Thanks for the suggestions. Yes definatley don’t want anything to do with retrofitting cars even if I get pcm control… The states will go after the road tax like you say and fall back on me. I would be open to getting close prepper friends or family set up on stationary power but not even them for motorvehicle.
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Rob,
Welcome to DOW. If you haven’t seen it yet, I think you will enjoy this DOW thread:
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You will need to set up your instrumentation for woodgas. If you can find the scale for NG that will be very close. I use AEM O2 Sensor kits using the Botsch wide band sensors. I believe you can set up the gages for different fuels. I use these kits for the lambda input for electronic fuel controls but I dont mess with changing the scale. Woodgas likes to run a little higher up on the gasoline scale around 15.5 ppm. There is code here on the site to build an electronic mixer control, I am the creator of it. This controller is now 8 years developed and hundreds of them have been built.
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Wecome to the DOW RobW.
You experience and goals should make you fit in well here.
Couple of points about woodgas. The three primary fuel gasses are SIMPLE molecules. It does not take nearly as much oxygen molecules in-cylinder to have them fully combusted creating the needed pressure pushing.
And that is good.
Because they are space taking up physically bulky to also have to stuff into a cylinder.
50-50; 1 to 1 +/- maybe 10%.
2nd point to get yourself out of RPM for power watch a lot of WWII piston aircraft engine videos. Puts you mind-set into piston power makers in the 2000 +/- RPM range.
But beware of the seduction of their compound boosting and then even added exhaust turbo charging.
Consensus is now you’d have to equal pressure boost the whole gasifier hearth, cooler and filtering train to get the woodgas forced into the engine to match the air boosting capability.
And that’d be super Gov’Mint cost-plus expensive, and dangerous.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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Welcome Rob. You have definitely fallen in with the right crowd. You will find common ground with Bruce Jackson on your bio-fuel endeavors and others of us are always interested in any form of self made alternate fuels of any kind. I was not always in the category but the more I learn the more I find the Kiss principle to be the wisest path. I spent a fair amount of time and money in the past enamored of Chevy performance engines. Too old to try and learn to adapt to electronic anything but having the ability for have a ECM monitor timing is a definite plus. If you have the equipment and funds to build a high compression engine and can still hybrid it then more power to you. Otherwise most here have found that displacement will overcome the shortcomings of Woodgas fuel without a lot of engine modification. You meth injection system is very interesting to me and something I have been considering for some time. Details would be appreciated. Being a “fairly serious prepper” you are aware that the supply chain is broken and is not likely to recover. Outside of a geared distributor with a supply of extra HEI modules I am committed to old school engineering.
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Hi Rob,
Welcome.
I have long suspected that a 14.2:1 CR engine should maximize power on woodgas. We have a Ukrainian guy on here, Joni, who did 12.7 with positive results. Link
We also have a Slovenian guy, Tone, who wood gassed a diesel farm tractor. Says he gets about the same power as with diesel. Link
My ideal wg engine would be a diesel with a thicker head gasket to reduce the CR to 14.2 and a spark ignition system. Of course I’d match the ports while I was at it.
I’m in process of making a water/meth breather. Just a simple way to put extra humidity in the intake air and increase economy. Your thoughts on this?
Rindert
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Hi rindert.
I have only done gassification on a small engine as a science project decades ago so the experienced operators would have better idea with large cubic inch stuff . I know 
running a bubbler with water meth will absolutely increase efficiency with liquid fuel engines but my concern with wood gas is the water especially turning the soft soot in the intake to a more abrasive sticky tar with a higher durometer. In fact I have been really pondering this exact issue long term. You see in heavy class 8 trucks I saw engine reliability go down by a factor of 50 to 60 percent . In frame rebuilds used to be 1 million to 2 million miles. Well in epa2007 trucks that went down to 500k or less. The egr was introducing large amount of carbon into cylinders via egr… It would wipe the crosshatch and rings right out of them. Now the carbon was much more course and sticky than soot from my old gasifiers. My hypothesis is the carbon created from combustion of diesel is much different in durometer and particulate size. Carbon in the right form can be a lubricant but also can be one of the hardest elements or more specifically make elements harder. … But the diesels also use a egr cooler that is very rapid and no place for condensation to drop out like gasifiers have.
So I’d be curious on results of a test like you out forth bit would definatley try on something like a back up rig or stationary genset.
Another subject I ponder is the mpfi vs tbi thing… To me a tbi could be used to clean intake runners on every use… A simple use of liquid fuel on shutdown to wash out carbon. A mpfi won’t do that because of location of injector. My hypothesis is to use either home made ethanol or methanol for the liquid fuel as it evaporates fast without leaving trace substances in tract and is a more powerful solvent to the soot. And the fact it needs 30% more by volume means the soot dilution is greater. My fear is the caking when ethanol is introduced and possibly washing too much soot at once making a mechanical hydrolock if you will.
My current project is my 454tbi so will be testing this. First thing is to get rid of egr crossover cast iron manifold with an air gap aluminum manifold that I can cut apart and orings intake part for rapid intake removal and inspection without coolant loss and valley exposure. Got lots of testing to do and will be a fun journey .
Also looking at a 20kw stationary genset that uses a log straight 6 ford tonight. Hopefully can strike a deal and will be installing a microsquirt controlled tbi on it I have laying around.
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Also running woodgas through a water scrubber will turn into a mess very fast. I tried using a water scrubber years ago to clean gas but found the amount of water was quite high. Did work well until water was oversaturated with soot. It again this was a short term project for me then and somebody here may have experience more long term and have a solution. Off to the search bar I will go after work. 
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The soot from a raw wood system like what most have found isn’t exactly the same as the soot found in poorly filtered charcoal gas. It doesn’t contain ash.
Wayne actually burns the soot off of the throttle body with the engine running on gasoline, he has port injection otherwise it wouldn’t be safe.
I think it would be worth experimenting adding a water/methanol bubbler connected to the fresh air intake but I don’t think it’ll keep everything clean. Would be better to invest time in a bag filter or series of progressive filters.
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Hi Cody, i think gengas Werner or Lars Toresson uses a bubbler with ethanol (E85) on their truck, says it helps to keep the intake clean, think i saw it at: omstallningsresan on Youtube.
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I think a higher concentration of alcohol would work, adding water wouldn’t do much other than preventing it from evaporating via engine heat.
I live in a hot place when it’s summer time, the cab of my truck exceeds 100°F when left in a parking lot so I can only imagine how hot the engine compartment would get. Methanol evaporates starting at 140°F and ethanol at 175~°F
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Wheeew, thanks for that info. Just convinces me even more to make / use use primo filters. A kid at a Case-IH dealership parts counter once told me modern filters, a Hall ignition, and synthetic oil can make a Farmall M tractor go 4 times as long between overhauls, so actually no surprise.
I never heard of the mechanical-hydro lock, as you call it, thing happening. People report a ‘smoke event’. LOL I guess that’s when a chunk of stuff comes loose and goes through the engine.
I guess I will go forward with my bubbler. Thanks again.
Rindert
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I’ve had carbon knock the bearings out of an egr diesel and actually cake on a layer of rock hard carbon that breaks piston… Not saying it happens is wood gas as I haven’t applied to vehicle yet and soot is different… It’s just a thought I had to watch out for. I push boundaries of common practice and at times bites me in the ass…lol
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Rob I ran my charcoal gas straight through my Weber 32/36 carb and the intake is as clean as it was before adding the gasifier, so I agree it would definitely keep the intake runners and valves clean. I ran a seafoam spray session every once in a while to clean the throttle plate of the carb though so maybe that skewed results.
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Correct me if I’m wrong but seems like charchol is much cleaner … But have twice the volume to carry? And of course the extra work preparing fuel ? From what I e read that’s what I have gathered… and lucky for me have surplus of scrap to build both variations to see with own eyes. My thoughts are if so some reason I’m not home the charchol would be easier for kids and wife to operate as far as power generation
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I find charcoal easier to process, I just burn it down in a barrel, snuff and let it cool for a day then toss it in my crusher and sieve it. I don’t have the scrap availability to make a wood chunker or the money to buy a square baler to make a proper chunker out of. Saw cutting is a good way to make raw wood fuel as well but that takes time. Burning wood I can do throughout my day on the weekend until I have a 55 gallon drum full and I don’t have to break down the branches since it gravity feeds. I use a 55 gallon drum tilted a little bit that I just toss wood into. Coals fall to the bottom and the flames prevent oxygen from burning up the coals. If I had a ton of branches and scrap boards to burn I think in one weekend I could make 2 weeks worth of charcoal for my needs.
Charcoal is easier to filter, just need a canvas or wool sack really. But if you don’t filter it enough then you get abrasive fly-ash with the soot.
I got about 2 miles per pound of charcoal, and my density is roughly 6lbs per 5 gallons.
Edit: if I ever find a big enough container to burn in, I could save a lot of time just throwing entire pallets into the fire.
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I have to agree here. On a expermental spin the gases down into a 5 gallon bucket of water test I did. The water grabbed the really fine ash getting by my clycone filter. The gases went across the surface plate into the water. My sock type filters above the bucket stayed clean for many runs on the charcoal gasifier. A bubbler would work the same way scrubbing gases.
Bob
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I have an oil bath air cleaner from an old tractor and was wondering if I could use that with water instead of oil. I might have to have a water supply and a overflow drain into a closed container for extended runs. Worth trying?
Don M
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Just the contrary. The charcoal reaction process is far more eficient plus, you can crack water. By volume and factoring in the higher efficiency of charcoal gasification, it is third more energy dense than raw fuel. I have now proven this solid as my machines can run on both raw fuels and or charcoal.
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I remember my oil bath air cleaner on my 1965 IH Scout iI had got water it the air oil bath cleaner and it still worked fine, it was this creamy color oil water mix when it was operating because of the air bubbing through it. Messy to clean but it worked great. In the bottom of the bath it would have a thick hard black muddy oily gooy mess to clean out very few months. But the intake was always free of dirt. Some old big trucks used these filters too, or the Clycone type.
Bob
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