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 âJust like . . . gasoline, propane, street pipe delivered Natural gas, pump spec diesel . . . for my engines. For my heating burners.â
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 fellowsâ 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 cutân-fit skills has put down more woodgas powering hours/miles than all of the âsomedayâ talking heads put together.
He didnât 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 âMEâ kinds of purchases back in 1983 when I was 21 years old. Iâd 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 donât 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 wouldnât 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 downâŚI 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 wifeâs family owned 4âx8â 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 didnât 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 - itâs our dating car. She canât even drive it. At 4â5" tall she canât see over the dash and reach the pedals at the same time. I put 3" risers under the passenger seat but she still couldnât 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 124âs over the years. I considered them more fun to drive than the Vette. Iâd 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 Freudâs 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 youâre really curious what speed youâre 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 ârock crawlerâ enter the southern rock racing series. Crawling is for babies!
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HI, having faced death - I donât fear it so much - I fear again living through something that really should have brought my demise.
In 1989 I did something else Iâd 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 1990âs. 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 donât 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 isnât 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 âbottom lineâ 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 donât 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 donât have any better way to store energy.
After todayâs 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 itâs 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. Iâd 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 dadâs 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 donât 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 wouldnât 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-BlowerďźHand-Blowersďź-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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One of the nicest storage solutions for gas is a retired 1000 gallon propane tank. We were able to secure a few 500 gallon tanks some years ago.
I really lean more towards condensate off gas storage then wood gas. That said, I would only compress wood gas with an engine driven compressor. I like the elegance of the built-in gas quality test. If the engine runs, the gas is good.
Electrically, I made the gas with a vacuum pump collected it in a gas-o-meter, and compressed it from there. I was able to test the gas quality from the gas-o-meter.
I would be very interested in the condensate from a wood retort. That off gas would be worth compressing. Methane, maybe some CO. I would like to see where in the column the tar comes outâŚworth googling that.
We are going for the low hanging fruit, sorry no Woodgas. Cracking HDPE and compressing that condensate off gas is our first project this spring. Having a feed stock that is a single type of molecule allows the plant to be greatly simplified.
Liquid feed stocks interest me as well.
At present, sadly, itâs all about shoveling the glacier away so I can work. Work we will though.
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