Also, welcome to the DOW HowardB.
If you hover over and click open BronlinK’s avatar icon it will open up a small summery box.
In that box click open again on his avatar icon.
That will open up his all activities page.
Under “STATS” there will be his three created topics.
Click that open to find his truck build topics.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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Hi Howard. I’m in the Vegreville area and am just getting set to begin work on a gasifier system for an old Massey Harris.
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Has anyone built a Troy Martz style charcoal gasifier and if so what do you think about the result?
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Hello. I live in central Saskatchewan and have built a Troy Martz type charcoal gasifier but have yet to try it out, as I’m now building a retort to make charcoal. I have an old Onan generator I hope to run and perhaps expand to bigger engines as I gain experience and knowledge.
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That is basically an updraft charcoal gasifier. I’ve used one for years as have many others here. If you are working with charcoal then I’d look up posts from Gary Gilmore and his simple fire gasifiers. Also Matt Ryan’s Thrive on Wood thread. That will take some time because of all the information but he has built and proven all types of gasifiers including updrafts.
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Yes, I’ve studied all of Gary Gilmores videos and really like his approach to things. Can you tell me about your updraft unit and any suggestions you may have found usfull, My gasifier and cooler/filter are 100 lb propane sylinders,
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Jim,
As Tom indicated many on this forum have built charcoal gasifiers using Gary’s example. My thread on the subject is Toyota Corolla Charcoal Vehicle Gasifier Project. I power a car, generator, push mower, and grist mill with the SimpleFire.
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I’ve built half a dozen simple fire type units, Jim. From 5 gallon buckets and 20 lb and larger propane tanks. I’ll post a link to the one I use most often built in 2020. It started out as a modified copy of a very successful Don Mannes gasifier he built for his Geo Tracker. Kind of copied from some pictures Eddie Ramos drew about that video from post 276.
I built this.
Still use it now but never got good results with the hearth design so I blocked off everything below the red tank and just installed a regular pipe nozzle in the upper tank section. Also removed the cyclone because it was unnecessary and down graded the filter to just a ammo box filled with course sawdust. Just a simple fire. Works fine for a 600 cc generator engine. I don’t remember if Troy Martz used a water drip on his gasifier but if not you will definitely want one.
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Thank you Tom. There is just so much good and useful information and ideas on this sight. And a great bunch of people. I will check out the links you mentioned.
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Thank you Steve. I will check out your thread. It’s so nice to hear from people who have been successful at this venture.
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hello jim, we make now with charcoal gasifiers since 5 years, and i must say successful…my first model was made also from propane tanks, the further models must be lighter therefore they are in thinner ss steel…look at my topics, there you can find also a method for making charcoal from twigs, simple and effective and with hig hydrogen content, because of short exposition to heat…
the last important step is our new water filter for gas cleaning, this has resolved the dust problem when using chargas…you find informations in my topic of the pasquali project, modyfied diesel
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I’ll mention a couple of things about charcoal, Jim. When I started using it I was not breaking it down small enough and I wasn’'t cleaning it as well as I should have. I made a simple hand cranked grinder that broke the chunks down to about 3/8 of an inch and screen out anything smaller than a quarter inch. Then I started washing all the char dust out of it. That really helped but found that it was necessary to dry the fuel a while before I could use it. That’s fine for me because I’m mostly interested in wood gas for emergency power and only run the the generator occasionally just to keep in practice. Plus I heat with wood for 7 months a year and generate a lot of char from that. Anyway getting rid of the ash coating that lingers on your fuel and especially getting rid of that char dust makes a big difference in my experience.
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Hi. I’m in west central Manitoba. If you live in a rural area, the most effective charcoal making method is to burn piles of small brush from tree tops or saplings. The more even sized the better. The bigger the pile the better. Light and stand back about half an hour and there will be a glowing bed of small charcoal. Get the heat resistant gear on, and start pushing the pile together, because the radiant heat is fierce. As the pile gets smaller it radiates less heat and can’t access oxygen. Use a long handled steel shovel, and fill steel barrels with resealable lids. Once flush full seal, and flip the barrels over on their heads. Without oxygen the charcoal will immediately snuff. By the next day you have a barrel of cold tinkling charcoal.
For processing I would recommend a miniature jaw crusher. The fines will be very useful for biochar or garden ammendment.
Brush pile burning isn’t as efficient per unit as other methods, but it is fast and volume oriented.
The other method I like is a cone kiln. I slit 2 barrels, opened them into a U form, reinforced the edges, filled the ends, then burn brush in the kiln till it’s full of glowing char, shovel into resealable barrels. It pales for efficiency beside the open burning approach, but it’s a comfortable winter activity and might appear civilized enough if neighbours or authorities are concerned. 
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Hello Garry.Thank you for your feedback on charcoal. I am building a small retort right now,though presently ride lined by a burned hand from a stupid cutting torch accident, as I don’t require large volumes of charcoal as of yet. I do burn a fairly large pile of scrap wood each winter and will try saving some of the charcoal from it. I am new to this game so haven’t read all the pieces on this site. Do you have a gasifier. I assume you do as I see you are a premium member. How is the interest around your area? Jim
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Hi. Thanks Tom. Yes, I’ll keep that in mind. My retort building is temperarly on hold as I recover from a cutting torch burn on one hand.Do you wash your char by spraying or dunking?
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I’d avoid wetting the charcoal at all. Far simpler handling and storage keep it dry than trying to dry it, charcoal holds moisture very strongly. Plus that way weight is minimal, no added work or mess. Water drip can add the needed water once it’s burning. Bone dry char is much easier to light too. When I tinkered with a seachar TLUD I would snuff the char in an old flour can, without air charcoal goes out amazingly fast.
I only achieved making a small tabletop charcoal gasifier, to run a gas hot water burner, which was a fun and validating project. But this year looking at geopolitical and supply issues definitely seems to be the year to get a gasifier or two together.
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Welcome to the forum Jim. I am in southern Manitoba as well.
So far I haven’t had any experience with a charcoal gasifier, so I can’t speak directly to your questions. But I have been driving my truck with wood for the last two years.
If you have time look through Matt Ryder’s thread. He has been tested water injection for charcoal gasifiers and has been having great success. It adds extra hydration which exponentially boosts the efficiency of the gasifier.
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If producing wood gas is anything then it’s a lot of trial and error. Usually so much error that most people just give up. I did once, while working with raw wood. Much more complicated than charcoal but if you are doing a lot of driving on wood gas then more efficient for the required volume of fuel and system maintenance. Not really geared for the average tinkerer.
In my trial and error, I found that getting rid of anything in the fuel that wasn’t pure carbon created inferior fuel. I run the chunks through my hand cranked grinder, as I said, and screen out the smaller crushed bits. Those go to bio-char and having residual ash mixed in that is a good thing, What’s left goes into a perforated 27 gallon tote and I just hose it down. I mostly want to get rid of the dust and ash coating stuck to the char. Because I make so much and use so little, it’s no problem for me to stock pile it while it dries. If I needed a more continuous amount then I have a dryer made from a 55 gallon barrel fed by a rocket mass heater and I can dry 30 gallons at a time in about an hour, but of course that’s a whole extra step that I’d prefer to skip. Freshly washed char does absorb a lot of water and will not make good gas. Trial and error again. You just have to experiment and find out what works best for you. If you have Gary Gilmore videos then he has an example of a char crusher/sizer he made. You can improvise a lot but I find such a tool to be essential for my production. Mainly do not get discouraged if everything goes less than smoothly at first. There is a learning curve as well.
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I don’t know of anyone else doing syngas. If you explain it to people the odd one is interested, but it takes a very particular personality to actually want to see it through. Very few people are decent metal fabricators plus auto tinkerers, plus have the time and space to do such a project, a healthy scrap metal collection and then have access to the biomass supply. I suspect however that as the global oil situation progresses suddenly there will be a lot more motivation, same as the situation in Australia and Europe in WWII. But this situation is moving too fast and with too little background information to adapt. Back in the day syngas was a known fringe technology commercially deployed.
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Hi. Yes not much interest around here, but a few who are keen. Mostly people get a glazed over look on their faces and smile at you sympathetically. I have never worried much what others think of what I do. Once my burned finger settles down I will finish my charcoal retort and try out the gasifier. Thank you for the input .
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