My gasifier keeps firing back into the hopper

You must have an air leak some olace in the system, or posibly your air too the burn tube hearth is too short of distance, on our Wayne Keith gasifiers, Our air feed goes through two heat exchangers, And has air feed shut off when shutting down too park. At leist 10 feet away from the hearth air feed.

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If he built it to Flashā€™s specs itā€™s basically a FEMA thatā€™s been renovated to preserve heat and run on twigs and other little bits of wood. So basically a single nozzle Imbert for the most part, tall gas jacket and no monorator hopper to collect condensate. Flash had the right idea to insulate his restriction and reduction zone with cement, Flash is a super nice guy and will answer comments to this day.

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But isnā€™t a fema a down draft, why is his outlet on top of barrel ?

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The barrel is the gas jacket, it goes the whole length. The hearth and hopper are welded or flange bolted to the lid of the barrel. Everything necessary to run the core is attached via the lid so you can pull it out for repairs.

Flash built his hoppers fairly small, to keep run times a reasonable length.

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The hopper is hard to see in the picture but I circled it in Green.
Red is the gas exit
Blue is his air intake I think.

Speaking of which, that rubber coupler running between the gasifier and what heā€™s referred to as a cyclone will be a weak point, those Fernco couplers melt and will leak air, they also get cracks that suck air in. Looks more like a drop box, but they both do a similar job of losing the heavy particulate

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Hi Hodi,
Welcome at DOW

The only reason a gasifier can ā€œburpā€ is if there is an combustible mixture available in the section between nozzle tips and lid.

Check your nozzle piping for leaks
Check everything with airpressure at 1 bar for leaks, with soapy water.

Donā€™t asume , DO check and recheckā€¦
The smallest airleak can enter enough oxy to make it burpā€¦

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Ok I getcha thereā€™s a smaller barrel on in side and gas runs up to outlet and intake must be on other side we canā€™t seešŸ‘But why all tar, creosote on fan, looks like very cold smoke coming out ,maybe like Steve said not enuf suction, I run 4 of those bilge fans and itā€™s barely enufšŸ˜¬

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Looks like heā€™s using wood pellets which have a lot of moisture thatā€™s hard to get rid of. If you fill up a hopper with it and donā€™t have a way to get rid of the water it will turn to mush.

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Also the gas could be getting cooled by the one bilge blower and dropping tar around the exit of the drop box. Heā€™s said it hasnā€™t gotten to the right operating temp yet without a puffback so it probably hasnā€™t been entirely warmed up.

The Flashifier has a relatively small char bed to work with, from what I understand Flash doesnā€™t leave a full hopper at shutdown and will top off the charcoal during the next lighting up. The concrete insulation takes a little while to get good and hot to help crack tar.

One big merit to Flashā€™s design is his filtration, uses one or two expansion tanks, then the cooling rail, and then 3 filter pipes going from course to fine. The fine filter will plug if thereā€™s tar before it can reach the engine because the gas is nice and cool once it reaches the filters.

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Srry for late reply i got the 22 hr wait nitificatiinā€¦

Had got her sealed and got the generator to run off it. But it died again, can i remove blower once its hot enough and just let the generators natural vacume do the sucking? Oh and i Got the poof again somehow after it sealed good and the generator was started. Then she wouldnt produce syngas again, poof gave me air leak somewhere i think. Cause when i tried to get genset going again the gas coming out wouldnt ignite

Also yes the air nozzle vent out the top, and no i did not know wood pellets were such a bastardā€¦learning is messy here :joy:

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Ty everyone for your help

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Yes, donā€™t use the blower once you can run an engine off of the gas.

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Dean, Cody,
I agree, I am not seeing this properly?? How does air intake on top of lid agree with nozzle piping picture on post #3?
@HodlTarantula ; Welcome to the forum!! :grin:

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It comes in at the gas jacket lid, then into the hopper via the side.

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I am having trouble understanding how the system is supposed to work.
After reading and rereading all the posts, maybe I do see.
So, thereā€™s an inner hopper within the gray barrel. The bottom of that hopper contains the grate, right?
You have to remove that inner hopper to reload it, donā€™t you?
The gases that leave the bottom of the grate must be sucked up between the Hopper and the outside of the gray barrel. Thereā€™s a lot of air space, so that means youā€™d have to suck for quite a while to get all the oxygen out, right?
Then the gases flow to the red tank. Is that the filter/cooling system? What is inside there? How do you clean it? How do you know that itā€™s not already plugged up? (I see tar streaks running down the side of the red tank).
I agree with the poster who said you need more suction. Iā€™d say at least 4 or 5 inches water column.

Sorry for rambling on, but I think you should be measuring temperature and suction below the grate.

One HUGH troubleshooting clue for me, is that the paint on the gray barrel isnā€™t at all discolored. Iā€™d say that the reactor temps are much too low.

Pete Stanaitis

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You donā€™t have to take the unit out to refill it. The hopper is welded to the drum lid like anyone else would do, it has its own hopper lid. Itā€™s just hard to see in the photograph itā€™s a bad angle, obfuscated by other objects.
The red tank is just a drop box/expansion tank. Itā€™s the first hurdle of the cooling system.

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Yes i wasnt able to get it up to proper operating temp before it would burp and put out

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So i was warned by family to take a break and clean up my shop as i was so gung ho on this everythi g else went to the way side even cleani g up after myself. Im gonna finish shop ckeaning and then go and double check my sealsā€¦also my blower sounds crispy inside can anyone recomend a more hearty blower? One that can eal with this heat and tar just for start ups.

Also thanks again everyome so welcoming. I wont stop thos project till i can runn my little 10kw genny with this for at min couple hours at a timeā€¦thats not unreasonable i hope. And ty again for all the help. Ill be back. Blessingsā€‹:pray::orange_heart:

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Shops clean, busines trip next week, then back to working on the gassifierā€‹:orange_heart::raised_hands:

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Cody,
I know many have used this method for making lid gaskets using stove rope and rtv. The stove rope I have is graphite impregnated. Do you think that will work or do I need to find some without graphite?

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