Love it, Yeah Kristijan was right I and had suspected the rotating busters would be a bit over kill. I think Im going to remove them and build a grate system exactly like you mentioned.
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i have thought about batteries i thought maybe a person could take a 55 gallon drum and build edison/ nickel/iron batteries from my understanding a large battery would give high amp hours but still be 1.5v each so you would need to series connect them but some guy on youtube was nickle plating his own from metal window screen to make a mesh the only source i could locate nickel from was welding rods but plating your own is just electrolysis
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1.2 to 1.25 volts if I remember right and yes each isolated container no matter how big would only be 1 cell. Once upon a time On the yahoo forums someone talked about making a large nickel iron cell using 50 gallon plastic barrels and sheets of nickel. He never posted pics and went quiet though. It’s a good solid chemistry but it does electrolyze a lot of water and has a lower efficiency then lead and much lower than lithium. There was talk in some academic circles of harnessing that electrolysis and turning it into a hydrogen maker and battery… just research still.
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The efficiency is not there. Just get Lipo cells and be done with it. Either LifePo4 or lithium ion both are well above 90% efficiency and they are getting cheaper and cheaper all the time. Its not even worth your effort to try and build a better mouse trap with whats currently on market.
You can get these cells here for $150 bucks this is 2 kW/hrs!! Thats a great deal and those cells absolutely amazing. https://www.batteryclearinghouse.com/products/100-pack-3-7v-8ah-200a-lithium-ion-power-spim08hp
Just build large enough so you never hard cycle your cells. This is easier to do now that prices are so cheap. If you never hard cycle your batteries they will last many many years.
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I knew a guy that built what started as an ebike and ended up being beefed up into an electric motorcycle using those cells. I think he went with 72V and 50ah total.
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Where would you buy a sheet of electrolytic nickle?
We make the stuff where I work and even I could not tell you where to buy a sheet of it.
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At the time the old timer said he was ordering it via Alibaba. You had to take a lot with a grain of salt on yahoo forums
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Yes that guy was from Texas if i remember correctly and as soon as he was asked to show and prove us he went very defensive , said he would tell us but not show us , still it did get a lot of people talking about trying to build one
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Sheet won’t work, you need at least nickel(II) hydroxide, which can be treated with potassium hydroxide to make nickel(III) oxide-hydroxide. Most of it it starts with salt like NiCl2, which is fairly cancerous. I don’t know if you can just dump chlorine on sheet nickel and have it work or not. I’m not touching it. There is like a nickel (II) sulfate that might work and could be safer to synth but I didn’t chase that reaction down.
I don’t think edison batteries are worth your time at this point, unless you are doing it for fun.
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I need to build fire pit and looking for ideas. I have brush to burn so it needs to be large but not overly expensive <$1,000. It’s going to be located on a sloped portion of the back yard - probably 5% grade. Would be nice to have some room for seating - definitely needs a grass free surface around the perimeter so I don’t trim/edge the pit.
https://www.backyardstyle.com/best-smokeless-fire-pit/
Any ideas? It would be great if you post some pictures
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Annie, Those fire pits are actually open-top gasifiers. Have you seen Bob M’s fire pit or his charcoal kiln, Don Mannes has a nice setup, Matt Ryder has demonstrated two styles, Kristian Lettinger had a earthen trough and a retort style. They all have posted videos of their charcoal making if you will use the search tool and look for them. I am sure you will find one that meets your needs.
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Someone else will have to find a picture but it sounds like Gary Gilmore’s upside down pyramid shape would do the job well.
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I think you mean the kon-tiki. (you can google for other references.)
http://www.ithaka-institut.org/en/ct/101-Kon-Tiki-flame-curtain-pyrolysis
(there is a link on this page to a presentation on the kon-tiki.)
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I just look though all the Gary Gilmore videos that are on youtube and didn’t find it but I am sure I saw one of Gary’s inverted pyramid shaped charcoal burner. Unless I dreamed it.
I know Don Mannes has one on his YouTube.
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The ones you posted are pretty small. There are a couple of people that tried to make them out of bricks on youtube with varying degrees of supposed success. I think you need to have it fairly deep to get the chimney effect going unless you use forced air like a fan to blow the air through. Which gary gilmore did do with a 55 gallon drum retort.
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Tom and others, I just found this on Gary Gilmore’s Pyramid Kiln:
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I wish I had one of my old broken PTO seed spreaders. That would be a good use for it. Was sold for scrap a decade ago.
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I found what I was looking for—more on Gary Gilmore’s Pyramid Kiln:
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Thanks a bunch SteveB. I was starting to join the large group that thinks I’m crazy.
I can easily see making a nice sitting area around that.
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