Somewhere we have a thread about vehicle profile and wind resistance .
I can’t find it right now but will look again when I get in tonight .
You can get some idea of wood consumption by the gasoline mileage of the bus.
8 Likes
No i built a cage out of cattle panel and mounted it on the trailer then just filled bags. and stacked them in there. I do use ibc tanks some for storage of chunks.
8 Likes
Thanks Robert. The choke plate is something I should consider enlarging, but like you say, I’m not sure how far it can be pushed before running up against the design of the reactor. I will look more into the WK designs and weigh my options from here. Do you know of a good, preferably free online resource for that?
I am, however, optimistic that I can successfully riff on this current design. The bus has a governor. I have only once gotten it in the upper 60’s and am in no hurry to do that again. Generally I accelerate and drive slowly. My whole trip to Fairbanks and back was done ~45mph on propane, which as a fuel presents a significant power reduction not incomparable to wood. I would call my set up anti-performance automotive… I even once ran the 454 on four cylinders! (whoops)
2 Likes
Fantastic about your son’s trip! I will have a close look at that. Good also to hear interstate wood transportation wasn’t a problem.
The GWV is 23,100. Weigh stations put it’s actual weight in at about half of that. I may be adding several hundred pounds to the rear wit the gasifier, but I am also going to remove the 20-year-inactive gasoline tank. I don’t think it’s been filled once in the bus’s life!.. Must be a few hundred pounds empty with brackets and all. I’ll drop that today or tomorrow.
You question about hybrid: currently it is a propane-only vehicle. But the neat thing about propane is that, like wood, it’s on-demand/pumpless, vacuum-based system. I have a propane mixer which is a little convoluted compared to other models in terms of sensors & computer regulation, but your question raises some neat possibilities. Perhaps some hybrid system will help to amend the power shortage that many here are cautioning about.
The only time I ever drove on wood was the Kiskatinaw Bridge on the Alaskan highway : ) No longer open, but at the time that was several hundred feet of “driving on wood”!
As for wood prep, I’ll certainly have to be more prepared than just scavenging scrap on the fly. I’ll consider other storage methods and maybe get a system down for processing pallets.more generally
Thank you for the wood offering! I’ll certainly give you a holler if we’ll be going through AL.
4 Likes
Thanks for your good points about the reactor size, Steve. I agree it seems I will likely have to change elements of the reactor or run it as a hybrid with the current propane system. I certainly do not want to push it into tar-production territory.
As for the design, the reactor is, as you say of the Peterson reactor design, fabricated from various propane tanks. The walls are thick, and the combustion zone uses an even heavier gauge for the inner, rolled stainless cylinder.
Distinct from the reactor, the thinner steel drum you mentioned is for the hopper, which must be wider than the reactor and will condense moisture around its cooler surfaces. I don’t intend to expose it to substantial heat, but the idea is that it will receive radiant heat from the reactor and force moisture from the fuel to the outside of the container where it may then condense. The hopper will have its own drain. That’s all I meant by moisture collection.
No intention here to offend your reverence for the Peterson builds. I simply followed plans for the reactor quite faithfully because they were freely available online. (see schematics offered for free from proceeds of his publications, as well as many YouTube instructional videos. I think page 9 of the pdf mentions a “condensate collector” that I riffed on) The few other design adjustment I made were to introduce more air jets, a wider air intake, increase the height of the jets above the choke, and perhaps now a widened choke mouth as well.
Hindsight is 20/20, and perhaps I would have done better to riff off of the WK instead. As things stand now though, I have an excellent, perhaps under-powered reactor which can also be used to power a generator and auxiliary heating systems. It may need to be run as a propane hybrid, or perhaps just at reduced power. We’ll see!
2 Likes
Thanks, Rindert! Excellent Resource.
2 Likes
Thank you for the well written, thought out response, BillyS.
I stand corrected. Page 22 illustration in BenP’s 2020 Mastery Edition does show the double walled hopper condensate section. I apologize.
And the PDF link you put up was a copy of an authorized release BenP put out in 2015 to promote selling his full PDF book versions and pay-for CAD fabbing download.
Still. You would be much better served, Amazon buying the still available full printed book. IT gives the text, tables, charts on engine selections capabilities. Wood fuels prepping, drying and sizing. Check list of pre-starting conditions. Pre-shut down procedures. And experienced based trouble shooting for when things do not work.
Theses are the Gold to woodgas successfully.
Operational experiences.
Same thing with Wayne and Chris’s book. Build diagrams; and pictures; and step by step constructions, yes. But the GOLD in layed out operational experiences.
And anyone PDF-download breaking the copyright to that better move to MARS.
Many us us here are Hunters, and game butchers. We bloody annually. Be no talking. Or hesitation.
Very good to hear you are an experienced, traveling conversion bus user/operator. Excellent.
Save a lot of hand holding words. We’ve had some come here with loo-loo ideas and no way to convince them, impractical. Hopes, dreams, desires, and I-heard’s do not make reality’s.
Regards
Steve Unruh
6 Likes
For the price Ben puts his book at you’d have to be outright crazy to prefer a stolen PDF. I paid 20 bucks on Amazon and It’s a treasure trove of a tome.
5 Likes
there is probably a lot more stuff that could be dropped to lose some weight.
Maybe watch the last part of Matt Damon in The Martian movie when he strips out the space craft to gain more altitude…Same principle. 
9 Likes
Using 50 lb feed bags for dry wood storage is the well proven way to go. You just have to keep them dry.
Jakob made a videoed 1 min 45 second refuel stop along side the road. Then the empty bags are stored inside a bag.
A full bag of my dried Douglas fir weighs 30 lbs which can easily be lifted overhead for storage or refueling.
And the best part is that they can be had for free at most any farm
9 Likes
Mike, I think you need to limiit your recommendation to BURLAP bags. I was buying feed bags from the feed mill, new. Turned out they were woven ‘‘plastic’’. After sitting in my shop, full of chunks, when I picked them up they fell apart. I didn’t think they got much sun light, but that is all I can think of that would rot them so fast. TomC
8 Likes
Yup, I had the same problem Tom. I think it was just exposed to air hot and cold back to hot. Mine were under cover and still started to come apart. No good for out side exposure. Short life plastic bags.
Bob
6 Likes
Good to see Tom on here!
12 Likes
I’m guessing that the governor is on the carb. Earlier governors were flyball / mechanical types. later governors were electronic. Are you planning to keep the carb?
That drive to Fairbanks is a long haul, especially at 45 mph.
For me, it is 3225 miles just to anchorage. Drove it 7 times.
3 Likes
So, I’m back at it! As it turned out, the engine needed a whole new block because of some pre-ignition caused depressions. But all is well now and I’m resuming the gasifier with completely updated plans. I started to do some more carefully considered CAD models with the hope of releasing the plans free and open-source for anyone to copy/use/replicate. I’ve already plotted them to DXF files for the local laser cutting shop, but I would be no less curious to hear people’s feedback on the design.
It draws from some aspects of the Peterson design, but scales up for a larger engine (7.4L) , does a little more air preheating work, adds a cyclone filter and space for an auto intercooler (which will heat the bus floors eventually…), and fits it all into 55-gallon drums for heat retention and a cooler outer surface (safer for unwitting passersby).
link to OpenSCAD file, SVG piece files, DXF files, etc: https://drive.protonmail.com/urls/PY49VQEZFG#ZbKgAQvV1jlF
Also, curious if anyone has ever looked into electrostatic precipitators for filtering air. They certainly don’t seem friendly with their crazy high voltage and guarantee of occasional sparks, but I wonder if it can be done safely using some flashback arrestors and oxygen sensors to assure no oxygen is present in the line. Would be nice to just whisk any tar and particulates out of the gas…
2 Likes
(at the least, an electrostatic precipitator could probbaly lower the tailpipe emissions pretty well)
Yes. Electrostatic filtering has been tried.
First the wattage requirements. You must pre-store it. or live generate it.
Worse, all system regardless of the “No Tars” claims will make a lot of wet sticky tars when warming up to hearth to internal stability.
One Operator too early flowing through the ESP will goo clog it up big time. Quite the mess to cleaning up then, NOT damaging the unit. (Hot steam)
Billy think of restaurant cooking hoods. You must capture that level of goo’s with early gas. With system ran down eating up it’s char bed then hot wood refueling now dirty gas.
You design is interesting with it’s made to fit the bus component layout.
But it will only have a value to copy once you build it, operate it traveling. And then modify it better based on those experiences.
Nobody gets it best-use right the first time.
Regards
Steve unruh
6 Likes
Hi Billy, we have a proven gasifer builds that will work for larger engine sizes. A V-10 8.0 L and other larger engines. There is no need to try and build a new unproven gasifer. Build one first that is proven to work. Get the other 75% knowledge on how gasification works first. Then after that work on a new design of your own. Believe me it does not work the very first time off a drawing board.
Bob
7 Likes
Very reasonable suggestion Robert. Is the design free and open source? I would love to take a look and study the plans.
As far as the design here, I mentioned this draws on past gasifiers, like the Ben Peterson design, but scaled up. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Even the cyclone filter dimensions are taken from an industrial/mechanical manual I found on the internet archive. And the ammo can filter is certainly not an original idea.
I’d be very interested in changing/refining the design according to any plans or suggestions/tips people may have. I was actually hoping to get a little workshopping of the design done here from people in the forums. The only constraint is that that the design remain free and open source.