Exactly, because this is important to improve certain design features of handling the gas.
Volume-filters, filled with steel-wool, wood shavings, hay or whatever have difficulties of filtering the very fine dust out. So there are deposits later. I think this is the cause.
A totally different question is if this does any harm the the engine. The long term experience of Wayne shows that most likely not, expect from cleaning the inlet manifold from time to time.
Yes Gary Tait when I reported my making soots observations to others much better read and even university educated than me, they insisted that made, cooled stabilized CO gas could not revert back without an energy input to convert it. They kept thinking in terms of heat energy.
Failed to appreciate that sonic making levels of shear edge flow turbulence past a throttle plate edge IS an energy input too!!
Pressure drops and edge shear sonic is how all of the really good liquid gasoline carburetor designers did their best works using just the descending piston to work to lowering pressure drops to drive the whole system.
Look 'Ma no turbo charger turbulence or in passage way “turbulator” needed.
Not being university educated I am able to just accept what I see and observe without always having to know why in math’s and physics terms.
And this IS still a rational working system of application. Use Net-Effects on systems to mange all of the incalculable variables.
No belief in magic pixie-dust needed either.
It was earlier learning well auto emissions that finally pounded into my head the reason for GM’s insistence on shear edge kidney shaped combustion chambers. The decreasing volume from the rising piston pushed the air gasoline droplets mix ripping past this edge was intended to rip the want-to-be-stable tight bound carbons chains apart.
Ha! And here I’d thought smooth flow in and out Hemispherical combustion chambers were the best. For absolute power, yes, maybe. NOT for best fuel use efficiency with the lowest output exhaust emissions. And I found in auto service work that the non-shear edge combustion chamber designs like in Dodge/Jeep quench and hex/penta types were the ones that were carbons depositing building up, needing decarbonizations.
Heck of a lot of engineering experience goes into specific combustion chamber/valves/piston top designing between the different HC liquid/gasious fuel types.
The more advanced “better”, “superior” for one specific fuel type; the less likely able to operate well on an alternative fuel.
Fortunately woodgas works well with all gasoline types IC engines. Works excellent with methane IC engine types. Propane engines are usually an unmodified gasoline-type combustion chamber.
And there actually was Chrysler/Dodge liquid Propane EFI engines made for municipalities. NOT just heat vaporized central point mixing gaseous Propane systems like warehouse forklifts.
Ha! And all of these propane system really needed parked overnight in side of warmed storage in really cold times of the year.
Regards
tree-farmer Steve Unruh
From loaded IC engine running experiences Tilman I found that the more multi stage cleaned filtered the woodgas was the less wattage I was able to electrical system generate engine fueling with it.
A very sophisticated four stage cleaned/cooled/filtered “blue-flare” capable system as the one of the worst for loaded IC engine power. In truth this system was designed for GTL feed stock making.
Missing an IC engine power making free-carbons (pure soots) fuel component.
On the 2-stroke engine topic you stated quite well that as many soots passed out of the core hearth area should be gotten out as having abrasive ash cores.
Past that: the fine soots passed (or my contention; downstream systems made) will be just more energy making engine fuel power once into the IC engine combustion chamber.
Ha! Getting these fueling capable into the combustion is the bug-a-boo.
Intake manifold pocket areas accumulating; eventually flows clogging.
Into the engine oils. I’ve had even extermly sipmly oiling 4-stoke engeror engine sooted oil hang up the hand cranking speed compression release mechanisms. Outch! Hurts! Solution. Dump out the oil. Flush the crankcase. Change out the oil more often.
I did for a while on easy single cylinder 4 stroke generators types making some lowest turbulence mixers. Too heavy. Too expensive to get past a one-on-one handmade stage. Mine depended on intake valve closing back pressure pulses so had no use in multicylinder engines.
And the Austrian GE/Jenbacher engine company did put up on the NET design work on an internal movable torpedo low turbulence gaseous mixer for their big 12, 16, 20 cylinder generator engines. A Canadian published link, in English.
GE/Jenbacher engine-generators were used in a Swiss woodproducts fed electrical generating plant system. The links on that works have gone away. Why? Cheap Arabian peninsula natural gas? Russian natural gas? Particulate emissions shut down? Greens tree-killers push-back?
Regards
tree-farmer Steve unruh
Hi Steve,
indeed it is a balance act to get output wattage vs the gas input.
and ( not but ) one of the forgotten reasons is the amount of Nitrogen ( power reduction 1 % per percentage present in the gas ) + the amount of Co2 in the gas ( 1,67 % reduction per percentage present in the gas )
the other contributing factor, the one i learned from you with the most value; the restriction in the flow created.
If any filter creates restriction, subsequently the amount of gas that can enter the combustion chamber will be reduced, hence less wattage output.
For me, i focussed on the clean fuel, easier to understand, easier to obtain, easier to make, resulting in almost no filtering needed = less vacuum = more wattage output…
To make a distinction between soot and fine charcoal dust: soot is the most fine carbon “dust”, coming from unconverted but smoldered volatiles and contributes positive, chardust is more course and abrasive and has a very negative influence. to be avoided with filtering in same quality as a regular airfilter would do for your engine.
Engine oils four stroke can be getting dirty more easy yes, but that is only mechanical pollution, can be filtered out easy.
just to be aware of certain acidity that will degrade the oil, mostly from wet wood gasification or certain species.
Indeed and i second that. see above reasons ( Co2 is never filtered out in those systems )
Playing around with some chemical exercises: extract your condensates/tar and make it boil with exhaust heat, ad a fractional device, then inject the fumes in your gas-stream and enjoy… ( the sticky tar remains at the lowest point from the fractional device )
By “clean fuel” do you mean with no char dust? The soot dust is ok? How do you control the char dust or any other impurities with “almost” no filtering. TomC
Thanks for confirming KoenVL.
Coarse hearth output grits removal is least energy drag done with either a long slowed down path LARGE settlement chamber/then single stage LARGE relatively coarse weave filtering media.
This is how WayneK evolved into.
This is how Ben Peterson evolved into.
I did capitalize these words as these systems have to be BIG and LARGE to work effectively with least energy inputs.
Cyclones need much energy to create the necessary centrifugal spin out and separation. This energy must be gotten from the IC engines descending pistion(S). Take engine energy here and it cannot be used to make shaft power for any purpose!!
Think not? And just how much energy to DUPLICATE an a engine effectively sucking a cyclone separator! ONE to FIVE engine horsepower. Really. 550 to 1500 watts for those insisting on confusing the point. That’s what your carpet vacuum cleaner needs to work well.
Cyclones and compact filters were a solution to squeezing down the system size for mobile vehicle installations. A compromise. A trading off. All usable engineering has these to move forward to usability.
Insisting on “producer gas as clean as spec grade commercial fuels!!” is a loo-loo unpractical approach. Idealism. All idealism’s need massive input subsides to pay the price for their impractical for wide use extremes.
Back onto engines to woodgas fuel . . .
face the realities that you will anymore have to use modern scary overhead camshafts, electronic ignitions, electronic calculated and controlled spark timings.
EVEN on common small engine generators you will have to deal with emissions controls in crankcase vapor recovery and engine re-burn systems. PCV. The granddaddy of mandated emissions controls.
Deal with gasoline designed vapor recovery systems feeding back into the intake streams. ELECTRONICALLY controlled.
And all of these on vehicles in Europe, North America and most of Asia as having very sophisticated electronic monitoring and control systems.
Bypass changing these is in many places breaking the law.
Scare the pants off of you?
No worries.
Go back to Rural living, be direct, be simple, be pragmatic, be practical approaching these systems.
I want this. I need this. How can I make this system produce this.
You wan to eat lots bacon? Spend lots of money and be consumer-buy-dependnet.
Rural: you raise pigs on rough forages. Harvest time thunk it in the head, neck stick it to bleed out. Cut up butcher. Set up to cure and make bacon.
That bacon will be much more appreciated and used with love. Put you back in touch with the real of life.
Take you now aged out once-was cutting edge-tech Audi/Dodge/Citron/-> → to Volvo and thump it in the head, bleed out the no needed/non-functional, bone it down to what you do need and make it into what will produce for you and yours.
Compression ratios idealizations; combustion chamber idealizing; woo-woo hanging on exhaust turbochargers or mechanical driven super charges is no different than sports dream-team masturbating.
Grab a ball go outside and play, real with your kids. Your family, body and heart will thank you.
Just how I do things.
tree-farmer Steve Unruh
Hi Tom,
By clean fuel i mean realy good cooked charcoal, chopped into uniform pieces, well sieved and dedusted as much as possible.
Kept dry and always perform a full refill before starting. The old charcoal dried and sieved.
Filter always cleaned and dust blown of.
Soot is avoided this way also.
How about electrostatic separation?
The trouble with letting the fine particulate through the system is that ash particles can also be extremely fine…
And the case is convincing that greater efforts at filtering / cycloning will all have significant energy penalties.
But an electrostatic system should require relatively little power given the small amount of particulate it would need to remove.
I believe this has been done on stationary systems, but I can’t see why a neon light transformer and inverter can’t be employed on a vehicle system.
Thoughts?
Dust is like nano-bots that stick to fine tar droplets, so dust isn’t all bad. I was told that 30 micron filter was boarder line and 15 micron stops pesky minor problems. Electrostatic filters can short out and totally stop working, so I’ve read.
Hey guys I am on very short wifie-Sunday time here.
Yes electrostatic parciptitors could for a time work. Sister and brother-in-law actually had one in their whole house heat-pump system back in the 80’s. In-house was noisy. PITA to clean from smokers and candle use in that house. Just talk to maintenance men in commercial spaces with kitchens about the PITA of 'stat cleaning and repairs maintenance’s.
Really. On this Interview Steve topic I am trying to highlight out that focusing down to the bare-bones of having realistic wood-for-power expectations and goals. THEN insistent boning down to as simple as possible direct achieved is the route I take.
Then . . . . Mr Chevy lover/Ford lover; Dodge hater, you will set aside your loves/hates and do what is proven.
Home electrical power generating set aside ALL idealism’s . . . just sell off that gasoline/propane 3500-5500 watt adequate system; up-size to a 8500 watt on gasoline/propane system: woodgas that, and get your family’s needs supplied!
And Do this then with just an aircleaner box “Tee” mixer, standard compression, and no ignition timing tweeking at all.
Ha! I’ve done all of these idealizations on small generator engines now. Handmade complex-ites having to craft for each and every individual brand of system. With then ONLY me truly understanding how to operate and maintain these hand-mades Hot-Rods. Fools-errand. I do not want others being tied to me as a Tech-needed-god-priest.
Wedding cakes, glued on dresses, mono-oversized tires; ground hugger 30’s/40’s/50’s series sticky short-life tires are for the “fancies”. Not for practicals.
Good hot and fresh out of the oven sheet cake un-iced; comfortable A-line slips; standard tires get’s it done.
S.U.
Hey Steve it’s like Woodgas Haiku…
See if I can revive this, Chris is there a way to see these videos? The link is dead it appears
I looked on YouTube, Victory Gasworks channel. The Steve Unruh videos seem to be gone. Victory Gasworks videos showing Ben P. are now few. Nothing we can do unless someone pirated them! 
Steve, have you come across factory alternators with a variable variator, to mechanically maintain a stable speed of the electric rotor at a lower speed of the drive ICE during light loads?
I am hatching the idea of a wood gas home CHP plant operating 24/7/365. And I have a blank for an 18.5kW generator and a belt variator from a combine harvester. As an electronics engineer, I’m not thrilled with a bunch of very expensive power switches in inverter generators. It is one thing to use an electronic voltage regulator to power the field winding, which consumes about 1% of the generator output power, and quite another thing is huge currents to transfer 100% of the generator output power, and even more during overloads or short circuits.
Sincerely. Marat Lysenko.
Since I can’t find anything on the web about this I may have dreamed it, Marat, but back in the 1970’s, in an American magazine called Popular Mechanics, they had an article about a CHP system Fiat was trying to market with a small Fiat engine hooked to a generator and running off the homes natural gas supply. Engine coolants was used to provide home hot water. I guess it never went anywhere but I have thought about it many times. I’ll be very interested in hearing about your plans.
Just use a converter regardless you are going to be switching AC to DC. Its better to use AC and run it to the battery and then do the conversion at the battery bank. Cheaper and easier to run AC cable than heavy gage cable for DC.
Use the wood you were going to waste in the gasifier for direct heating and hot water.
A fun thing: from a simple and fairly reliable and powerful system gasifier + internal combustion engine + alternator, which I imagine how to maintain and repair, you propose to supplement it with very short-lived, expensive and delicate batteries and electronic power converters. How can I fix them when, in 20 years, I will no longer be as active as I am now? What will happen to them in 100 years?
Today, after another rocket attack, the whole of Ukraine is sitting without electricity. Perhaps tomorrow there will be no light in our village. I prefer to prepare for the worst-case scenario in advance. Optimism is often very costly.
A lifePo4 battery and todays inverters will outlast your engine by a long shot especially considering the hours you would put on it everyday. A LifePo 4 battery system will last at least 10 years if not 20.
But considering your situation make what you have work. But keep it simple CHP systems are never simple and are generally cumbersome and complex. Heating will never be linear with your power its very hard to balance a CHP system. Best to separate the two and keep it simple. This is why the market is not already flooded with CHP systems. Too complex, costly and cumbersome.
Marat. As an electronics engineer you at least understand how the more complex systems work and if you had access to replacement parts you could probably maintain such a system. However there are millions of vehicles in the US right now that are inoperable and waiting on replacement electronics. I agree with you, that even though the more complex components may be much more efficient it only takes one fried component to make a system useless. On the other hand clumsy old tech can usually be hacked together and kept running. Just ask the Cubans. Compromises are made.
Many people don’t realize that grid power only came to much of the rural US just before, but mostly after WWII and that there were local co-ops that were put together to fund private power companies. One in this area ran their own poles and lines and powered them with a John Deere engine running a large generator. In your present situation, you are better to use equipment that would not attract the same attention as a lifePo battery bank and large watt inverters. Those would all be stolen or confiscated. Old tech would not draw the same attention even if you were the one house in a village with lights on.