Nice run, Gordon,
As Wayne points out, you’re hooked now. Now for some of the 75% operator experience which will lead you to those “refinements” in design and operation. Good job and good luck. I’m sure you will find the group in general ready with advice and comments. I agree, they’re a great bunch of guys to hang out with, so to speak. My first VW and engine rebuild was a 58 Kharmen Ghia convertible.
Pepe
Wayne, that group singing ring of fire sounds a lot like the old statler brothers to me.
Pepe,
Thank you for the support. Great guys here. I certainly do have refinements. I’ll make a better video of start-up to run engine tomorrow. My son didn’t capture the good revs of the engine. I haven’t touched timing yet. I love Karmen Ghias and had a few.
Wayne, Nice video. What a perfect topper for the end of what was one of the funnest days of my life. I’m a big fan of the man in black. Those guys gave me the “chicken skin” with such nicely blended harmonies.
have fun always Gordon
Hi Gordon “oui-geee”
I’ll try a long post again.
Referring back up to your unified rod down center hopper stirrer and grate shaker idea. . .
As I said on the phone the first problem that crops up is anything metal down trough those different heat zones warp, distort dies in a few 10’s to 100 hours.
Center DOWN air nozzles, or center UP air nozzles live because the incoming air will cool them some.
Here the second problem that I’ve ran into trying this . . .
The tuning of the actions of hopper versus grate becomes fixed together… This, then forces a fellow into a very narrow wood species, particle size and ash content usage range.
Set up for a hard char, high ash true hardwood then it will be crushing and crumbling softwood conifer fuel-chars.
Re-jigger for the hopper tarry conifer woods with a re-jiggered then grate gentle softwood action and then switching to a high ash hardwood and the grate ash flow clogs badly.
Making these two system needs demand/command independent, then a fellow WITHOUT any arms/mechanical changing but just independent duration actuation can easily handle the widest range of wood fuels.
Ha! Ha! My Sthil chainsaw wants to be fed mid-grade ethanol-free gasoline. Overheats on low test E-10 when worked hard. Misfires, low power on the slower combustion speed Premium grade.
Wife’s 2007 Hyundai will work fine on current E-5 to E-10, low and mid-test gasolines. Would misfire complain about the high octane E-10. Run lean, hot and dangerous on an E-85 mix. Only run a few hundred miles on any of the old high lead gasoline before killing the cat.
Our 99 Plymouth flex fuel mini-van will run happy on all of the above - except for the old leaded due to the cat clogging. Both the 2007 and 1999 as OBDII would down stream oxygen sensor sense the cat malfunction and FI/timings go into limp-in modes. And even if not would small orafices injectors clog up in months on the older gasolines.
The 84 Ford pick-up now sans cat could fuel with ANY gasoline post WWII. Run fine on the two higher test grade of gasoline since the late 1920’s. Carbureted, with large flow orifices, even eat a lot of watery, dirty gasoline and just keep on trucking along.
Got enough fuel picky, weak sisters here in my life already
Never wanted a needs spec pellets only "wood"stove/heater dependency. Bunch in the family have these. NO heat in our last two power outages. Their wood fuel pellets cost have varied form $215 to $400 a ton, to no-can-get in the last 7 years. Subbing non-minimum ash and moisture spec animals bedding pellets really slagged/clogged these systems up badly.
MY bulkwood stoves are able to fuel with ANY woods I can stuff into them. Pitchwoods. Barks. Wood chips/splinters/cones in paper sacks even.
Best to design a personal woodgasifier to have this same wide range of wood fuel capability.
Although I can stunt jigger cheat the wood fuel in some way to make any airtight gasifer system work after a fashion for video moments: NOT something I want of be tied into doing continuously. Always run short on the “special” wood fuel portions. Too much waste in the “unusable” fuelwood portions then. Now that is true waste. That is inefficiency. An insult to 'Ma Nature.
Only ever so much white breast meat on any chicken. Only so much bacon on any hog.
Omnivorous eaters/fuelers will always OUTDO long term the selective picky insistent pizza and cake eaters.
I want my woodgasifiers to be a thrifty goat not a primadonna princes pony.
Regards
Washington State Steve Unruh
Steve Unruh
Had a fun talk yesterday… My ideas work sometimes…sometimes not. Had a rough day getting the old girl hot enough for motor running. Grate was plugged I think. barely made warm marshmellows…back to the ole drawing board. Had bad bridging problems. Gas quality fluctuating. I’m going to tear into it tomorrow. I wont be happy til I’m a meat-n-potatos, HP to the ground gasser. Had a pretty blue (no power)flame all day. I just burned up the wood in the hopper and left some char for another start-up tomorrow. Had other mishaps too but I learned alot. No steam tho today. I’ll say more after I get some sleep. GordonO
Sorry Gordon; My long post didn’t go through. A summary. Suggestion: put a thermocouple in the area of the grate. You are using that variable air intake and I think the TC would tell you when you have the correct air setting. 1000 degrees F before feeding gas to engine-- 1300 F while running. They aren’t that expensive.TomC
Hi TomC,
I got a thermocouple coming. X-mas shipping must be slow.
I’m running the air full valve open on run, or fully closed to shut down machine. Actually cools off pretty quick when shut intake valve. Temps were very low on gas exit pipe. I’m thinking I need to slot (or star-cut) grate. Maybe redesign entire grate area. I’m going to cut nozzles back for better air direction and wood gravity flow. I open the hopper and there is a center burn hole w/blocks stacked 1/3 the way up the hopper.
I believe I said it before but i’ll say it again. Cut your nozzles back then add a “tar fence”. A cylinder that is about the diameter of your nozzle circle with a hole where each nozzle can blow through. The cylinder should go from the restriction to as I say just above the nozzles. It is ok if the fence ends just under the nozzles The outside of the ring will fill with char and be an insulator. The inside will be where you oxidation and reduction takes place. As it is now, you have all sorts of room for the pyrolysis gases including tar to pass between , around and below the nozzles with out getting in to the HotSpot.TomC
TomC,OK, will do, I like the insulation factor too. Gordon
Hey TomC
I got my last long post to stick here by putting it up in bits and pieces by on-site posting, then editing adding and adding.
Even pushed it toward the end adding in colons, semicolons and quotations. Call me a sneaky bastard . . .or, just an always git’ter done kinda fellow.
GordonO if you look in BenP’s book toward the end in the performance improvements section he shows making his nozzle tips flush behind an added in “combustion sleeve”. You can leave this open at the top for self filling with ash. But that leaves another edge for the fuel chunks to hang up on. My photo album here on the DOW shows mine pulled out with an added on steep angle cone to seal and guide. In BensGift book system he seals and slopes this with some slathered in furnace cement. He wanted to make the book system metal coneless, easy to fab. Ha! Never refer to his as a tar fence. Anger him royally. On his systems with intentional added in spun alumina silica insulation batting this piece could be also called an insulation retainer sleeve. This sleeve will be subjected to more heat, expansions and erosions than the anything else except the choker restriction. Best to have both of these as non-bolted down able to expansion/contraction float, and be pull-out/drop-in changeable. Like a brake shoe or pad - intended use wear sacrificial.
Yep. Once you run enough pounds of cumulative wood fuel through, the ash will build up lower down choking off flows.
Verify by grabbing and shaking the bejesus out of the hearth while running looking for improvement changes.
I can’t remember . . If your grate is chain hung then an up from the bottom or out the side simple rod shaker would let you begin to learn when and how much you will need to grate activate for your fuels and usages.
Rod needs to be sealed/sleeved gastight.
menber Dutch John shows how to do this on his woodgasification site:
www.woodgas.nl
In pictures in his Micro Gasifiers section.
For now on your hopper bridging just put in smaller loads of dryer fuel chunks.
Once you DO get your system flows and temps up as TomC advises you will be surprised how much of this problem then isn’t a problem.
Regards
Steve Unruh
SteveU TomC,Good advice you guys. I do need to cut my nozzles back and create an insulated space. I have thought about what to do. I’m going to make a drop-in “hearth insulator sleeve or tar fence” w/cone attached above to help with wood gravity flow that is removable and sacrificial. Space will fill-up with small pieces of char and ash. I will take more detailed pics for everyone to see. I’m confident this will solve a few problems. I got the pieces to build my new cooler. cost was less than $100 total. I’m on the road to conversion for power gas that is clean and plentiful. I’m going to star or slot my grate.
Thanx for the help Gordon oh oh forbidden. better use Steves sneaky approach It worked. cant use the perenthecese sp? won’t postPs. I have been shaking my hopper and do get better gas for a while.
Hi Gordon,
I read above where you mentioned a grate shaker. I have a manual grate turner and a vibrator shaker which is bolted onto my burner unit. I copied this from Dan Cox. He says the vibrator works so well for him that he seldom uses the grate turner. Check out the first minute of this video for a look see. It’s a quick (relatively) fix. I found I had to use my grate turner much less with the vibrator operated about 20 to 30 sec every 15 minutes or so, usually prompted by an engine rpm slow down. Rpm slowdown and pick up after vibrating at 4 min 40 secs.in first vid. I will set this up on a timer later.
My new grate config seems to work well. It is 1/4" mild steel. Dan Cox’s is motorized and on a timer. I may do this just to have both options. I’ll be working on my own “refinements” this winter!
Enjoy.
Pepe
hopper shaker
manual grate turner
Pepe,
I love woodgas videos. Wish people would make more. I learn alot from actual gasifier build,start-up/run,videos.I like to see gassers designs. I like your machine very much. You are like me with the “whatever happens…post it” get feedback from the other guys. I see you have been making woodgas for quite a while.
I’m going to cutback my nozzles today and see how she runs before I go get steel for a hearth insulator/tarfence. I’m low on bucks. I’m still going over design thoughts. Should be easy enough. Still designing my grate shaker in my head. Your designs have given me thoughts. I really appreciate the time and thoughts towards my “fier”. Just going to put some wood in and fire her up today for test and pleasure. Might make a video and post.
Gordon
OK …Help,
I just cut back my nozzles to almost flush as to convert to a WK design hearth. I got a good flame for about 5 minutes. then just a good smoker for 30 mins til I shut down. I could not light it at all. Temps went way up from 300f at lower exit pipe as it was to 750f at exit like it went into heater mode. Kept shaking it hard to see if wood was bridging. Still no flame. The only thing I can think of is I was bubbling soot and water in drop box. All I got at exhaust pipe was heavy tar water. Actually made a puddle on the ground. Nothing but smoke. I cleaned the hopper but did not clean dropbox filters before lighting. I will let it cool down a bit and clean good, then relight. Any ideas?
first pic is original nozzle and second is after cutting
Idea, I’m hoping the new temps are a good thing and I was just burning off crap stuck in the drop box and stainless filter. I’m hoping I didn’t just convert to a bad woodstove.Here are some more pics.
first is new load of wood
second is tar/water on exhaust pipe. what a mess.
UPDATE: Well my fears are confirmed. After a good total cleanout all I’m getting now is unburnable smoke. 20 minute run. All I can do now is lower my nozzles into Imbert demensions.
2hrs later: OK got burnable smoke this time,but very orange and massive tar streams with water coming down flare pipe. Just burning wood out for repairs. Was certainly converting tars better with nozzles shooting in 1.5 inches. very strange
I just caught this post on the side so I do not know all your details, but it sounds like you are lacking a good char bed. That will always make tar/smoke.
Hey Gordon I think I screwed you up. I didn’t like the nozzles sticking way out there and thus suggested you shorten them. Din’t think you would cut them off entirely. And I was really pushing for a “tar fence”. Not needed now with the nozzles not protruding. So lets back up. Are you running the 4" restriction? What is the diameter of the circle around the nozzles tips? What is the diameter of each nozzle tip? How far is it from the nozzle tip to the restriction? And finally do you have a manometer to see how much vacuum you are pulling? This last run were you pulling it “hard” with a shop van?
Until I hear from you I guess I would just say, do you have any way of extending the nozzles back out and adding a tar fence. I know that is probably a lot to ask. My thought right now is you are just getting oxidation and pyrolysis with out reduction. You are not getting enough velocity out of the nozzle to penetrate to the center of the nozzle circle. Thus it isn’t working like an Imbert. The flame front is coming out of the nozzle but doesn’t reach the center and it heads down towards the restriction. But as it nears the restriction the char hasn’t gotten hot enough to cause reduction. At the start you got a flare from pyrolysis gases but then they diminished and you weren’t getting enough heat to burn the tars or get reduction. After 2 hours of running you were probably getting the ash cone developed from the nozzles to the restriction on the outside but the flame was not getting to the center where tar was passing down.
So, lets try a couple of things. Can you pull more vacuum? If so, vary it and see what happens. You have 8 nozzles. For the engine you are running 8 - 1/2" nozzles would be a lot. I would get some copper tubing that would just fit inside the nozzles you have and place them inside the nozzles. This should increase the velocity of the air giving the fire front more of a chance of getting close to the center of the nozzle circle. You could cut the copper long enough to extend towards the center of the circle like your old nozzles did but maybe not as far. If you get the extensions, then cut a tin can and drop in as a tar shield for a try.It could go from the restriction to just under the nozzles.
I’m truly sorry for mis leading you. TomC
Hi Gordon,
I’m not familiar with the WK too much, but I’m offering my thoughts about power needed, nozzles, their diam, diam of nozzle ring, nozzle c/l to restriction, restriction diam, etc. These are “imbert” considerations but I feel there is a certain connection between designs that allows the production of good gas. Anyhow in that vein I feel that cutting back your nozzles to deal with bridging changed the nozzle ring diameter and thus the dynamics of your previous “working” numbers. So keeping track of the numbers that worked is a must. Your nozzle velocity may not now be forceful enough to heat up the larger mass of fuel that it has to penetrate. Temperature goes down, gas quality suffers or stops, wood basically just burns. I had an internal (bad weld) leak in my fluidyne and 1/2" nozzle diam (too big) and had all kinds of problems to deal with. I ended up going to the “imbert” gasifier I have now. I’m just thinking off the top of my head now for stuff that stands the test of reasonableness. In my head a smaller firetube the diam of the nozzle ring (your spec here) would be better. Then you have fuel flow considerations, funnels so to speak to transition diameters smoothly, hopper to firetube.
Joseph has a good point the char bed is the energy that drives the chemistry. Its size and temperature critically affects gas production. My little gasifier has a very large conical volume of glowing char. I’m not sure what you mean by “lower my nozzles to imbert”. Again I caution you to keep or find some numbers for a reference point. If you get a chance look through my first small engine run for my firetube, hourglass hearth for some size perspective and tech drawings of my design. Some might say I’m mixing apples and oranges. It’s not bad, I drink it.
The thing I like about what I’m doing is following the “imbert” chart posted elsewhere on the site. I really didn’t have much of a clue what else to do. I watched scads of videos also scouring for clues. Love it!. Hope these thoughts helps.
Pepe
EDIT: I just read Tom’s response and he has some good suggestions. I had a home built fan with an 1800 rpm motor that Chris suggested I use a 3600 rpm motor on to increase pull. It worked. The fix for the nozzles seems easy enough to do for tests.
Let me also say that you should keep fuel size, MC, etc consistent to more accurately measure gasifier physical changes on gas quality. Yup, you need to be a QA tech. too. lol!
Hi TomC, Pepe
You didn’t mislead me Tom. Your info is very important to me. So things didn’t workout perfectly. There’s always a fix.
I have a hearth inner liner fix that will give me a reference guide for research in gas production with nozzle length and hole size,and distance from the hotzone info. Plus it will give me more preheat of the air coming in.I will expose my design as I build it with pics. My design will give me nozzle height, diameter and length readings that will help my quest for as perfect gas as I can make with what I have already assembled. I wish I had my thermocouple to help with my findings as I go. It will be here any day, plus I still have to assemble my inner test sleeve. I am not trying to “one-up” Jacques Imbert or Wayne but there might be a cross WK/Imbert area of gas production that is viable. My original design worked OK but cutting back the nozzles was too drastic for a cure. I will find a spot there somewhere or I will just have to go Imbert demensions as per chart formula.
I had the vacuum up high and low to see the change in gas/smoke. I did get lightable gas when turned up full blast. Still very tarry and wet. I can always go back to my original but that wasn’t really good enough anyway. This will be an interesting journey. There’s something to be said about the journey. But the destination is everything here. GordonPs. Had a good charbed
Hey GordonO
The advices both TomC and R"Pepe" are giving is good.
Library holiday shut out so having to wifi out in the rain.
There is a working window between “Imbert/Scandinavian” specs and WK specs. This does have a narrow possibilities operating range though. The other side of Imbert/Scandinavian specs is Doug Williams Fluidyne. Past WK specs is stratified stuff (FEMA), IISc/Mukunda.
A fully heated up but then underdrawn Imbert/Scandinavian will act like a WK until it loses too much heat energy.
An overdraw WK will act like an Imbert/Scandinavian until you char consume rat holes then allowing oxygen down to the grate level.
You really have a branch choice now in developing –
Work on making the wood fuel match the systems range use characteristics: examples GEK’s and the DriZZler systems now only able to use screened chipped or desified pelletized fuels.
Evolve towards a design able to fuel with the woods and chunks sizing you are able and willing to make up.
Example here:
http://www.timeandbeing.com/Applications/CountryLiving/VictoryGasworks-Hotwatt.pdf
scroll down for the wood feed stocks recommendations for a true BenDesigned system. He calls his systems Imbert derivatives. I actually disagree with this. His are a much a more balanced approach to get this wide of range of fuel woods types and sizing.
Your last burn effort may have had a deep char bed. But from your results that char bed was too cold and inactive.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Hi Gordon,
I am re-watching some ALL Power Labs tutorials on gasification. They’re really good. I didn’t get into the chemistry until I built my latest version. He answered many of my questions. If you’re not familiar with them here’s a link for part 4 where he begins the chemistry lesson. Very interesting, I think you’ll like it.
Pepe
