Thanks Tom, i use to somewhat follow project farm, to, haven’t seen that about turpentine.
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Hi GorenK,
And the yield is dependent on the pitch wood, yes?
Pine? Fir woods?
Regards
Steve Unruh
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Hi SteveU, there are different tars from different woods, i prefer, only uses old pine stumps, or “fatwood” wich can be made by “hurting” living pine three’s, debarking them, only leaving a “life nerve” piece of bark on the north side, this causing the three to produce enormous amounts of resins, when trying to heal, this cant be done by anyone, i think it requires a special permit.
Anyways stumps are often free, and the twisted pieces left after the outer wood rotted away contains alot of tar.
For example: i stack tightly wood inside a 60 liters drum (15 gallons) from this i yield about a gallon and a quart of good tar, the double amount of water and turpentine, which has to be left for a while to separate/stratifies.
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With this kind of pitch wood in your tar making retort, do you get good engine grade charcoal?
Bob
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Yes, as a bonus, good, hard charcoal, but it must be carefully checked for brands, or crust that can contain tar. One way is to “superheat” the retort, stuff a lot of wood and let it burn “wild” after tar has stopped dripping.
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Thanks Goran, it is just as I thought.
I do get a percentage of pitch pockets seams in our Douglas Fir trees harvested. Generally, perimeter patch trees that have been winds twisted and internally torque split.
The “fatwoods” splits out are dangerous and difficult to safely use up.
I can see processing them for useful by-products should be a separate dedicated thing to do.
Ha! Expect many to keep quizzing you about wood-to-all-outputs in one process.
You know. Heat. Shaft power. Wood charcoal. Bio and medical charcoal. And now chemicals.
Silly of them. Life celebrates diversity.
Or as my Wife quotes her mother saying to her growing up, “Melinda, honey there is more to a hog than just bacon.” “We must use it all.”
Steve Unruh
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Göran
Project Farm on youtube is a good source.
You might also search the term ‘pine root gasoline’. The Japanese, toward the end of WWII, made turpentine, supposedly as aviation fuel. But there was no evidence of their having used it. The Americans ruined two jeep engines with it.
Rindert
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Hi RindertW,
Have you seen Gorens chainsaw collection on the Summer of 2022 thread?
Whole bunch of 2-strokes needing to fuel feed.
What an ideal, eh. Wood making wood.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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I’m Japan after the war gasoline was rationed but turpentine was not.
Some people would adulterate gasoline with enough to make it smell like turpentine
Bit it still contained enough gas to run an engine
Personal use of gasoline for private cars and motorcycles was almost impossible
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As about turpentine as a fuel, for now im just going througt some old books and papers about war-time experiments and trying, also some about making lubrication, and motor-oil from tar, nothing im going to try, it should have been a very bad substitute for “real” oil, but very interesting anyway.
And, as i understand it, the Finn’s used a low-priced fuel 1970-80s i think, that was someway turpentine based, i’ve read about a Saab automobile that was build especially for the Finnish market, for this fuel (Saab had a plant in Finland) this used Saab’s electronic ignition, based on the anti-knock sensor, that was used for Saab’s turbo-models, this “dual-fuel” Saab had a divided fuel tank, a smaller section for gasoline for start, and running up to working temperature, a two-way switch to select between two fuel pumps.
The ignition system took care of any knocking, retarding the timing, turpentine based fuel was around 70 octane, if i remember correctly.
I should look this up further.
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I have seen a YouTube video of a guy running a homemade generator using turpentine as the main fuel, but he had to start it on gasoline first to get good and hot. I wish I could find it again.
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Unless you have a lot of highly refined turpentine, its significantly cheaper than gasoline and you have the time to modify an engine I would not put much effort into it.
You will probably have to reduce compression and timing so you will burn more of it.
Its very kerosene like so its not great fuel.
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Thanks Wallace, im not going to put much effort into this, but as i got more turpentine than i can use i think about to try it in my hot-bulb ignition engine, these engines are not so picky about what they “chew on” as a fuel, as long as it’s not corrosive against the fuel pump or injector, after all: it’s a free fuel this way, and the hot-bulb engine easily powers my buzz-saw or chunker.
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thats pretty cool where did you find a hot bulb engine?
Is it from a boat?
You know you can feed it woodgas too.
Ursus and Lanz made tractor like that with gasifaction units.
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Thanks Wallace, yes it was a boat engine, but i “modified” to become a stationary engine (built a cart/wagon and mounted a flat-belt pulley) this engines was pretty common in Sweden, we had a lot of manufacturers from early 1900 to 1960:s, today they has become collectors pieces and pretty expensive, but there are still some to be found. They are extremely popular at motor-shows and such, i use to display my engine to, even just start it up to listen to it 
This one is actually a wedding-day gift from my wife (had to drove and get it myself)
Bolinder’s, 10hp 1000rpm, waste-lubricated, year 1947 (late model) weight 315kg!
Yes i’ve read and studied alot of these running on woodgas, but it’s often a very cumbersome work to “adapt” , mounting of electric ignition, special cylinder head with valves, and gas pumping devices (pulsator, supercharger) anyway they seemed to run very well on woodgas, often made more power than on liquid fuels. Also it seems the original Imbert gasifiers worked extremely well under this pulsating conditions, one could see through the air intake the glowing “pulsing” from bright red to yellow during the strokes.
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A lot of things produced in 1947 worked very well. At least up to now.
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Yup we know of them over here, a few were imported over here to Newfoundland before they joined confederation and maritimes…
It was seen as a way to save money in the out ports where there are sources of waste oil from other boats and diesel electric plants .( waste not…).
Times Change and these as well as SAAB marine diesels are extremely rare now,
You don’t need the spark ignition modification.
Just feed it some wood gas…
Just enough to back the rack off like you would a true diesel.
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Hi Wallace, im hesitant about it being so easy? I think it should be hard to control the ignition point/ timing, we have to take into acount that most hot-bulb engines injekts the fuel very early, halfway the compression stroke and earlier, ignition then takes place when enough fuel/air mixture are pushed up in the hot-bulb, the molecules “pressed together” giving a ignitable mix.
Woodgas should probably mess this up with it’s different ignition points, flame speeds, hydrogen are easily ignited.
I think this is probably why they often converted to spark ignition?
Ofcourse i never tried, other than spray some gasoline in the air intake, wich usually gives pre-detonations fast.
Ofcourse this is just some theories from my side, maybe others have different
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Charcoal gasification versus wood gasification, … in my gasifier on the tractor I test the operation on charcoal and raw wood, the difference is quite obvious, gasification of charcoal requires much more air than gasification of wood, gas comes from the gasifier slightly warmer in coal than in wood, the engine air damper must be more muffled with charcoal than with wood gas, so I can conclude that charcoal gas is much less caloric, adding much more nitrogen and less hydrogen due to the addition of more air. A wood gasifier is a better solution for me, as I mentioned, but I will try to gasify the wood in a closed container without adding air, so it should produce a very high calorific gas that could reach the energy density of half the natural gas. Don’t blame me, I’m just thinking out loud
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Are you using a water drip? I can also run both fuels and my experience is the opposite. The water injection as it is processed and converts to steam; displaces intake air resulting in less nitrogen plus boosting H2 and CO. The gas is much cooler as well.
Charcoal is much more energy dense by weight. 1 lb of charcoal has 9600 btu. Dry wood chips / chunks will average around 6000 to 7000 btu.
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