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.
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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.
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Hey Steve it’s like Woodgas Haiku…
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See if I can revive this, Chris is there a way to see these videos? The link is dead it appears
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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! 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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