I just bought a set of these TOM thanks for posting- i am sure i find a use for them once i get into char gasifier-i might use them on a insulated burn TUBE wood gasifier testing design. THERE is 5 or 6 sets left.
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ONLY 5 left now. I debated on buying one but figured I should get one before theyāre gone.
Iām going to keep using the piece of pipe I have in my simple fire since itās still working but it sounds like this should last longer and I really hope to use this gasifier a lot more once I get it set up better. Right now it works but I want to get it on a cart or at least a base with the filter and probably a water drip as one unit instead of having everything duct taped and spread around.
I got almost another bucket of charcoal from my last batch of sticks but it still needs screened and maybe crushed although most of it was fairly small and broke apart by hand.
Started on another charcoal grinder that will hopefully work better than the welded nuts and bolts on my first test. Only one tooth so far but a quick test powered by a cordless drill looks like it makes it closer to the size I was hoping for.
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CONGRADULATIONS on your charco gasifier simple fire building- i have never built any char gasifiers yet- though i plan to sooner or later , since i heat with wood long michigan winters, and there is char left over wood heater and in wood gasifiers-so no sense waisting charco power fuel, if needed/ though i am not an off grid person, i have built 3 wood gasifier units.
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Another modification and another 15-20 minute run.
A lot of duct tape. I made a duct tape pipe cap on the left for when Iām running on gasoline. Thatās where I attach the charcoal gas pipe.
Either duct tape isnāt sealing good enough or my flexible hose from the mixer valve to the engine is bad. I had to keep the air inlet valve almost fully closed to get it to run.
Another problem is my final filter.
I didnāt tear this āTā fitting apart when I hooked this to my simple fire so this MIGHT be left over from my previous WOOD gasifier attempt.
The planer shavings I put in that filter arenāt coated in tar or anything and has a slight ācampfireā smell to them. Other than that, they donāt look any different than when I put them in the bucket.
Whatever this is, it isnāt tar. Itās wet because my charcoal gas seems to be damp. Iām guessing it is sawdust or something that got in that pipe in the years since I used it last.
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Hi Don , I have admired your twin fluted nozzle since i first saw the video up on YouTube ,love the compact set up of it all , did you ever post any build videoās or photoās of the twin flute , and have you altered anything since you first built it ?
Dave
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LOOKS like you needed a drain clean out on your T fitting on your wood gas unit- A little fine tuning arranging filters and you got all the needed basic design working- LOOKING GOOD. char or wood gasifing is not exactly easy but most certainly nice knowing how to have engine grade fuel for ICE from scrap wood.THANKS TO DRIVE ON WOOD GROUP_ WK.
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Hi Dave,
This photo shows the general layout of my twin flute nozzles before the flute holes were drilled and the far ends welded shut.
I have not changed anything so far but I want to experiment with pointing the flute holes upward and also downward to see if it makes any difference. Now they are pointing sideways toward each other and it seems to work good.
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I think the square/rectangle form factor is perfect for the double flute.
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Spent hours today repairing a cooler for my new simple fire.
Not sure how much difference this will make but I had it from a previous gasifier. The gas from the simple fire wasnāt overly hot before at least on short half hour runs but Iām hoping to extend the burn time and condense at least some of the water. I had to grind, burn, and pound the old silicone and epoxy off it then brazed it all up to fix the leaks.
This was my practice piece to see if I could braze it and I think I got the old one sealed up now without any silicone.
This is another change to the generator. Duct tape just wasnāt sealing the hose good enough so I used silicone and hose clamps.
I fired the gasifier up just enough to get a flare but want to put a water trap on it to hopefully catch any liquid that might condense out of the gas. I think my connections at the filter bucket were leaking a little too but I donāt have any more hose clamps big enough and Iād like to build a different filter as well as get the whole unit on some kind of base.
Iād like to do some more work on the charcoal grinder too but didnāt feel like getting coated with charcoal dust yet and I nailed the test build together so Iāll have to pound and pry it apart to add more teeth and a couple more slots.
This is my last batch of charcoal broken up a little by hand but not screened or ground. The piece Iām holding is the remains of a pine cone after breaking it up. I know it wonāt make the best gasifier fuel but I threw them in with the other sticks when I was turning them into charcoal.
This is some run through the grinder. This is closer to what I was trying to get. Was slow with only a single tooth but proved that it should work.
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If you can, look for a thermometer that can go up to at least boiling point. When the gas gets that hot itās time to refill.
That cooler could get you a little more time per hopper, or at least drop moisture out a little.
You could cut a 1/2" pipe coupling and braze it onto your cooler to get live readings.
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Good idea Cody. Iāve been meaning to take a temperature reading with an Infrared thermometer but keep forgetting to take it out to the gasifier when I run it.
Do you mean I should be able to run this until the gas out of the top gets to the boiling point of water? I had been running it with the plastic hose pressed onto the outlet pipe so I had to shut it down when the duct tape started getting soft. This was hot but not boiling hot.
Adding the cooling pipes I hope to condense some of the moisture before it makes it to my filter but also get the plastic pipe a little further away from the hottest gasses.
So far running the generator on the charcoal gas I can run some of the stuff I normally use that generator for but I still run it on gasoline to run the air compressor and the welder. Smaller stuff like grinders and saws and even my wood planer work off the homemade fuel.
It would be nice to be able to run at least an hour before needing to shut it down and refill it. 3 or 4 hours would be nicer especially if using it for backup power when the power goes out but mostly I only run the generator when I need to use power tools or refill my air tank. Iām too far from the house to run an extension cord but set up some solar panels and an old car battery to charge my cordless tool batteries or run a light or two. If the sun is hitting the solar panels I can run an angle grinder through an inverter but the old battery donāt last long with much of a load if the sun isnāt keeping it charged.
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With the thermometer at the outlet of the gasifier, before the cooler, when your gas starts to read at 200Ā°F it absolutely must be refilled. With the cooler you might be able to run it a little longer but it will at least save your plastic parts.
Eddy Ramos is the one that suggests 200Ā°F/100Ā°C for the refill temp, but he has a lot more metal plumbing.
I would put the thermometer where the gasifier meets the cooler.
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Thanks for the photo Don , I had been wondering if your build was based on the drawing you posted back in Dec 2020 on the double fluted post and it is similar in a few ways i guess ,the running model uses a restriction and 1 gas outlet by the looks of it .
I hope to get back into building / finishing off my double fluted gasifier now we are out of winter as i have had my unit sat there 2 years now waiting for me to finish it off but never having the time , i needed to get re energized into finishing it off and i think you have helped .
Cheers Dave
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Hi Brian , i had another look at your latest picture of your gasifier and realised the tank is not as tall as i first thought ,but looking at it i bet you could extend the run time if you were to find a small drum with a clamp lid you could fix it on top where your fuel cap is , that looks to be around 4 inches in dia grab a couple of nuts and seal onto the top you wont even need to alter the gas outlet pipe and you could get another hours run time or more out of it .
Dave
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Thanks Dave.
I tried to figure out how to just link this from the app but gave up and downloaded it instead.
I assume this is what you mean. I was just looking at that design and I have an old 20 pound propane tank with the valve off just waiting to find a use for it. My cap is only a 3 inch pipe but it might still work especially if I get my charcoal grinder and sizing screen finished.
Iām tempted to use that idea on another build and keep messing around with this one testing ideas and using it until the nozzle burns up. Then I will need to modify it somehow anyway because there isnāt an easy way to get to the nozzle to change it.
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Easiest way to get an accessible nozzle is to weld a one inch coupler into the tank and then thread your three quarter nipples into both sides of a bushing. Then you just have to unthread the bushing from the coupler.
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when welding couplers is only important one thingā¦screw a old threaded conterpiece deep and strong inside before welding, than the coupler cannot bend so muchā¦otherwise the inner piece sometimes not enters moreā¦
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Yes, one of my fittings that I welded on had to be ground down a bit to get the other piece to screw in. I think I got a little too close to the threads when welding it on.
I just modified my charcoal grinder and tested it out. Seems to work pretty good.
Uploaded a quick video of it crushing some of my last batch of charcoal. I should have pre-screened that charcoal so the pieces already small enough didnāt get passed through again but this was just a quick (and dirty) test.
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Did another half hour run of the gasifier with the new cooler on it.
It did help keep the plastic hoses cooler and I could have gone longer but I run all the pieces of wood I had through the planer and my battery was over 14 volts so I shut it down.
This flame came out the nozzle opening when I shut it down. I snuffed it out with a leather glove and plugged the hole with a ball of foil. The flame from the gas outlet side when I test it before hooking up the generator is almost invisible.
This filter (pieces of felt) was clean when I started. Not real bad but still collected some moisture and some dust. I didnāt add a water trap yet so I hope to get less moisture collecting in the filter once that is added.
I added some more of the planer shavings to my filter to hopefully trap more of the dust and let everything cool off. I didnāt have enough planer shavings before to fill it and I wasnāt sure if too much would restrict it too much but it obviously wasnāt enough to catch the dust although the felt did a pretty good job of stopping it from making it all the way to the engine. The short section of clear hose at the engine was a little damp but still clean.
I did run the generator on gasoline after I was done long enough to refill my air tank to hopefully flush out any of the moisture I was feeding the engine but, if you canāt tell, Iām happy with the gasifier so far and it is doing useful work.
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One more addition tonight.
This water trap isnāt fully done yet. I need to clean out the jar which still has some stains from the old wood gasifier.
I made a new, thicker top instead of just a normal canning jar lid and made my own āTā fitting. I havenāt tested it for leaks but expect to need some silicone around the pipe connecting to the lid.
I cut the hole for the āTā with a torch and got it too big so had to add an extra chuck of metal to fill in the space.
I didnāt weld this water trap onto the cooler but just coated the pipe with silicone and pushed it together. My spool of flux core wire is almost empty and Iām considering this build as a working test build and might want to reuse some of the parts on a better gasifier in the future.
Another reason I didnāt want to weld this permanently is because the water trap āTā is inside the cooling pipe so water will get trapped in the bottom cooling pipe. Not ideal but should still work for this ātestā build. I donāt have it mounted on a base so I can tilt it over to dump any water that collects there but not ideal.
The gasifier is refilled with fresh charcoal ready to use once the silicone dries and I put the rubber gasket on the jar.
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