, my 4.0l engine is just over a gallon at a 30% ratio of fuel to air. If i did the math right, it is like 4m of runtime at idle (800rpm)
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Sean,
Thank you for the rational discussion. In reviewing your remarks, I realized I made a typo in the earlier post. I meant to write CO (carbon monoxide), not Carbon dioxide.
Your narrative or “bottom line” is actually the purpose for compressing wood gas. 4 minutes of run time would or should be enough to pull on your producer and start the reaction.
I don’t understand what the purpose of compressing Woodgas if one had enough electricity to run an electric compressor. Excess solar perhaps? Not sure.
I compress wood gas or hydrogen, or condensate because I don’t have any better way to store energy.
After today’s foray to the gas station, I am suddenly back in the gas compression game.
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I certainly understand you thoughts of using compressed gas to run the engine to draw upon the gasifier to initiate the process. I remember how little time it required to get a GEK reaction to a state sufficient to run the 3 cyl Kubota engine using compressed air and a venturi.
12v fans have been used for many years for starting the process. I lean toward using a more powerful 110v or even 220v blower/vacuum source and powering it with an inverter. As you most certainly know - this is a serious power draw on a battery. I remember so well of Mike Anthony using an old Kirby vacuum cleaner motor with dimmer control to flare a gasifier. It had nice vacuum and volume. The really old Kirby vacuums used a heat resistant cast aluminum vacuum impeller verses the newer units that have a plastic one. I had collected a few of them but were lost to the fire.
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Yup, if you have this much electric energy stored up, compressing wood gas is ridiculous.
The Gilmore Charcoal systems remove incentive for running tiny engines on compressed gas as well.
My next gas compression adventure will be storing the off gas from the plastic pyrolysis plant. I am anxious to see what use it is after it’s dehumidified.
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I regret making you mad at me which lead to me not traveling to see what you were doing when folks met at your home over a decade ago. I’d like to see what you have done and are working on.
Sadly - life kept getting in my way and preventing me from getting something done.
I believe that you would like Gary G should you ever meet him. Gary makes charcoal work so easily.
I remember seeing refuse pyrolysis on Saturday morning TV back some 47 years ago. Just as they showed on the program, I tried cooking off a load of coffee grounds, egg shells, and broken bones in a vessel made of a large pipe union with plugs and reducers made by raiding my dad’s plumbing collection. It had a 1/4" pipe as exit. I heated it by placing inside of a refuse burning barrel with the 1/4" pipe sticking out through the hole. I built a fire in the burning barrel. Some steam came out the discharge pipe but barely anything else. The reasons for the failure are far more evident today.
I sure hope you have far more successful results worthy of the effort that it requires. I have a guy near me that was using tires and plastic. I lost his contact info in the fire. Mike Anthony had a friend who also was working with tires.
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It is not recommended because it is easy to screw up, and we don’t want woodgas to get a bad rap, and attract attention from legislators.
50 cents in gas to get the car started is a lot less then a trip to the hospital.
I wouldn’t go over 140-150psi, the issue is that in your piping there will be areas of higher (and lower) pressure so a short burst like a corner it could increase into the detonation range.
Honestly, if you are looking for energy storage, I would start looking at liquids.
If you are just trying to start up without cranking over the engine a zillion times.
https://www.amazon.com/Sunglow-Blower，Hand-Blowers，-Barbecue-Accessories/dp/B085DZ8FP3/ref=asc_df_B085DZ8FP3/?
The electric version is cheaper, and really with the LiFe rechargeable 9v batteries. I think they are like 10 bucks a piece but you can charge from usb ie a car lighter adapter. you might be better served by getting a couple of those wiring them in parallel and 9-12v electric fan or a 3 in series and like 24v fan. They should last a couple thousand charge cycles. They ARE affected by cold temps, but body heat should warm them up quickly.
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