I have been using straw in a laundry bag with about 8’’ of ss scrub pads in a wire basket on top.
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I used grass hay at first but it packed and seemed to glue together when it got moist and would not breathe like I thought it should. Straw does not have that problem and it seems to collect soot on the moist surfaces and when I drained the water out of the bottom it drained out black water which makes me think it worked ok.
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Hi Don, the wild oats that grows around my place is working great also, the stocks are very similar to straw. I notice the same thing when dumping my water and the oat straw washes out clean and does not pack down like the grass hay did. Also I can use more for filtering.
Bob
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And don’t forget about wool. Old wool blankets are fairly easy to come by and according to Austrailian research near the end of WW2, was pretty effective in trapping dust.
Gary in PA
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Hi Gary, do you think wool could be used for filtering just after the cyclone filter on a gasifier? Or would you have to cool the gas down first.
Bob
The wool GaryG is referring to is animal sheeps wool.
The fibers on these are hollow.
The surface of these fibers have many, many overlapping shingled pores.
Sheeps wool had the highest heat resistance of all common natural fibers.
How high? My wood stove surface in full roar will be ~400F. No problem for wool clothing brushing up against this.
Sheeps wool will burn; but it seems to take at least 600F to get it to even smoulder. Wool fiber yarn is listed as suporting open combustion “burning” at 1100F/600C.
Regards
tree-farmer Steve Unruh
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Raw wool is about $10 per pound, which overfills a 5 gallon bucket. Oxyclean is a pretty good detergent for tar. Hmmm?
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From a filter media suppliers webpage:
Wool felts are naturally flame resistant. Although they will burn when exposed to an open flame, when the flame is removed the felt will extinguish itself
Wool felts remain unchanged in physical properties as it wears
Can be hard enough to turn on a lathe and also soft enough to be sewn
Wool felts do not ravel or fray
Highly absorbent and uninjured by continued oil/lubricant saturation
Significant resiliency
Wool felt is an excellent insulator against cold, heat, sound and vibration.
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I’ve used wool blanket material in my final filters. Works good
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Hi Don.
I have a couple of questions. You mention you set your water drip to about 2 drops per second. Does this amount remain constant all the time or do you adjust depending on load? Did you determine 2 drops/s is optimal for performance or gas dryness or something else? I ask becouse it seems a small amount. I used that much water in my 50cc moped runing on chargas.
You do not use exhaust reintake on your sistem?
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Hi Kristijan,
I start out at 2 drops a second (just a guess-not using a stop watch) and then watch the temperature readouts. when the temps go up I give it more water. Most of my trips are 45 minutes or less. The temps go higher after shut down than when running. I never tried exhaust gas on the Geo Tracker, just on my lawn mower.
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Thank you. Do you reduce your water drip when you idle?
I’m too busy to idle very long but if I did, I would reduce the water. I don’t fiddle with it much as a rule. It is quite forgiving.
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Don Manns Thanks for posting your well design charco unit. I am trying too picture your air nozel. If i am seeing the design properly, your air is introduced down in below your rotateing unit, not sure the name of the rotateing unit with what looks like air hole in center.? And what is the air nozel, or consuming componet.? Is there a clear page of your full nozel and grate area, is the grate the space between the rotater? And what is the metal beside the rotater made out of.? Thanks Don.
Kevin, here is is a slide show video of the charcoal gasifier build, Maybe this will answer your questions/
The nozzle puck is a cast iron a flat belt pulley off a craftsman air compressor.
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Don, I like the slits for forming the cone end. It looks very evenly formed.
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Thanks don i allso just seen the photo ramsmondo put up about 30 pharagraph back, air in at the ammo can, steem next too the puck for cooling. Have you had too make any changes since you been putting miles on,? and how did the heat efect the ammo can seal, any heat issue there.? Thanks i like that design.
Hi Everybody.
I have started a new topic with a collections of my drawings, part list, spec’s sheet, and/or operations procedures, it is call: “Drawings of charcoal gasifiers for vehicles”. In this new topic is included the work I have done for this topic. Thank’s Don!!
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Don, I would like to see some close-ups of your distributor timing adjustment mechanism. Also, if you have an idle adjustment, I would be interested in seeing that as well. I thought you had one, but I may be thinking of someone else. Thanks.
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Steve please excuse the poor quality pics but this the distributor closeup. I loosened the hold down bolt enough so it moved freely in the slot . I doubt this method will work on every vehicle.
The idle throttle idea I got from Carl Zin and it is a worm gear aluminum window crank that I took the arm off and used a red 18 gauge stranded wire that pulls on the accelerator linkage.
Here is a short video of it working
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