Well here it is 2 am again,
I had a very productive day .
First off lots of codensate, every thing soggy. I cleaned out the filter, soread my charcoal out in the sun to dry.
Refilled the canister with some free pine shavings.
Went over all hose connections. Fixed a bunch of leaks.
Made a new grate out of some small washers that I spot welded together in a sorta oblong big enough to just cover the throat of the burntube exhast pipe.
I made a condensate trap out of a 2 liter pop bottle. Works pretty good!
Finally its close to midnight when I set the new grate in place and added that first handful of pellets. Cool they didnāt fall through! Turn the blower on let it run for a couple min. While I fill the 6" tall nipple, about 2coffee cups. Lit it with the torch. Stood and watched as it howled to a start up. Let it do its thing for about 2 min and lit my grill burner on the first try nice blue flame. I added my 2ā tube and flared for about an hour with no problems and now loss of gas.
Ok I know I keep saying tomorrow. But really, let me clean things up a bit. My front porch is a bit chaotic right now. Tomorrow morning sfter I weed whack my almost a yard Iāll do a startup vid so you can see the changes I have made .
Its 230
630 comes early
Another long day planned for tomorrow
Just isnāt enough hours in a day
Night all
Jesse
Boy was I wrong there!
Read everything? looked at everything?
Not even close!
There is so much that I have not read on this subject!
I was suffering from info overload, but I do that, Iāll find a subject that interests me. and then cram as much info as possible into my brain
So lately I just read a little here and there
watched that vid with the guy from Victory Gas works Ben Peterson?
very informative. yes there is a sales pitch. just ignor that part and watched and listened for the good stuff.
Like a simple way to tell if your blower is sized correctly, By looking into the liting port, and looking at the colar of the burn. if its kinda orange then your blower might be a little undersized, if its glowing white like the sun your in the right place.
I got my bilge blower thinking only about startup because I had seen what other guys were useing.
now that I have a usable system to generate gas for cooking and can see down into the burn tube and by judging from the amount of gas I am producing to cook with that my blower could be a size
or two bigger.
Iām looking at a 450 cfm 12v on amazon for 59 dollars. I think I could hook up a speed control to that and use that to power my out door cook station
Jesse
I found a nice blower in a junked microwave oven that I used on several stoves. It runs on 115 vac, and a cheap light dimmer worked to vary the speed, but you could also just put a restriction in the output to lower the amount of air. I suggest a TLUD stove that will make charcoal. The Anderson Champion is a good one. Use small scrap wood pieces, cook the meal, and then dump the glowing charcoal into an airtight container or dump it into a container of water. Later, after you have eaten, pour the doused charcoal over a screen to recover and dry out the charcoal. Here is an old photo of my setup, showing the charcoal produced.
The blower for this stove is a computer fan mounted in the bottom of a juice bottle. It fits into the primary air pipe at the bottom of the stove. I only use it for start-up, and at the end of the batch if I need to burn some of my precious charcoal to complete the cooking task. (Like for riceā¦)
Good morning Ray,
I have been using an 8" dia. TLUD some this spring. I get real tired of scrubbing soot off my ss pots n pans. I even set up with a fan assist. like that chineese biomass cook stove like Navshaki
lots of wood gas too much soot. even put the burner cover on with 1/8th inch holes to let the flames out. still a lot of soot. that was the main reason for building the little wood gas generator.
I love cooking with gas. Electric is too slow, and expensive. I have several microwave fans, and transformers.
Iām here to tell ya third world cooking styles suck unless your in a shtf situation then its YEA!! we got fire!! I have a 3" stove pipe elbow that makes the best (little) rocket stove. you just have to keep adding fuel. unless all you want is some egg sanwiches
Tluds, Rocket stoves, bean can wood gas stoves. been there done that not into camping or third world cooking. not building a charcoal gasifier for my van right away.
donāt know what kind of micowave you scrapped out. Iāve done some very big restaurant sized ones and they all come with the same basic 2.5 -3" fan in a plastic shroud. Was not impressed with the volume of air.
my needs for this cook station are simple only want enough clean gas to cook with from egg sandwiches to Beef stroganoff. without all the soot.
donāt mind processing the wood. thats all good exercise. fat guys like me need that. 16 months ago was 420Lbs. now am below 270Lbs and still shrinking!!! will stop shrinking at about 165-170Lbs.
no meds or diet pills just count calories. and stay busy.
thanks for your input . but Iām one of those guys that like black in my grill not on my dishes
Jesse
Thatās a nice pile of charcoal! All that from that little stove? Iām impressed!
Maybe you could eliminate the soot issue by using a steel hot plate first and then sit the pots on top of that ?
Dave
Yes, it adds up. That stove takes quite a bit of fuel because the bottom part is a nine inch stainless steel cook pot with old stove pipe bolted in to give it a height of 20 or 24 inches. Inside that is a sacrificial liner of more used stove pipe that rapidly burns away. The grate is a worn-out ten inch Harbor Freight Carbide saw blade with holes drilled into it. I have recently been covering the grate with a layer of small charcoal brands so it will complete the charcoal making process. I noticed the blade was a bright orange color when I dumped the char, so why not use all that heat to finish off brands. Yes, my pots are covered with soot because cold water in a cold pot over a hot fire collects soot. I use cardboard squares as pot holders when I bring the pots into the house. (These get cut up as more starter fuel for the stove after they get covered with soot.) I also have my own stainless rack to hold all the cast iron pans and soot covered pans while they are in the house. It smells like Mesquite BBQ where the pans are stored. With my grid tied solar panels, solar clothes drier. and solar water heating (for showering), we are actually feeding excess power into the grid, even with an electric car. Cooking and heating water out on the patio makes this possible, while at the same time making bunches of engine grade charcoal.
So I watched the Ben Peterson vid. Learned a lot first and foremost is air requirments. On the push side I have lots of air, but have lots of blow back.
And a bad filter seal.
1 need bigger blower
After bipassing the poorly sealed filter
And changing the down tube, from 3/4" to1" With a fresh battery startup was easy. Had gas in about 3 min. I had also
Drilled a 1/4" hole in the center of my old side burner. Now it has a jet flame in the center
Only got to flare for about 20, and had to leave. Got back about 4hours later. Now its 8pm .
One small egg sandwich, and one small piece of chicken for all day was making me feel kinda puny. So I got stuff around and cooked some Irish mans comfort food. On the wood gas burner. Potatoes, chopped/skins on, red cabbage, large onion, all cooked together in a little chicken grease. Ate a small portion gave the rest of mine to my Rottie Lady Dog. She will eat almost everything I will. Sweet sweet girl. One of my best rescues. So for now Iām cooking unfiltered.
Jesse
Sat. Morn. Cold, wet & rainy. Looks like a good day to rest,and watch movies with the kids
I have bad luck with pocket sized electronics, ie cell phones
I have had this iphone for a couple months now. I have come to the conclusion that I absolutly hate this thing
I had told my daughter she could have it when I get a new one this summer.
You know I think itāll have an accident,
Maybe a drowning. Or Iāll beat it to death
in a fit of frustration because Iām actually
smarter than this phone. My thougjts on this particular phone.
Samsung. Much better products, more user friendly
Jesse
This is another off topic post. But here goes anyway
Went ouside this morning after it rained and blew icey cold wind all night to see how things fared on my front porch.
Stood there with my Elderly Rottie girl, waiting for her to do her thing. Waved at the meighbor, while looking down main street. I realised that ot was snowing. ON THE 15th OF MAY ! !
The longer I stood ther the harder it snowed untill you could see it start t acumulate pn the ground. It snowed for 18 min, and at one point you could hardly see accross Huron Ave.
I love Mi.
Jesse
Well here we are several days later and many revisions.
But here is two vids.
the first is me lighting up my little gasifier and lighting the burner
the second is showing the gas improvment after about 5 min. of run time.
My poor little battery pack has been used like it was a large deep cycle,
and now its getting pretty tired I can only run about 10 min.
the blower has some tar residue inside so it doesnāt run as fast as it could
You will here me talk about the color of the glowing coal inside the reactor.
That is in reference to what I learned on the Ben Pearson video from Victory Gas works.
Where he speaks on an easy way to tell if your blower is sized correctly.
The bilge blower that I am using is good for start ups but not big enough to run on for any period of time.
Hope you like the vids
Very nice! That flame looks perfect for outdoor cooking without the soot.
Thanks for the videos. Looking good. I donāt think there is too much you can do to change the flame color with a simple gasifier. It is more a quantity to heat what ever. But the main thing is your are in there having successes and learning. TomC
Thanks, Tom C. And Corey,
Thank you especially Matt, everything you said worked.
Well I tore into the hoses and blower today. A lot of tar from running low air speed, I love the fact that this blower is water proof. I have it soaking in oven cleaner right now. Still have to scrub it out with hot water and Dawn dish soap.
It took both my oldest son and I to get the cook pot cyclone open today. It had about 12 ounces of condensate and powdery char. I gave it to the juniper bush out front. Donāt really want to put it back together with all that tar in the hoses. Glad they were free. I wonāt feel bad about putting them back in the garbage.
I am going to pull the gasifier out tomorrow. I want to see how much char and ash is in the bottom of the bucket.
Plus I need to go to the welding shop and have a lighting port welded on.
I have this old 25 cup aluminum coffee pot that acts just like a monorater hopper. when you draw smoke filled air though it you can see the air currents moving the same way that Pepe described his monorater. I guess I got lucky that pot has been destined to become a fuel hopper from day one.
I went to the DPW lot today and got a fifty gallon tub of mixed chips. A lot of trashy stuff mixed in. Iāll have to make a chip dryer tomorrow. A black poly barrel for heat and a 20" free from garbage fan.
I think it will be easier to screen whats left after drying and tumbleing in the barrel. Hey look its only midnite thirty.
I get two extra hours of sleep tonite!
Tomorrow is another long day. Schooling the boys, processing pallets small enough for a small gasifier. Building a chip dryer. And everything else that will get crammed into my day.
Night All
Jesse
Hi Jesse,
Very nice blue flame. That is a carbon monoxide flame. Hydrogen burns with an orange flame. Both have an energy density of approx. 325 BTU per cubic foot. The mix of blue and orangish flame, sometimes purple or bluish purple with blue streaks is what I usually end up with. Iād say youāre doing good getting those colors. Good results, keep it up.
Pepe
Thanks Pepe,
So if I run hotter then the flame should turm a lighter color. Am I right? Because when I was set up on the push side everything ran hotter. The gas temp coming off the cookpot cyclone was
280F on average now I can barely get it over 100F, at 280 the gas glame was invisable in the daytime, and was white after dark. So my theory was correct
Beside at these temps Iām getting a lot of tars. Air leaks are my nightmare.
No more sump hose. All solid plumbing,
Except at the blower. Fermco there
So bigger ac powered blower with a power control for air speed adjustment
BBB
Jesse
Iām not sure about lighter, but the colored flame in the second video is just what I usually see in my unit and feel good about. I think it is a good fuel mix of CO and H2. Occasionally, I have flames that are just about colorless (not sure why or what it means), and seem to produce the hottest temps in the few spots I started monitoring. Your on the right track and the color shown here is where to go, imho. If youāre getting those colors, I wouldnāt change any of the internal dimensions for now. You also might want to check out the imbert dimensions chart for comparison. It starts with your anticipated HP load and dimensions the unit from there, just some stuff to keep in mind as you progress through the experimental stages. Youāre correct about working on leaks, thatās a biggie. They reduce the velocity of the gas through the system and pollute your gas with air making it explosive (been there). You might want to read the posts by Dan Cox. He does a lot of show and tell for the good and the not so good things he tried. Lots of vids on his road to success. A good watch and entertaining, too. Keep on burning.
I believe purple is from methane, which I gather is a good thing as far as fuel burning gasses.
:EDIT: nevermind. Methane is just āNatural Gasā and burns blue/yellow.
What little there is of my gasifier is in several pieces,set off to the side for now.
Not going to mess with it till after the first of the month.
Imbert dementions donāt work here. The burn tube is to narrow. The restriction is below the grate. From 2" down to 1" with a 6" long tube. I had asked Matt Rider what he thought on nozzle height and he suggested at about 3" with the nozzle ring dia. just outside the restriction dia. With the plumbing threads heat welded at the moment, makes it kinda hard to analise the char bed. Woth my first few grates that had lots of little holes I always had some ashes on top of the grate. Now with this sink drain I have char dust and crumbles on the outside ring and the char particles get bigger toward the center.
You can distinguish little chunks of pellet. Butwhen you pour it out its all very burned and crumbles at the touch.
Not being able to disect from the top makes it very hard to know what is going on exactly where. I only have an aproxamation. I have always loved playing with fire. But this is So much more. Thanks guys I really apreciate your in put. All my toys are put away. Iām going to bed early
Jesse