Is that lid covering all the way to the outer barrel? That wont work that way, you only want to cover the fire tube / hopper barrel. The outer barrel needs to be open.
If you are only covering the center fire tube. Then I would suspect you are not getting enough air in through the grate to feed the primary combustion. To much secondary air feed will cause a bias flow favoring the second stage air. So it is probably a balancing issue.
Can you post some detailed pictures? I cant see what you got going there. Need to see how it is built and need to see your fire tube with exhaust holes .location, size of them in relation to the secondary air feed.
You may need to create openings that vent into the grate. Air does not feed directly through my grate, there are air holes around it it needs to be very passive so the second stage air does not overcome this air feed.
here are some pictures as requested. I hope they answer your questions.
The primary air passes entirely through the grid. This is the space between the charcoal pot and the grid that allows me to adjust the primary air P_20210427_181300|666x500
Oh wow that is a nice build. I think you just need bigger holes for the fire tube exhaust. Also how is air feeding the bottom of the second outer barrel?
Edit: I see through the chimney. Yeah just open those exhaust holes up. But looks like you are making charcoal with it.
This is a video about how I make charcoal fuel. When I set the phone up on something to record the grinding and sifting it only shot the top half of me so the grinder spitting out pieces and the sifting are audio only while you get a view of the Northern Michigan sky. Probably just as well. Sometimes I forget to wear pants. I made some better still photos of the metal parts that shows in the video. I am rebuilding it in all metal. It works well enough that I’m not going to bother building anything more elaborate.
Pictures of the actual grinding mechanism of the above video. Also the screen for sifting. That is just a wooden frame with expanded metal nails onto it. I pour the ground char into it and stick the rotohammer on the edge of the frame. No real work involved.
Pictures of the actual grinding mechanism of the above video. Also the screen for sifting. That is just a wooden frame with expanded metal nails onto it. I pour the ground char into it and stick the rotohammer on the edge of the frame. No real work involved.
I would estimate that out of a five gallon bucket of raw charcoal I get at least about 3 and 1/2 gallons of fuel grade char and about half gallon of fines. I use a lot of fines for gardening and water treatment so that’s good for me.
Here is video I just posted, this should help you see how mine work and operate better than what has been posted so far.
The efficiency gets better if you keep running. The first hopper load is really just getting spent getting things up to temp and then creating the process layers. Once you have that established then the rest of the hopper loads process more efficiently. I plan to do this again but with 60 gallons. I bet I can get closer to a 60% yield
Hi Matt
Matt your stove is absolutely fantastic. Thanks for the very informative video for me. I believe that of all the systems for producing charcoal these yours which have the most advantage. It is very efficient, easy to build, it allows easy recovery of BTUs from the manufacturing process. Congratulations on your genius and the sharing of your knowledge.
Thierry
Alright I had to design a new custom system for a multiple clients that want something that offers a little more.
This here may just be charcoal made easy. This thing you will feed it just like any other gasifier. Just once thats it. This will have water to heat exchange unit for continuous heat and hot water for the kiln process. It will then automatically auger feed the produced charcoal directly into the M-1 Alpha. When the controls detect a full hopper it will self light and self start the engine power unit and then self shut down once a low hopper is detected. The it will go into a standby mode until the high level hopper switch is tripped.
I have multiple clients looking at this and hopefully they will bite as I really want to build this thing.
The triangle thing is a vertical shaft Honda V twin powered direct DC 24 volt charger. It should be capable of 5 kW direct DC output.
Hi Tom, maybe I need to reconsider my new grinder. I was going to use cut nuts for sharp teeth. The bar looks simpler. I might not have the right combination of pipes. Thinking; if the rods were welded on the pipe at an angle, it might be easier to turn the crank?
The middle cylinder is closed at the ends so even with the rods angled everything still has to come out of the J pipe. Wouldn’t hurt anything to try. As I mentioned I just threw this together one afternoon intending to later make something better but it worked well enough that I decided there were more interesting things to work on. I’m rebuilding it out of all steel and I’ll add a bigger handle for more leverage but even like it is, it’s not really that hard to turn. Putting a motor on it would not be good because you have to be able to dig the occasional brand out of it but reversing the handle direction. I don’t think the size of the pipes is real important as long as the inner one is an inch OD smaller than the ID of the outer half pipe. I think the half pipe could even be made out of well braced PVC.
Yesterday there was a spare hour. I made a insulation jacket for the hookway. Fermaculite 15mm half inch. Post picture later, would it be enough? How thick should it be, anyone?
Pfoe, barrel is 580 mm, pipe is 600 mm. That means 10 mm insulation. Once again waste of material and time I am afraid. Maybe there is some time to test next weekend.
10mm insulation and the second barrel will provide significant improvement. One inch would be better, but 10mm may be enough if your feedstock is < 1-1/2" Diameter and < 6" long (remember most moisture and gases escape through the end grain).
Well, insulation is to small. Pipe was a left over. There is more to come, some bigger diameters. At least I got some extra experience. I am just as stupid as I look, it is quite simple. There are three things real important, heat , heat and heat.
In one hour gas phase started, but the other hour there was not enough heat.
