Guys, l have been researching ways to utilise the spring we have close to our house, get the most out of a good water and energy sorce.
The water part l have more or less sorted out, l need it for irrigation, livestock, toilet flushung and for the fish ponds. The stream is a couple of feet lower thain the house and all the planned applications but the pumping requirements are minimal.
Harvesting energy, its too weak for hydroelectric, and in the summer just barely strong enaugh for a 1/2" ram pump, at around a gallon a minute in drought conditions. Most of the year its probably close to 30 gal/min.
Having an unlimited supply of compressed air is good. It can be transported anywhere on the propperty, no matter the elevation of sorce, it can be stored and there are applications that require it anyway. Fishpond aeration, septic tank aeration, steel forging, and it can be made to power water pumps too. A trompe wuld provide air for it all without paying for electricity or listening to noisy air compressors.
This is some background to my thinking. Now, for why l put this in this topic.
Looking at some videos and diagrams, specialy the venturi part of the device, l realised it could be a extremely efficiant way to safely compress and purify woodgas! Imagine if we pull woodgas in the trompe collum instead of air. The water will draw on the gasifier, no blower needed. The gas contacts vast amounts of cold water wich will cool it imidiatly, no need for coolers. The dispersed bubbles will clean the gas and the pressure and cold water shuld even scrub most CO2. I think if one has a body of water nearby with a bit of head to power the trompe its a great solution.
I try to sleep in for a day with a cold and wake up to seeing a new tool i have never heard of or seen before. Time for a cup of coffee and rewatch, get my brain wrapped around this one, very very interesting concept for storeing power from water, with very little input or disturbance to the flow. Useful possibly in my garden next year
Few things @KristijanL you probably should care of.
First, the pressure/volume performance. What I see is quite huge flow able to collect only a little air to blow off a chunk of straw. Do you think it is enough to draw gas from gasifier?
Second, the ecology. Do you think it is OK to let all scrubbed things go down the stream? I see this as a drawback also for the stationary gasometer. Once a time you will need to solve what to do with the solution.
So I opened it up and it did what its supposed to do. Id have no problem running this fuel in the charcoal units.
Chips are still a no go they are way too wet yet. So switched to slat wood this wood is also green but not nearly as wet as the chips. It ranges from 20 -30% MC.
I left the fuel in there and topped it off with the slat wood and again I got a good solid flare right off the get go. Takes about a minute to light and sustain. So I let it run and I went out and checked it after around 15 - 20 minutes and it was out. Tried lighting and no light but gas was flammable. I think what is happening is; as it warms up water in all the wood starts releasing as steam over saturating the gas making it impossible to keep lit. If that is the case then it will still work for its intended purpose. In operation this will only run for 5 minutes to fill the gasometer then it will shut down until the other gasometer needs refill. Even if the gas is being over saturated with steam, this steam will drop out in the gasometer. So I still think this will work.
I have it shut down and going to give it 30 minutes to cool and then relight and see if I can get the flare to return and time it. This will simply layout the limitations of this design.
Ok I found the problem. The ammo box blower I put saw dust in it and was clogging up with tar. So it obviously works for tar scrubbing, just not very long lol. So I found where my tar was going plus I was able to get it to sustain a big potent dirty flare! Exactly what I was after.
This is all good stuff you are finding out for storing burn able Woodgas. Really KISS.
I remember the ammo box scubber with marbles you made for your gasifier a couple years back at Argos wood Gas meet up. It seemed to work pretty good. This might keep the suction side of the blower from clogging up with dust/tar mixture. Maybe only have to clean it out after a number of runs. This will keep the blower working at optimum efficiency with the gasometer tank for filling and the gasifier running at top efficiency. Not to get away from the KISS in your design, just using 18% or dryer wood and the moisture problem will go away, maybe some of the tar too.
Bob
This system wont use a blower so no need. Less complex this way. The gasometer will have a hoist made out of a small motor, possibly a windshield wiper motor. When the unit light this will lift the gasometer accumulator pulling air into the gasifier to light it. Then once fully extracted you do a flare test. If the gas is bad you simply open an exhaust valve and release the accumulated gas and start over. Once you have good gas in there then you top it off and the process is done. I will have both manual and automated procedures.
The air mattress you sleep on can lift a lot of weight with just the pump it comes with. I would think with the blower you built
could easly lift a gasometer. You could flare your gas off first on the gasifier then with good gases switch it over to the gasometer for filling. This would keep cleaner gases going into the gasometer. Automation on/off control on the blower and shut off solenoid valve on the gasometer.
Bob
My 2 vacuum blowers have been making a lot of noises sucking the early cold gasses, the 2 pusher blowers on the fresh air intake are still silent when they are running just like the day I bought them. Pushers blowers DEFINITELY warm the system up faster on my truck then the vacuum blowers
For the gasometers, my plan is to have two center tubes that fit over one another so that they can telescope. This will help keep the top barrel from tipping and allow the gas to enter and exit via this tube system. This way there is no hoses that have to move with the accumulator top vessel.
That is a great idea. If the center tube is the filling tube the outer tube can have holes in the top of the tube for the gases to enter the gasometer vessel. With this being a common header tubing you could gang up multiple gasometers. Filling one at a time or all at once by valving to each vessel. When the gasometer is empty the outer tube seats on top of the inter tubing and seals it off.
Not sure if this is needed.
Bob
Yup you got it, except I dont think it will need to seal at the tubes anyways. There will need to be two valves an input and output. There will be a solenoid valve to control the supply and it will be smaller like 1/4 inch NPT. The intake valve will probably be a 1 Inch NPT electronic ball valve. Both are cheap and only cost slightly more than a manual valve.
Yup Marcus you will find the blowers that suck on the gasifier gas smoke will suck on how long they last compared to the ones that are pusher blowers with fresh air only.
Bob
Kamil, the trompe on the video is just a scaled down see trugh example. We talk about a machine with about a 10m drop, wich shuld produce up to 10 bars. And an actual venturi, not just some straws hot glued in a clear pipe.
The ecology. This one l was thinking about too. I realy cant say. I dont think good woodgas will be any problem. CO isnt realy soluble in water, tar and acids arent realy present and the only pollutant is a bit of soot and condensate that gets diluted a lot. But if we want to use updraft, or pyrolisis gas, thats a concern.
possibly in my garden next year
