Matt, the Brandt gasifier sort of works that way. I am experimenting with that design just for fun. They used it in Europe in the thirties. Here is a drawing of the design.
Don M
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Is this a dual fuel unit ? Burning charcoal and wood sticks ? It looks like everything mixes and burns at the bottom, and the gasses are drawn through the charcoal column as a filter and sortie out the top.
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http://jamclasses.drbanjo.com/static/dimages/Hydrogen_Generator_Gas_V.1%26_2_Wishart_Car_Type_Producer.gif
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I am just amazed at how many ways exists to skin a cat!
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Wood gasification to me is still a better way to go, making charcoal is a bit of work, especially for bigger engines. Though the fuel is nice and clean! Great start for the beginner.
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Matt, Finally got home after a week at the NC shore. HOTTTTTT. Here is the question you posted:
'OK here is a dumb question has there ever been a gasifier invented that can perform as both a wood gasifier and a charcoal gasifier at the same time?"
Not to be smart, belittling or otherwise condensending, but the answer is YES! In fact you are making one such unit. At the heart of every wood/charcoal gasiifier is a glowing bed of charcoal. Without it, the tars will not get reduced into gas. Take the charcoal away from your Vulcan, the GEK or Mike’s Rosafier, etc. and all you get is tar. As Chris pointed out, charcoal is a bit of work, especially for larger engines, but it eliminates a lot of complexity and operating problems when compared to wood fueled gasifier.
This quote is from the Swedish Gas experiment as translated by the Energy Solar Research Institute and found on page 94.
“The question of generator gas from charcoal or wood has been heatedly debated during the generator gas epoch (especially in its beginning), and experience has gradually brough forth the more correct position of charcoal and wood. Both kinds of fuel are justified in Sweden; rationally, they must really only be limited to the apropriate area of use for each, so that each may be done justice.”
I do not want to see us divided into camps of wood or charcoal, throwing “embers” back and forth. Each type of fuel has its place and I like to see guys like you developing a unit to use raw wood as fuel. On the other hand, I feel a need to share my experience with using charcoal as a fuel due to some advantages it has over a unit that can run on wood.
On page 95 of that same book is a picture that shows a cubic meter of wood. If run through a wood gasifier such as yours, it will give of the equivilent energy as 200 Liters of gasoline. The same amount of wood turned into charcoal will only give off an equivilent of 80 liters. BIG difference. BUT, I can make a charcoal gasifier in an afternoon and have it running my generator by evening on charcoal that was a pile of wood in the morning.
Here is the bottom line, There is lots of room in this world for both types of gasifiers and my hat is off to those of you who are working on developing all phases of this exciting technology. Whether you chunk it or char it, I like Wayne’s one ending of;
“Have wood, will travel.” Now aint that cool!?!?
Gary in PA
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I’m all for charcoal gasifiers in their place. One place is on a small vehicle that can’t carry a heavy wood gasifier and all the filtering stuff. I may try a charcoal unit on my little Geo Metro one of these days.
Remember that Wayne’s unit makes very nice charcoal fuel out of the ash dump. You will have ready to use fuel for a small application.
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while charcoal brings less btu’s to the engine than the equivalent amount of wood, there’s a lot of room to re-capture the “lost” btu’s during the creation of the charcoal, as Wayne Baker suggested to me. capturing the heat during charcoal creation by running through a water cooler, thus heating the water for domestic use, may also condense some other products of the pyrolysis process (making the charcoal), which can be further processed later on. ie: the sky is the limit on what the efficiency of a charcoal fuel-only system might actually be.
Wayne Keith has taught us all the extent to which pre-heating air from waste heat in his gasifier can go towards increasing performance and efficiency.
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I think what gets overlooked in the whole charcoal versus wood debate is where you live. I use wood to heat as I must if I don’t want to freeze. If you need the heat why not capture everything you can at home instead of cooling on.the road. As in all issues like this the trick is to stay small. Make only what you can use with minimal waste.
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I guess where I was going is making the unit more efficiant with both units into one. The Vulcans do make some good char and rather than dump it why not create a small char gasifier in the unit under the grate and have 0 waste making the gasifier more efficiant. Longer run times. I think this is a very interesting concept but unfortunatly my plate is over flowing. But later I would really like to experiment with something like this.
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Hi Matt, Maybe got a little long winded in my reply but will stick to what you are contemplating. My thought is “Don’t throw the charcoal away (or give it to the cattle or chickens) but put it back into the wood hopper.” There is no reason it cannot be mixed in with the wood chunks and burned. Have you tried this yet? In my mind, charcoal is too precious to just toss to the critters 
Gary in PA
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Yes I do recycle my char, but as of late a lot my freinds have taken it for there gardens. Still want to play with this concept though. Maybe soon!! I have lots going on in the back ground. My boss from my old employer came out and has offered a large shop with equipment to me for free to take things to a higher level. We have had quite a few investors interested in investing into us as well. So I have had to get with the accountant and we are now putting together an investment plan for those interested in investing with us. I am with out a doupt that this is going to be a viable company now. Its grown so much since its conception and that was just 6 months ago.!!! Its getting to the point where I need some one to just man the Email and phones. Not sure what happend today but I spent most of the day answering the phone and emails.
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Here’s another charcoal gasifier running a weed wacker engine
Hi Gary and others. I am new to the site but have been following your and Chris Seymour’s charcoal projects. I put together a smaller version of your easy charcoal gasifier, Gary. The main changes are that it is sized even smaller. Tuyere is 1/2" and the reactor is a cheap 9 quart stockpot from Walmart. I use a battery powered air mattress blower to get a flare. It runs a 4 cycle weedwacker engine. I’m hoping that’s a record for this site.
I’ve got a video up at youtube at http://youtu.be/1gmg_Uuz5Ps
And here’s a picture of the flare
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Must be the smallest engine running on wood gas on this site. To beat this, one would have to gasifiy a four-stroke model airplane engine? Really cool! I posted some questions under the video on YouTube, basically asking for more details. Thanks for posting.
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Hi Ray,
I also posted on youtube but the comments always seem to get jumbled there. I’ve only run it for half hour stretches but it will probably go as long as an hour depending on how much work is asked of it. It would be easy enough to stack another stockpot directly on top with some larger pipe fittings and floor flanges to make a hopper. If you put a side port on the top pot and drew your gas from there it would already be very cool and dry going through all of that charcoal. You might get away with only a foam filter then. This setup was originally intended for a charcoal powered bike, but I haven’t quite gotten to the rest of it yet (that’s why it’s sized so small). I was getting a fair amount of condensation in the filter. At first I only had foam in it. So I decided to add charcoal to help prefilter, absorb water vapor and cool things down a bit more. Works great. This system doesn’t have much of a cooler–again that’s keeping weight in mind for a bicycle gasifier. I built a cooler and a cyclone like Dutch John has on his mini woodgassers but decided I didn’t need them.
For the startup I use a battery powered air mattress blower. I attach it to the air intake for the engine and suck air through the system. Good thing about a side tuyere is that you can stick a propane torch in the tuyere port to light it very easily. Takes a few seconds to light then 2-3 minutes to get a flare. I shut down the blower, take it off the air intake, choke the air intake a bit and she usually starts on the second or third pull. Depends more on whether I’ve set the air right.
When the exhaust is added after starting I get a real power boost. I don’t use too much. In the Kalle gasifier they determined 17% exhaust was ideal, but it’s tough to judge when the gases are all at different temps. I follow Gary’s advice and keep the charcoal bed cherry red, maybe a bit brighter.
I’ll put up some pics of the setup in a couple of days.
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