My ash cleanout is at the very bottom, so I guess I could clean out slag that way, unless you mean 180 degrees from the air entrance?
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Yup 180 from the air entrance. Also known as a tuyere or these guys call them nozzles.
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I’ve only ever heard the term tuyere used with cupola iron melting furnaces.
Rindert
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Rindert!
Good stuff, now I feel obligated to dig up my old text books. I like to be able to cite my sources. I am not sure which corner my books are piled in. The narrative goes like this: At Florida location (outside Laurium, Michigan) is a Brown Field slag site where there was a gas plant. The gas plant used gas producers to turn coal into the old monoxide gas. The gas producer’s air intakes were called tuyeres.
I don’t know much about the specifics of this local gas plant, and I should. I don’t know if they bothered with the water shift reaction, and made blau gas or whether they fired the producers in benches (groups) heating the coal to incandescence then exposing it to steam, or did they use a rotary heat exchanger like some of the boiler stacks.
It’s all good stuff, and it’s where I came from before learning about modern wood gas. Perhaps you will forgive me for using the old language.
Here is a screen shot of Ali Kaup (sp) mentioning tuyeres, and! Look at that! The same kind of gas producer Cody is building! Serendipity!
But back to the point, I think Cody needs to be able to rod his blocks down when they bridge over that pipe leading the air in to the hopper. I will look and see if that Hopper is laying around here somewhere and photograph the rodding port I built for it.
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Luckily for my tuyere I can unscrew it via reaching inside it. It’s attached via a 3/4" npt elbow and the nozzle portion is at the other end. I believe right now I’m in the ballpark of 5" above restriction. I’d like to shorten that outside portion of the air intake eventually and re thread it for the check valve again. I might do away with the check valve for a good old fashioned cap.
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Cody,
This is the producer I built some time ago. I had a mono tuyere like yours. I had fed it air that was pulled from a pipe that went directly under the grate. I had such a bad time with bridging that I cut the tuyere out, patched the hopper wall and added radial tuyeres.
This producer had a different fuel and different purpose then yours. I burnt wood blocks, not charcoal. It also made gas for storage, not engines.
Also Note the rodding port/lighting port.
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I’ll attempt to use the same large wood chips/mulch type fuel that Joni used in his little single nozzle. I’ve just pre loaded it with a lot of charcoal so I don’t have to build a char bed. Luckily the shaking and vibration of the direct mounted 10hp Briggs and movement of the little truck will knock loose any bridging. I’m making a little poker like what Wayne recommends, rebar with a narrower bar welded to the end.
If the woodchips are too small for this reactor I might use a mixture of small blocks and engine grade charcoal.
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Sounds good, sounds like a lot of fun!
My next iteration with my producer will be pressurized tuyeres like the Russian green birch wood burning producers had.
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Going to work some more on the micro truck.
I think I’ve figured out how I can mount the steering rack. It sadly doesn’t have holes to mount any bracketry but I will instead make some clamps to hold the tubular portion of the rack body. I’m really wondering how these things are even meant to go on a go kart, which is what these are marketed for.
If I can figure that out I’ll work on some of the cooling rails I think.
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Well since the accident I have some spare parts I can salvage. One of the bolt down locking rings that held the barrel down is warped so I’ll cut this down to use as the base for a gutter. Just need to trim it. I also really need to get to working on the gas cooler and filter for the reactor.
Still looking for a little cooking pot to use as a more convenient filling lid so I can use the main lid as a puffer top.
I didn’t pre fill the gasifier with wood ash to reinforce the restriction so I’ll probably need to keep an eye on everything.
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I’ve finally figured out how I can attach a rear leaf spring suspension on this truck without too much fuss.
I’ll take 4 4-bolt flange pillow block bearings and two lengths of 2" pipe. The 2" pipe will have floor flanges on each end to bolt the pillow block bearings. From the pipes I can weld a spring perch for my leaf springs. To prevent the keyed shaft from wobbling around I’ll use split collars.
I can branch the two pipes together to give me a brake perch for something like a set of band brakes. Might not even need that and instead have a brake perch on each pipe for the brake bands. If I’m lucky I could find one of my local golf cart places and get some golf cart drum brakes.
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My educated guess has paid off. A 2" NPT floor flange lines up perfectly with a 4 bolt flange type pillow block bearing. Thank you to the geniuses of the old Popular Mechanics.
To make them self align I will use coned locking nuts. Grade 8 bolts. I’ll drill the floor flanges out to 5/16" since they’re just a hair below that size. The floor flange has a counter sunk face so the coned nuts will align well, and I will countersink the faces of the pillow block bearings.
Edit: forgot to mention but I also believe that using coned nuts on each side will help relieve lateral stress on the bolts themselves.
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This is the plans I used that inspired my floating axle. In this build they only used one power wheel but mine will be a live axle.
http://horselesscarriagereplicas.com/FreePlans/1901Olds.pdf
And I’m using normal trailer springs instead of custom leafs.
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Here is an open ended example of what I was talking about. Pillow block bearing bolts to the floor flanges, which gives me a static and strong place to weld in some spring perches. Axle rotates freely inside and there is no risk of it touching the outer axle. This also gives me the benefit of having 4 bearings instead of 2 as it sits right now, and they are evenly spaced throughout the live axle so weight should be distributed evenly as well.
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Seems like trailer leafs would be so stiff on something as light weight at that to provide no flex. Seems like you would have been better off with some coil over shocks and maybe a three link unless the third link interfered with the sprocket. I know monday morning quarterback. I’ll enjoy seeing you get this all together,.
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