Steve Unruch,
unfortunately I live in an area where we primarily have soft woods. In the forest around here we have spruce, fir, cedar, hemlock, and alder. At my lumber yard we have a slim Selection of hardwood but there is next to no waist off of them. we sell and cut a lot of ceda and fir though.
Tom holton,
I would like to someday have a truck that fast and impressive like Dutch John’s 73 square body Chevy but that project is years off for now I intended to try and learn the basics .
Matt Ryder,
You are right I didn’t think of the additional processing I would have to do to the feed stock with either method. I also like the idea of not producing tars .
Well . . . then you will have limited ability to make all-of-this wonder-fuel charcoal.
The charcoals made with with cedar, fir and hemlock are super fragile. Crumbles to dust with handling.
The commercial folks use these to make that char-dust then with binders make commercial charcoal briquets. More process steps. And those gasify completely different from natural porous wood charcoal.
Want to go charcoal; focus on the red alder.
These Charcoal’tiers guys are all in hardwoods areas! Their knowledge is valid for them. Their areas.
I’ve only ever been able to some charcoal hard enough to be storable, handleably, out fir, hemlock, spruce knotwoods sections. Large machine torn out roots branch sections. 100 year growth very tight grain limb wood.
Made a lot of char dust with clear grain conifer wood sections. And I do not bio-char intentionally.
All raw wood gasifer intentionally do make tars in their upper system. Then those tars converted in mid-system, lower mid-system with the in-place made charcoal/Heats/and controlled flows-turbulence into motor grade fuel gasses.
Tars passed thru to the engine WILL ALWAYS be an Operator, operational problem.
DIY for your own use, become that better Operator.
This is the DOW creed.
Do not be put off by wood fuel prepping. Look up the many on-DOW pictured DIY chunks makers.
You mentioned Dutch John. He did not charcoal. Not in his wood fired cooking stove. Not in his self-made all SS downdraft heating stove. Not in any of his FOUR engine powering projects. 1 1/2 horsepower to ~100 horsepower.
Want easy? Buy propane.
Want a step into solid wood fuels? Buy pellets.
Want challenging? Do raw wood gas.
Read carefully KristijanL’s proposed Double Flute Downdraft gasifer topic. Watch Don Mannes build up powering results.
Not based on speculation. Based on their, done-both, loaded using experiences.
And both doing this on overhead cam engines to boot.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Now Dillon there is good news having primarily soft confer woods.
It is excellent, excellent for woodgasifing.
Has a fast energy release in comparisons to hardwoods.
And those your listed except for the red alder are all under 1% ash to 1 1/2% mineral ash.
Grating for ash separation is easy with soft confer woods.
The hardwood guys are all min 5% to as high as 11% ash. They clog badly lower down with ash and then must grate spill-slip much char to keep the ash from clogging. Or gas velocity blow it through.
Mistake to harwood grate active most conifer woods char-ash. Crumbles it. Then char fines clogging.
And be a mistake to towed system build for primarily conifer wood fuels. Trailers bounce too much. Keep the vehicle system; in-bed; in-trunk, or front or rear hung “gentle”.
And these are not book experiences. Done-it experiences.
For tar-making gooey confer woods keep your hopper small for best rising heat tars softening. Or you will be goo’s chunks hanging up. Bridging. This has been a wide spread experience. Then on to hopper shakers and such.
Big, big mistake to make big hoppers for soft confer woods.
Ha! And soft conifer woods can be chunked 50% larger than hardwood chunks. Less work! ('Cepting you will use 50% more of them)
S.U.
Steve unruh,
Thank you. You really provide some valuable insight in to the best use for the material I have at hand and I believe you saved me a lot of headache. I think my mane focus now will be on wood gas.
Now I have another question to anyone who might have an answer for me. Are there any ratios, equations, or rules of thumb for designing/build a wood gasifire?
Has not been mentioned whether you weld or not. Going to be very difficult to build a raw wood gasifier without welded components. Easy enough with Charcoal. As for hardwood. you probably have access to a lot of pallets and the pieces of cribbing supporting the banded bunks of lumber are often junk hardwood.
I can weld wen it’s needed. I don’t have a welder myself but I can barrow one from work or from my buddy
All the cribbing where I’m at is soft wood and most of the pallets are soft wood also.
I have a 302 I would like to swap in to my ranger in the next year or two and I was thinking building a gasifier for that would be a good project to tackle. Do you think it would be possible to make a bumper mounted unit?
Hi Dillon.
Ha! Back from snow shoveling and kids snowman making.
Basic hearth dimensions can be found in the Library section here.
That is the problem though. Just hearth dimensions without the other 2/3rds Downstream you’ll need to raw wood gasifiy for a vehicle. Coarse soot-ash separation. Cooling and downstream condensate capturing. Engine fuel gas Filtering.
The charcoal systems the gasmaker is 1/2 of the system. Then only some filtering.
Using the magnifing glass tool above search and read sytems for Ford Rangers. 3-4 builders for those. Search up Toyota Pickup systmes too. as similar.
And J.O. Olsen has a woodgas system in a Mitsubishi 4x4 pick up with lots of build pictures and performance results. Similar too.
For your pickup stay in-bed. Then you can build cheapn’heavy. Using air and propane steel tanks. Thick is easiest to weld.
Bumper mounts need to be super light so not really beginner systems.
My next will be an all SS thin metal bumper mounted for my Toyota Camry.
Expensive for the special SS metals. Expensive to weld SS needing special filler wire and shielding gasses.
I searched because I had pictures of a local Ranger w/a small block Chevy. And a different local local guy who has gone 302 carbureted.
BOTH tight, tight squeezes. This will give you difficulty routing up with the large diameter woodgas tubing.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Thank you I’ll check for the plans