Later l used a sack made of felt. It was a sack we had at work as lime dust filter. Althugh more restrictive, this will not pass ANY dust trugh and it might saved my engine on separate occasions. If l made tar for any reason, wich you do eventualy even useing the purest of charcoal, the felt fill clog and show you the red light that something is wrong. It will not filter tar, but it will not let it trugh!
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Yeah that’s what has been preventing me from doing woodchips. I just need to make a bigger bag from the upholstery.
Need to do a serious cleanup. Idle is messed up no matter which way i fiddle with the mixture screw. Maybe sparkolators are fouled up. Already cleaned the carburetor with some spray cleaner to get any junk off of the jets.
Once the engine cools down some I need to see if the truck popped one of the rubber caps from the vacuum ports on the intake manifold.
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Cody , keep an eye out for one of these pool filters , it has a hell of a lot of surface area , this is one i bought a month or two ago , i also have some made from plastic that work well .
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I could probably rig up one to use two of those long elements. I left enough pipe on the inside to hose clamp my bags so I could take a tee and some elbows and branch out a few.
I’ll try out a larger bag filter though.
There’s a large amount of dust from only about 18 miles of driving. It bothers me on the amount. I’m screening the charcoal twice for dust but I guess the smallest bits get pulverized while driving. I’ll defer to the experts but it seems like so much I would want a cyclone to make the bag filters job easier. While I was at work I got it up with a shop vac, there had to have been a mm or more thick coat of dust all around the inside and thicker on the bottom.
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Cody , without scrolling up and looking at your system , do you have a cyclone ? if you are making your charcoal from softwood then that will explain why it is so dusty , charcoal made from seasoned hardwood is not that dusty at all , i know this because when i am grinding my charcoal up as soon as any charcoal goes through that was made from pine or other softwoods goes through the amount of dust is unbearable , and as soon as hardwood charcoal goes through its pretty much little to nothing .
The other good thing about a updraft gasifier is that all the fuel above where your nozzle is also becomes a filter of sorts it helps keep down a lot of the dust as well as keeping it cool
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I don’t have a cyclone in this updraft system, no.
And I use a mix of wood as my charcoal feedstock. Oak branches and pallets right now. On the inside of the reactor barrel, I have a rolled up piece of hardware cloth mesh to keep most of the bits inside, a couple layers of 1/4" square section mesh cross hatching a little bit.
My filter box also in theory is supposed to be a drop box of sorts, gas entering from the side near the bottom and exiting through the lid.
More thinking out loud.
Here’s how high everything stacks inside a 55 gallon drum, obviously it would be sitting higher to give room for the swinging grate and room for ash to dump.
I keep going back and forth on how I want to surround the car rim to complete it as the air intake jacket, either grind the rim down to fit inside the 20 gallon drum or take spare barrel sheet and give it more hopper volume by welding the rim to the end of the 20 gallon drum.
For a hopper extension I can salvage part of the Double Flute, cutting at one of the reinforcing ribs and welding that to the lid of the first 55 gallon drum. Then the 20 gallon would double act as the tar gutter. I could use expanded sheet in a cone shape to allow tar to drip down the sides. It would be sitting proud of the cab by a bit but I can live with that.
I’m not sure if I want to angle my jets downwards into the brake drum to heat it up faster, or upwards like how Joni does his.
Just posting my thoughts.
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I do have another idea planned now that I got ahold of a hot water heater tank. I just need a day to go to the scrapyard and find a heavy walled 12" pipe and I can just make a WK reactor, throat it down to work for the Mazda and go from there. I feel like this is the safest bet to take and will last longer than whatever kooky thing I had planned with this stuff.
Made the new sack filter. One of the unused sock filters I made for size comparison.
I lined the inside of the sack with a window screen mesh to hold it open, I’m afraid of it collapsing while engine demands suction.
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Hi Cody if you all ready have widow screening on the inside you can put a pipe with lots of holes drilled in it, and place it on the inside of the screen. This will keep it from collapsing all the way.
During the 1980 Mount St. Helen’s ash clean up in Moses Lake. I built one for my Vehicles, to keep the ash dust out of my engines. It kept the engine filter from clogging up. You could not buy any filters for your cars. The parts stores were all sold out. My filter was a big bath towel and a long vaccum cleaner filter for a up right. They do not make this filter bag any more. I like the swiming pool filter container filter.
Bob
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Iv heard lots of stories from mechanics after Mount St Helens went off, it was a rough time to try to keep a car on the road and breathing
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I’ll probably do that as soon as I get home.
I can just weld some more conduit to the length protruding inside and hose clamp the screen over that and the sack loosely fitting over all that.
I think with the sack having room to partially collapse and inflate with deceleration it will help knock off soot from the bag.
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The window screen is looser than the cloth but I’m considering it my emergency big piece got through the primary type filter. Like a birdcatcher on a turbocharger intake 
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I used to pack stainless dishwashing pads in the sack to hold their shape. They are also springy so the sack “breaths” and cnocks the cake off.
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That is a great I idea Kristijan. I be using that idea on my next tube sock filter build for my new charcoal double flute gasifer I am building.
Bob
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I build a cage from old electric fence wire.
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Also thinking of modifying the gas exit in the reactor. Right now I just have a bundle of hardware cloth but it isn’t catching the smallest stuff. Might copy Gary Gilmore’s disc design where it would at least have to go around that disc before leaving with the gas.
Do you have pictures of the cage build Jeff?
Mine was chicken wire rolled up the size of a coffee can, about 5 times making a solid stiff rolled cylinder.
With charcoal gases I would think the chicken wire would rust quickly though.
Bob
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This is the original filter. Could be eight years old or so.
This is the new version. Just a coil.
Make sure that ends do not damage the cloth.
Just the top portion.
Later I’ll copy these photo links into the Air Carbon Fuel Cell topic.
Edit: at the top it should be “eight years old”. For some reason I can not edit it. Some kind of gateway error.
Error 502. Now the edit worked.
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