my eventual goal for off grid power production is solar probably with a wind turbine. the generator lord willing will never produce the majority of my power but could be used to run freezers when the powers out.
the primary reason to build it is to get my toes wet in woodgas. I eventually want to build a wood gas vehicle but I’d like to start a little smaller and get my toes wet. unlike solar I can drag home most the scrap metal/junk I need to build it for pretty well free and I don’t have to get it engineered permitted & inspected
my budget doesn’t have two pennies I could rub together but I get free wood free “junk” and a job where ive got 3 day weekends for projects
I would start with charcoal. The trick is with either, woodgas or charcoal, you need similar size pieces of fuel so it burns and flows similarly. Charcoal breaks up by hand fairly easily, and you don’t need much equipment. second, it runs on single cylinder engines better.
There are several ways to make charcoal can use the open pit method if you want.
Jason has posted here before, but i can’t find the posts. He is in Oregon. I think he uses douglas slash. A 55 gallon barrel with a tight lid is pretty easy. He may have more video’s on his youtube channel. IF the char gets any oxygen at all, it will keep burning, and it doesn’t have to be very hot to reignite, and ash itself is an insulator. you have to let it cool down for a few days or else it will restart. Some people seal the lids with mud, and you will want a ring with a lever on it, if you can. Rings with the bolts work, but you need a tool, which you don’t want to lose.
Once you made the char, you then you use wire screen to get rid of the smaller and larger stuff by screening it through hardware cloth/mesh, It is like 1/4" and 3/4" and then it is sized.
I have screen it just by using a sheet over a wheel barrow, then the ash gets scattered lightly on the garden or lawn. I actually curb shopped the screen I use.
Then your fuel is prepped. With wood, you have to cut it up into similar sized pieces a process we call chunking. You can do that before you make the charcoal as well.
Two after thoughts: 1. for good solar calculations check NREL, National renewable energy lab, They’re located in Golden CO, but search online, and you can put your zip code in and get the percentage of energy efficiency to expect from your panels. 2. when you screen your charcoal the fines will be great for your garden, they are not waste.
The landscape cloth is great for weed control. I’ve switched from holes to “x’s”, crossed slits melted with a “branding iron” made from heavy fence wire. You can tuck the triangles formed by the x’s under the cloth to open a square for planting, then put them back to cover more soil for less weeds once the plants are up. Next experiment is two strips overlapped and pinned down with landscape staples. Pull back the overlap between staples to plant, then cover as much soil between plants as possible once they’re up. If it works, there should be less fraying of the cloth, and the next year, you could plant anything and not worry about hole size or spacing. Who knows, it might even work
The problem with barrels is, me. My barrel is old and beat up, so the lid doesn’t fit very well any more. My solution is to cover the opening with a sheet of recycled aluminum (old realtor sign) and put a brick on top of it. The CO2 from the glowing char is heavier than air, and unless there are huge gaps, the char will cool in a few hours to overnight. My theory may be wrong, but it seems to work.
oh now that i see the pile. That can dry up to be good firewood. IF it is free make charcoal, which also happens to be biochar, which needs to be ‘primed’ with nutrients before adding to a garden, the easiest ways are adding it to a compost pile, but it looks like you have chickens, and you can feed it to them. They eat it and It cuts the smell down as well. iirc they also like to bathe in ashes
The woodpile you have may not work well with the open pit charcoal makers.
This is a thread on making charcoal. Matt made a lot of charcoal. There are two basic methods. The one I showed first is an open retort method, where you burn where you are making the charcoal, and there is a closed retort version where you put the wood you want to char into a sealed (with venting) container and heat it from the outside and bake it with heat from the outside. It off gases burnable gas which can be used to continue to provide heat as well. They both work. While there are a lot of variations on how to make it. They fall under those two broad catagories.
I usually burn larger chunks for a firewood, and the brush gets made into charcoal. I use the closed retort method for making charcoal for art drawing. Literally it is a can with a few small holes in it, and I drop it into bonfire. but people do the same thing with 30 gallon barrels inside a 55 gallon drum.
this isn’t too bad for a small batch if you have a firepit. just to demonstrate simplicity. I wouldn’t use a zinc plated anything in a fire because of the zinc gases which are kind of dangerous, and I would store it in metal. I would also at least cover the hole when I was done. a metal 5 gallon bucket, paint cans, etc. all work as well. You don’t need tons to get started.
Free free to jump in with questions. The only bad question is the one you didn’t ask.
I’ll try making some charcoal ive got a 55gal drum on the way I’ll probably stack some bricks as a fire box under it and light a fire.
we have chickens and geese. I’ll have to put some ashes out for them I’ve been putting them on the garden. I’m interested to see what the charcoal could do in the garden
back when I was a student in Portland, I used to bicycle and I remember that somewhere down by the town of Lake Oswego there is a park with and old Iron smelter. I bring this up, because it ran on charcoal made from the surrounding local Oregon forests, I would guess conifers. The story is that they would stack logs, cover most of them with soil, except for a small vent on top, light a fire in the vent hole and after it got going cover the hole. Afterwards the covering soil was removed and the charcoal used in the furnace. a little Oregon history from the 1860s. kent
Really nice combo engine air compressor-electrical generator-welder unit you have there DillonP.
That Honda engine is well worth rebuilding again and again. DOW member Wallace has said the copy-cat Chinese parts are good-enough.
Woodgasing or char gassing this keep a few things in mind.
That engine has an internal RPM activated compressor release system. Keep the oil clean and in temperature grade spec or the compression release will with soots-in-oil-thickening, then goo hang up non-functioning. Ha! Ha! A separated collar bone learning that one back in my beginning days using woodgas!
The air compressor should have and unloader valve to allow for easier engine cranking over to start; and then warming up to power stability. Many small systems do not have this air compressor feature. The trick then is to open up the air tank drain valve and leave it open until the engine is running stable.
I have more living tips, but very specific to our climate, terrains, and resulting circumstances and people/culture here; and would irritate and bore others just not having to live it.
PM exchanges if you want.
The Backwoods Home folks over in Pilomath; now moved up from Gold Beach, are great. At least use their online monthly info’s for encouragements. The Territorial Seed folks in southern Willamette Valley have the 2nd best PNW wet-side microclimate info. Seeds and starts for our climates. The best was The Raintree Nursery folks to the north of me.
Regards
Steve Unruh
The key is the heat. It has to get up to like 500 degrees internally to release the tars, alcohols, and the products of the chemical change in the pyrolization process.
This might be of interest.
While this might be AI. but it looks like the information is correct. I would double check it but I did look up a couple of things that came up as correct.
make sure it is charged with nutrients before adding or else it goes backwards. It is a non-specific what it absorbs. Results seem to vary based on soil types.
The other thing you can do is innoculate your soil with healthy forest soil, using an aerobic compost tea to establish mycorrhizae fungus and other microorganisms you know make good soil. Elaine Inghams "soil food web’ introduction videos give an overview and I might have posted a recipe for her compost tea (which you sub healthy forest soil in for the compost). It is pretty cheap and easy. it is really the basis for no-till, minimal tillage, cover crops, plant diversity, etc.
the Bakashi, they talk about in the poultry paper link is an anaerobic digester for carbon based waste similar to a septic system. It liquifies everything with the bacteria even meat, oils and bones It is very similar to 2-3 other systems like jadam. It seems like it would work for paper waste too. Or you can throw it in regular compost but you may not have one with chickens. You can put the chicken litter and bedding in it to liquify it. The more organic material in your soil, the better your plants will grow and the better water and nutrient retention it will have and the more food for the microbial communities.
