Thanks, Rindert! Excellent Resource.
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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
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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.
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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. 
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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
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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
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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
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Good to see Tom on here!
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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.
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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…
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(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
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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
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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.
Billy he’s talking about Wayne Keith’s design.
I am a penny pincher, barely make enough money to pay for my truck loan, and I consider Have Wood Will Travel worth every single cent of the 50 dollars for the book and 6 included months of premium. For a large engine I honestly think there’s bar none a better design.
Keep in mind Ben Peterson’s design isn’t open source. His book is 20 dollars on Amazon.
Hundreds if not thousands of man hours go into a proven design.
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Gotcha. The well-reputed WK gasifier. I’ve heard only good things about that.
It’s not exactly about the money. It’s more about producing plans that can be shared and used freely by others without money as an object. All of the software used was free and open source - OpenSCAD, Inkscape, LibreCAD, LibreOffice, etc. and I’d like to develop this consistently. Open source has become a well-established practice in tech and proven to have huge benefits for everyone involved.
incidentally, I also looked at what plans/info were available for the Dobson Gasifier - which is queued to be the plan of choice for the Open Source Ecology project. Dobson seems to have released a lot of material for others to build off of, and I was really impressed by the level of heat-exchange efficiency he shot for. It’s just a bit complex for a first build, and quite heavy for something on the back of a vehicle.
In general, I think woodgas is a really versatile energy source and a great way of achieving energy self-sufficiency (important on so many levels). I’d like to see more people taking that into their hands, as individuals and as communities, and I think that the less artificial constraints we can impose on each other, the easier that becomes.
This is just my personal opinion, I won’t rag on you for your efforts.
But I consider the buying of a book to be a drop in the hat. You need to know how to source scrap for the build, or buy new materials.
You need to know how to weld airtight beads, or pay someone to weld for you.
You need automotive skills, or find the one sympathetic mechanic who is willing to risk a liability suit to help you.
Even the free side of this website is paid for by the premium purchasers, book purchasers, and I’m sure for the first few years out of Chris and Wayne’s pockets. They could have gone the easy route and opened up the forum to advertising to pay for server fees and I am very thankful they chose to not do that. Nothing I hate more when I have to look up an automotive forum and every 3 posts in a topic I see an advertisement sucking up my mobile data.
Plus on the free side all the good Samaritans willing to offer their centuries combined experience. I’m not one of them because I don’t know enough to help beyond entry level questions and even that can be spotty.
I’ll repeat, this isn’t aimed at you and it’s not meant to spite you or anything like that, it’s just my opinion.
That being said if you do decide to go on with this design I would heavily consider adding more cooling rails. Maybe have it go up onto the roof to cool from all that wonderful buffeting air, and it will have plenty of gravity to collect in the condensate tank.
With a big big engine I’d say take up 8 feet of your roof, spanning across the width. Maybe turn it into a sort of guard rail space for more wood bags to carry. Or in a big ladder shape.
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Well BillyS. for open source proven for large engines I do not think you will beat just using/basing off of the Mother Earth News Gasifier system.
The design has certainly been out their for decades. Nothing secret about it.
It has fuel powered V-8’s, I-6’s and I believe even down to large four cylinder generators.
Two DOW members I know use it successfully.
Ron Lemler and Paul Halverson. Read here:
Your open source change the world concept . . . . even the best of designs takes hundreds and hundreds of hours under year around varying conditions to really get one of these system reliably producing. We know. Here on the DOW we hand hold fellows through this.
Guys who have walked this path know no matter what design tweaks recommended it just will nor work for the majority of the diverse folks out there.
One woodgasifier system at a time. One operator using that at a time is the only proven pathway.
You want operator easier?
Go with a pre-made charcoal system. And still a learning curve. With varying operational condition continually throwing you curve balls.
And you: the offering up designer; will be faulted for most users inabilities. Their overoptimism’s using wet wood. Shoreline/drift wood. BBQ charcoal briquets. Sap laden Green full in leaf arborists free chop. Painted build debris wood. MDF scrap’s and tear outs.
Sigh. You go ahead with your open-source concept. It is your life. To spend-expend as you wish.
Steve Unruh
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Dig this. Good point about cooling. Should definitely take advantage of the length. Back and forth and across is a good 50+ feet.
Just drew this up. simple. slightly raised in front to draw down air and shed condensation. I like the roof rack idea too. will fiddle with that tomorrow for sure. For now it’s the first seasonable day to grill here in the Portland area
.
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If you do a single run, I would use 3" or around that size. You can find conduit between 3 and 3.5" diameter depending on where you look. I think most places sell them in 10 foot lengths.
There’s rigid metal conduit which is threaded, and regular EMT conduit which is sheet metal. Both are galvanized so any welding should be done outside with a breeze going on and drink some milk before and after to mitigate zinc poisoning.
You want a large diameter for cold temps where the condensate can freeze inside the rails, when you have big diameter rails then there’s still room for gas to flow.
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