The real cost of petroleum has not shown up on the ledger yet.
I absolutely believe there is a place for petroleum I just don’t think we have been smart about the polution, the waste and the cost in subsidies.
What we could do with biomass, if we had a plan and government backing.
Not just for transportation but for district heating, chemical production and power generation.
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Amen to that!
As much as biofuels are limited by how much the environment will give and remain healthy, those are perpetually sustainable, clean limits. Heating and wood (or straw, or coppice willow, etc), go together so well, I hardly understand doing otherwise.
And subsidies and tax breaks removed, environmental liability from fracking accounted for, biofuel is probably pretty competitive.
But as Jeff pointed out, people naturally follow the path of least resistance, and nothing is easier or more energy dense than dino.
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I was asked to try and repair an IR lightsource yesterday external wiring is bad generator appears to have a catastrophic fault.
But ye old Little Kubota D905 runs like top.
Rated at about 12 hp1800 rpm with what I think is a french Leroy Sommer 6000 watt brushless head.
Very interesting, but I condemned it or at least told the owner I would not attempt to repair it until warmer weather comes.
The temptation with something like that is build a set that runs dual fuel sipping a little producer gas at medium loads.
The side benefit of that is if your gas is clean the engine is de-coked by a well tuned producer and the emissions from the engine drop way off ( no stink of diseasel fuel !!! ).
That would put this unit way at the back of the cue behind two other jobs I am working on including this one in the prime mover thread.
But I am tempted to ask the lightsource owner what he will take for it as is…
One like it…
I just like working on Generators fellows…
I don’t know why.
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I believed this until I saw the photographs of all the vehicles that had been converted to wood gas during WWII. It may not have been official policy to pursue wood gas as a viable gasoline alternative but, because of rationing the people pursued wood gas. As I said, after WWII the pivot was to cheap gasoline. There was no need for official secrecy.
Sometimes the best way to hide something is in plain sight. The model for this type of obfuscation was when Rockefeller labeled oil as a fossil fuel. There was no scientific evidence for such a claim but, it stuck and has to this day.
Twice in my life I’ve worked around the periphery of the oil and gas industry. Once in oil and gas leases and the other in the Gulf of Mexico on oil patch supply boats. Both were eye opening experiences.
On the lease side, my company was leading the charge for secondary recovery buying up the rights to old, and believed, played out oil wells in Louisiana and Texas. The plan was to use steam/chemical injection to recover the last of the oil that had been deemed to costly to extract when oil prices were low.
The first well was in Louisiana and was a shocker. When they’d gotten set up to begin steam injection and begin pumping they made a discovery the engineers couldn’t explain. The well had sat dormant for over fifty years and the plan was to remove the water in the well to begin recovery but instead of pumping water out they had oil coming out of the ground. This happened at three more locations one right after the other. Apparently something was going on the engineers had no explanation for and suddenly the question became, was the planet making oil or was there actually a finite amount of oil as the fossil fuel folks insisted?
Fast forward twenty years and I was in the gulf shuttling petroleum engineers and seismologists all over the gulf. During the trips I had the opportunity to converse with these guys about what they were doing and how they were doing it. I was surprised at how freely they spoke on any subject I brought up. In route to a well two hundred miles off shore in water 1200 feet deep and a at drill depth over 8000 feet I asked a couple of Exxon engineers how nature managed to bury lush jungle and dinosaurs that deep in the middle of the gulf. It was obvious that the question made them uncomfortable but one of them finally said, and I quote, “it didn’t”. I feigned shock and jokingly said, so, you’re telling me that oil is made by the earth. They both answered in unison “we’re not sure”.
Coupled with what I had been an eyewitness to twenty years before I was left with the conclusion that “peak oil” and the fossil fuel story was total BS.
It’s just like the much touted man made “climate change”. More BS.
In the case of wood gas, a conspiracy to hide or malign the budding technology was unnecessary, economics did all the heavy lifting. But, I would bet my last five dollars that had the price of gasoline gone to $2 bucks a gallon in 1946 and wood gas had taken off like a rocket the oil cartel, with the blessing of Washington, would have crushed it like a bug.
What’s happening in the world of alternative fuels is viewed by the majority as a sideshow within a sideshow. It’s like Musk and colonizing Mars. It’s fun to dream about but the reality is nowhere near what science would have us believe. My great grandchildren will not live long enough to ever see a man on Mars. It’s more BS.
In the end we’ll all believe what we want to believe. As for me, I’ve seen too much to believe in all of these “coincidences”.
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It seems to be a problem with every place I work I bump against a way of doing things that is not sustainable or environmentally responsible.
But it was never about those things in the first place.
Oil mining steel heavy industry is the only kind of work I have ever done.
Its all built on the ideas of never ending growth and inexhaustible resources.
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.
It takes a worried man, but I won’t be worried long.
Lyrics from a song that rings in my ears.
Could be something good changes things…
Could be running out of time to keep worrying too…
Very clever song
You know sitting here reading thinking.
I am reminded of those moments of clarity in my life when it became obvious things were going to end badly if we did not change
One of them was in the early 80 when I was pretty much convinced we would blow up the world.
But at the end of the decade my fears were put to rest and I blissfully went back to sleepwalking through life.
But every decade since has had a moment that jolted me and noticed crises come… be averted… and life went on.
Slowly it began to dawn on me the crisis never ends we just kick it down the road and call the root of the problem something else.
We are the root of the problem we do not change.
We teach or children when they are little to share and care and do no harm.
They grow up and we ease them into a world with completely different values.
I continue to struggle to do the things I know are right because I cannot survive unless I participate in a system that is totally contrary to a life that is in balance what sustainable really means.
Sounds like some kind of Hippy crap…
Watching this film was one of those early moments of clarity when the problem of human nature came into focus as the root of the problem.
I can push it to the back of my mind, but I am past pushing completely it out now…
Our greatest triumphs are built an foundation of solid growing healthy modern industrial society.
This solid foundation is a fiction.
Recently I read that the insects are dying.
I think the number was 60% of all insects types are in steep decline.
Why aren’t people scared?
Seas are rising and people built next to the ocean.
No fear they have insurance? ( Like that will solve the trouble ??? )
Polar bears are invading a small town in Russia because there is no food
( that Skinny starving bear photo… remember that one last year? )
Sea salt is full of plastic…
Rain water has acid in it.
New steel is contaminated from the day its made by radioactive fall out from Hiroshima everywhere on earth.
Just enough to make it useless for some applications, so we have to find old steel ( pre atomic age )and carefully recycle it for sensitive test equipment.
And yet people I work worth only complain about the price of gasoline, taxes or immigrants ( refugess ect ).
Just some thoughts I had to get off my chest.
Reminds me of Darling’s moment of clarity before the big push in Black Adder when he realizes that optimism will not not change anything.
I will try and be more positive now
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Where were the photograph of all the vehicles, that had been converted??? Yes I have seen photographs of '39 Fords and '37 Chev converted and I have even seen pictures of Ford manufacture gasifiers but I defy you to show me a picture taken in Detroit, New York, San Francisco or anywhere in between. If by chance you find “one” it was a rarity, an advertising or promotional picture. I remember those days when we had “A” or “B” stickers in the corner of the windshield, to buy gas. I remember going to the movies and getting in for 1 empty tin can. I remember my folks putting on dinner parties where they served pancakes or waffles, because meat was not available. I remember those times but I don’t remember ever hearing about or for that matter seeing a vehicle on woodgas. In the '70’s we had the oil embargo and that was the first information I ever saw on woodgas. TomC
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Very true Tom, in Europe the Germans were the leading country of gasification for vehicles. With other countries following, doing the same. The Germans knew after World War 1 they were going to have to have a alternative fuel for the next war. Because the US and Britain would cut off the oil supply to them. The Germans consider them selfs the Master Race and still do, but not in a Godly way, as they have proven to this day with their history of the Jewish people and anyone that did not follow them in they Master Plan kill them. It is very sad, I have German family decent. God forgive us.
But out of it we have the Imbert gasifier modified to the WK Gasifier and other designs. Also we have many charcoal designed gasifiers. Could this happen again? Yes it can, man does not seem to learn from his past mistakes.
Sad but true. If the US government would take away our subsidies keeping the fuel prices down we would be paying a lot more for our gas. $8.00 a gal. or more. Ouch! They tested it back in 2008 we went into a fast recession all over this country all because of the price of gas going up to as high as $6.00 A gal. I know because I was traveling across the USA at that time.
So the new Government plan is to just keep raising the gas prices up every summer a little at a time and not lowering as much in the winter. Maybe we will not notice.
Like Wayne said about fuel, It will bring the US citizens to their knees. When it happens. Everyone needs to know about gasification for a Genertor prime mover or for a vechile or just heating a home… Most of the new vechiles it will not work with gasification, and homes very few heated with wood. Electrical needs for everything we do. Even what I 'm writing to you all right now.
Bob
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Bob, with no intention of opening a rabbit hole, and with all respect to you, let me write a quote l read not long ago. “Germany is the first country that Hitler ocupyed”. I think it is not right to blame the whole nation for doings of one man, his helpers and the sheep that folowed them.
I live in a country that was in the hearth of WW1 and 2 teror. Wifes great uncle was hit in the head with a cannon in ww1 and my grand grand father was shot in the stomack in ww2, captured and enslaved in a concentration camp. Every family has a story. But there are always two sides on the coin… human psychology is weak and it doesent take much to take a decent man and turn him in to a monster. Just a bit of propaganda and our herd instinct. Culd of happen to any nation in the world, includeing myne or yours.
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Well, I’m not here to start a fight. I never said that US car manufacturers embraced wood gas. I have a collection of photos that I have on a flash drive somewhere around here and if I can locate it I’ll post some more photos. Here’s a couple I found this morning.
I had to pull a photo because I’m new here but, I’ve got a couple of pictures of converted taxis and one city bus that I can’t remember which city it ran in but it was in the US.
My point is the control factor. The US Army played with wood gas in or around 1937. So, the government was well aware of gasoline alternatives but didn’t promote it. Why? Ration cards when you could go clean out a fence row for fuel.
Then the gas lines in the 70’s when the peanut farmer in chief was in the White House. You’d think with gas lines that circled city blocks he’d have stumped for wood gas but nary a word. Why?
Since then what have we seen? Ethyl alcohol from corn to mix with gas, electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells etc., why was Uncle Sam and industry obviously opposed to wood gas? It’s control Tom. If they can’t figure out a way to tax or regulate it (control) they aren’t interested, why? Everything they promote either doesn’t work worth a damn, is cost prohibitive or depends upon government approved industries to keep it operational.
It’s the same with welfare, food stamps, the FDA, Social Security, student loans or anything else you care to look at. They are all ways to take control away from us. Maybe the better way to describe it is this way, they want us dependent on government or government approved industries. A self reliant population would thumb their noses at Washington, can’t have that.
To your point, just about every civilized nation on Earth promoted wood gas during WWII except the US. Granted we had a healthy oil and gas industry but we still had to ration. And not all the countries that promoted wood gas were under a naval blockade. From the days of the New Deal under FDR the population was steered away from self reliance toward dependence upon Big Brother. The trend continues to this very day.
There’s no such thing as news anymore (maybe a little on Fox). It’s all perception management. They want to control what we think. If you can stand to do it ask some teenagers what they learn in high school about the civil war, the Kennedy assassination or FDR. If you really want a good dose ask some young folks in college the same things. How did the white people, who built civilization, become the planet’s villains? I don’t say that as some kind of racist, I really don’t give a hoot what color a person is so long as they’re a decent human being. But, I’ll be damned if I apologize or feel guilty because I’m white. See how well thought control works when you want to target a specific group?
If you’ve ever asked yourself how things got to be this way the next logical question has got to be “why” they got this way? It’s all about control Tom. I don’t know how you see things but, this wood gas is a way for me to reclaim some of my independence. The more of it the better.
I didn’t mean to raise your hackles and I now officially climb down off the stump. Sowing hate and discontent is not why I’m here.
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Dear Mr. Denny, Without a long dissertation, I have two points to make. 1st. The picture you provided is but one vehicle and I see nothing in the picture that indicates this picture was taken in the U.S. 2nd. The remainder of what you said is the major difference between Democrats and Republicans in my opinion. TomC
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Hi Denny I bet that picture of a Chev was taken in Australia or the UK as its a right hand drive , lovely truck all the same no matter where its from or even if the photo has been reversed 
.
Dave
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We are skirting into the political.
I have very strong political views.
AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, I can change them HA HA!!!
NO that ain’t true non of us are going to significantly alter the others Ideology and belief systems so lets try and not talk about politics
Ever…
Please…
I have this ideal view in my mind of all of us quietly contemplating life around a fire at places like Argos and never discussing things us wee folk can not actually change.
In the UK that would be badged a Vauxhal and in Auz that’s Holden ( was Holden GM closed the plants and skipped town a few years back ).
But never a Chev unless it was lend lease material.
In Auz you have to convert a car to right hand drive for mechanical fitness, thats probably what you are seeing there.
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So I took apart the old Sisson Choke off the kohler and cleaned and adjusted it.
I am tempted to try and use it with the Honda and modify the vacuum pull off and see if all these components can compliment each other.
It would also look really cool…
Here is that vacuum break mechanism
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You are Right Kristijan, many of the German people were not for what hitler and the ss group wanted, but were forced to join like other countries they occupied. But out of all this war mess on humanity. We have gasifiers today.
Bob
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I concede Tom. The photos on my hard drive won’t pass muster and I don’t know off hand where the flash drive with other photos is located. Thanks.
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I agree with everything you said, lesson learned. I missed the Kohler generator I was looking at and found another one with more photos. This one is a 45 RZ and is a six cylinder that has to be a 4.9L/300 C.I. I’m guessing that the one with the water cooled exhaust was the same. The head scratcher now is will two gasifiers feed it for an eight hour run. It’s not that I hate trial and error but I’d like to at least be in the neighborhood when I slap it all together. Guess I’ll see when I get there. Thanks.
Thanks.
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Denny, I can’t remember where or when it was discussed before about running two gasifiers for one engine but I believe the consensus was that it won’t work well. It will be too hard to balance the vacuum draw between them so one will probably run hot and the other run cool and make tar.
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In the 80"s and in his later years, Mr. Pederick designed and built a two in one gasifier. It was a combination charcoal and wood design. For short hops it could run on the charcoal side and for long trips the wood side would be added to the mix.
There was published articles in the USofA on gas producers. Finding them, in the 80’s, required trips to the library and waiting for copies to be mailed. I know that because I did it. Most if not all are now on line. In the early 1900 or late 1800 there was the Smith gasifier. It was used for farm lighting and used charcoal if I remember correctly.
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Don, actualy l gave this a lot thod before and l think this has potential. The draw difference can easyaly be maintained with a simple vacuum automixer. Its job is to equalise gas and air volume going to the engine and same culd be done with 2 gasifiers. Just put the membrane system on the gasifiers intake and it will equalize draw on each gasifier.
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Remind me again please, why do we want “two” gasifiers for a stationary system? Can’t you just stack up the hopper for longer runs. TomC
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