Right on. Thanks for all the good input.
We are dry and cold up here.
Charging batteries is what zi had in mind or like you said use the genset for the high power thing when needed. We are not off grid up here at this point so my idea was also to have the set up mainly on standby for when the power goes out. Which is fairly frequently in the winter.
The other book i ordered (petersons gasifier bible) just came in the mail. So now I have a lot more reading to catch up on
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By the way if you go lithium, make sure you get ones with Low Temp as well as High Temp cutoff protections.
Can mean the difference between a 20 year long battery bank and a 2 year long one, lithium doesnât like to be charged below freezing. But since they donât offgas you can store them in the house.
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Good advice. I do plan on going with lithium batteries. I a ways out on that. A friend of mine has built his own battery bank set up for solar. Very nice set up i will pretty much be copying.
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I also have an old short school bus im turning i to a camper that would be awesome to go camping on wood power. But its has a 7.3 diesel in it. So that might not happen. I know you can convert diesels but less info out there on it
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Can a guy use straight coal in a charcoal gasifier? Seems like this is straight forward answer but maybe theres unforeseen issues im not thinking of. Theres a coal mine couple hours south of me. Pretty cheap coal.
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On the coal topic, l wuld say no. First of all, if its a updraft we are talking about, its a big no. If its downdraft, l think mixing coal with charcoal might work but not ideal.
Two reasons. First, coal has a large mineral content that will form loads of ash and cause problems. Culd work if diluted with low ash charcoal.
Second, sulfur. If the coal has high sulfur content this will drasticly shorten the life of an engine and certainly the gasifier.
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Just out of curiosity and because you seem to have a knowledge of such things, Do you think that coke could be used as a gasifier fuel? Admittedly it would be foolish to go through the process of making it for such a use.
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I wouldnât do it, beyond what @KristijanL said, you also have heavy metals like mercury, lead and a number of others that basically turn your ash into toxic waste, and also get into your air, engine surfaces, etc.
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It is maybe a little easier to run a diesel on woodgas than a spark ignited engine. You just put a throttle upstream of the woodgas inlet. The only issue seems to be that diesels were never intended to have vacuum in the intake manifold, so they usually donât have valve stem seals. This causes them to use a lot of oil, because the now vacuum in the manifold sucks oil down the valve stems.
Rindert
http://forum.driveonwood.com/t/converting-diesels-to-woodgas/
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Right on. Ill do some research on it. I know ive seen some youtube videos on Diesel engines running wood gas. Just havent found much how-to on it. A wood powered camper bus up here would be amazing
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On the inverse, you could see if someone wants to trade your 7.3 for an equivalent gasoline engine.
Depending on the compression of your engine if itâs over 17:1 thatâs the highest that woodgas can tolerate on average. I want to get my hands on a diesel that is beyond itâs service life on diesel and add spark ignition for a woodgas only vehicle.
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Iâve thought about that. But why the âbeyond itâs service life partâ?
Iâve sort of changed my thinking over time to. My ideal wg engine would just be an engine built for natural gas.
Rindert
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When I say beyond itâs service life I mean it has an insufferably low compression for diesel. Something sold off for cheap because they wouldnât want to get it resleeved or rebuilt.
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Okay, I see where you are coming from. Low compression for a diesel should still be plenty for wg.
But if youâve ever overhauled, or just taken apart a worn out engine you would know that engine cylinders rarely loose compression evenly. I fear that you are going to do a lot of work adapting a spark ignition system to an engine and get a very raggedy running thing.
You might overhaul the diesel, put in a thicker head gasket to reduce compression to say 14.2:1, and then ad a spark ignition system. That was my idea, util I started looking at natural gas engines. They usually have a 12.5:1 ratio and are designed specifically for it.
Rindert
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greetings from Arkansas. grew up and retired 20 years ago from my job in Fairbanks, Alaska .I first learned of woodgas in a mother Earth artical a long time agoâŚAnd now at 76 years old I see the time is right for me to build a Gasification unit. Also along with a biogas digester and install the 40 solar panels Iâve obtained. we gotta get ready for the hard times thats surly ahead.
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Welcome to the forum George! Glad to have you along
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