At first it was hard to start, using a spa gate valve of course makes it ten times harder.
This gasifier just gets way too hot for comfort. I can’t even touch the lid after this short drive of 2 miles. I was using good engine grade charcoal.
These diagonal drafts are too fickle to bother with.
If you’re gonna fiddle with charcoal, go with Updraft or Downdraft.
But it did tell me that this truck is drivable on woodgas. The hills are God awful and it could just be this gasifier and the fact I couldn’t adjust my air on the fly to blend in gasoline.
I hope this rig can cool down soon enough for me to take it off tonight.
It is beyond odd how hot this gasifier gets, yet the exiting gas isn’t that hot.
Lots and lots of water in the gas piping. I took my clean out cap off and got a good cup of water.
I think the lesson learned is, a 2011 4.3 is somehow worse off than a 1990s 4.3 like good ole Tom Collins has. I’m sure Wisconsin has its share of good hills too.
Maybe if I had a 5.7L in this truck it wouldn’t be so bad.
Now I’m just curious to see how an updraft will perform.
Looking good CODY on the gasifier-i wonder if the white in flame is excess moisture- and what don said about the fans- maybe the fans need to be mounted farther from the flame front.And you could try add extention on the flare tube just when flaring. AND nice truck you have there- i would not cut any holes in the box either until you know it is working perfect-on the design first.
Yep Cody I woulda bet money on that happening , but only because i tried the same thing and got the same results before i screwed the tungsten nozzle on and its run about 6 test runs so far with no problems apart from the bottom of the gasifier drum and gas out pipes get too hot to touch .
We are coming into that time of year where we can burn off again and so its time to get out and start deciding how i am going to finish off my stainless steel gasifier i want to try another downdraft maybe a double flute , but on the other hand I would love to build a Matt type single cross downdraft with some thought and some help from smarter people here than me I might be able to come up with something before the winters out .
I will get some photo’s up to show what i have so far and to see what everyone thoughts might be as i think this unit would blend its self into a few types of charcoal gasifiers maybe even a hybrid of charcoal and raw wood , who knows
Dave
This is the samething I found on my diagonal cross draft. It was okay on lower velocity flows of air going into the gasifier. Gases coming out very warm and into the syclone filter and then into the cooling tubes and into the socks filter. Run my 1500 generator engine fine.
But any more load then that it started to heat up in the hopper area. Heat rises and as the charcoal was used up it really got hot. I know my hopper was designed wrong and it would worm hole above the nozzle.
This is why I decided to go with a more like WK Firetube even on my charcoal gasifiers more of a straight down fuel feed into the nozzle ring area smaller nozzle holes and spread out in a ring not one big blasting nozzle into the charcoal. The metal ring helps spread the heat out through the firetube and ash ring can be formed below it. The ash protection is very important in this area in the hottest lobe zone. Question is to me. Can I make this more K.I.S.S. then a normal WK Firetube and combine Tone’s vertical grate with nozzles in the bottom plate.
I would want it like you Cody, to just drop it down into a 55 gallon barrel and out the bottom of the barrel into cooling pipes into a filter barrel and up to the engine.
What I see, you are on the right track here Cody with this. It is a K.I.S.S. unit.
I would change to a nozzle type to a firetube ring in the barrel. The top 2/3 hopper and the bottom 1/3 for firetube nozzle and grate area with ash removal hatch area.
Bob
Caint wait to see what kind of charcoal per mile- the holes in the bed wont matter much any way time you get it gasified- i got to find some heavy mesh like 1/8" thick triangle screen plate- for my test rig- see if i can cool the rails from air up from the bottom.
Been using my limited free time after work to do a lot of materials prepping. Spent a few hours cleaning up the hot water heater tanks. I absolutely hate having to scrape off the foam insulation. Even when I lay down a tarp it gets everywhere. Filled up three trash bags just from one tank.
Already scraped some the other week so I was just plasma cutting out the gas heater pipe. Useful heavy pipe to be honest.
Now I really understand why Ben Peterson went with propane tanks!
I used a barrel dia 23" water heater on my the one i am building now-it is about another 1/32" thicker than the smaller water heaters- i think it will out last my ceramic blanket insulated burn tube though- and i used propane tank on inside metal of my burn tube- I think propane tank steel is more carbon- or harder steel and more rust proof.?
I think the main reason Ben went with propane tanks is they’re usually more rust resistant until the coating is burned off, and you don’t have to strip all that expanded foam off like on a water tank.
Propane tanks are a pretty high quality steel, I’ve yet to see any serious rust on the inside of a tank I’ve cut open, just the dusty Cheeto rust.
And you can buy propane tanks new and empty even if they cost a lot.
Kevin I think your burn tube will last a good long time, especially if you use it on the inside. Paul McCrombie used one on the inside of his burn tube on his WK and didn’t even use special coatings. Personally I’d spray it down with sodium silicate to keep it from being so delicate.
The sodium silicate liquid will make a hard skin on the ceramic wool and won’t let it flake off. Kristijan told about that trick, and it’ll make rock wool almost as heat resistant as untreated ceramic wool.
New hearth. Nine 1/2" nozzles protruding 1" from the wall, pointing about ~20 degrees upwards. The angling isn’t perfect.
Imbert with preheat, but I’m leaving room for char bed in case I want to run it on pure charcoal or play with reduction height. It’ll have a bottom plate for the reduction and restriction to sit on, but leave room to pull out and inspect my grate.
This is a remnant from my WK tube so it’s 3/8" thick 12" ID.
Why the 20 degree? I just like Joni’s idea for protruding nozzles. Hard to tell but these have a venturi restriction inside.
This will have about half of the hopper in the gas exiting jacket, and a condensing top half. My hopes is the heat coming out of the hot hopper will want to go up to the monorator. Anyone that’s seen the Finnish drawing comparing the two will know a fully hot hopper has a somewhat chaotic flow of the woods steam but a monorator has a circular current.
I’m banking on a sort of mushroom cloud of wood moisture, the very hot wood will sweat tars and water out, and the cooler upper hopper will suck it up and condense it.
Either that or I’ve just made Bridge City, and the slightly upwards nozzles should mitigate that.
I’m going to baffle the air jacket but not add heat sink fins, I’m just trying to prevent the nozzles being favored in one place. I don’t have enough scrap to heat sink both this and the WK for the square body. I do have enough angle iron to prevent char spilling into the nozzles and filling the air jacket, though.
Interesting build there- what is this big tube going too power up, Thanks keep us posted as much as posible if not giving up too much details. I got my 12 gallon propane fuel tank all plumed and epoxied yesterday- i figured the counter top epoxy would resist corosion more being the tank is mounted behind the rear axel.I my need to weld a tin gaurd around it so rocks dont catch it being close to the rear tires.I got too mount hay filter with a drain and a cooling rack drain can- plum it up and roll-Though i want too rust proff the toltal frame,since them 99 dakotas have a rather thin looking frame- its due for a good scraping some sanding and a coat of epoxy, or rubber tar.
This is going to power the 4.3 or any similar sized engine with the way it’s laid out. Swapping out the reduction would maybe let me run the 350cui SBC. The nozzles are at the biggest size Ben recommended at 1/2 inch. This might be a weak sister for the 350 though. Definitely wouldn’t compare to a WK like I’m making for the '76.
This isn’t long enough of a tube for a WK build, but it’ll make a bomb proof Imbert type for sure using Ben Peterson dimensions. I’ll be able to replace the reduction and restriction to fine tune it.
My original Mako idea(the one with a car rim air jacket) won’t work out too well after I realized there will be a weld bead right in the active zone, don’t think it would last terribly long in the heat. At least I can salvage the drum portion from that beginning of an idea and use it in the WK’s filter body.
