Here Derrick, you might like this guy near-state to you:
Hugh Wilson
Enjoy. Be inspired.
S.U.
Odd. It shows good in my post pre-view side bar??
Try for his channel address:
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This is what I have to deal with like what you are talking about. I have more Snow, longer burn ban. But less rain.
It is still much hard to make charcoal, then it is to chunk up the same type of cherry wood. Why do I make charcoal is this, a lot of the cherry wood that I get will never go into my chunker just to big. It has to be burned. So the fire ring or retort is where it goes for that wood. I have both kinds of gasifiers. Wood runs my truck and the charcoal will run my (emergency) generator. If I can get a car or truck running on a charcoal gasifier this would be great.
But I have done both and I say Wood is easier than Charcoal. But I like them both.
And yes I did say I think the FEMA would be better used as a charcoal gasified then a Wood tar making gasifier.
But this is up to Derrick to decide on not me.
I will say this about charcoal gasifiers they are a lot easier to build. Except the one I am building right now and that is one that can do both types or a combination fuel mix, and has some WK design in it that will be running a 5.2 L engine. Fingers crossed. And it will be very hard to keep up with the charcoal fuel only demand load for making it for this larger engine. LOL. And this why It will be able to burn both types of fuel in the gasifier.
Maybe even hope, hope, road side pick up off the ground stuff.
Bob
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Thanks Steve U, I will definitely check Hugh’s videos out and Steve B, no I haven’t done the soapy water test yet. That’s another reason I am making a airtight hopper lid a priority. I figure its like trying to spray soapy water on a nail hole in a tire and find the air leak wile the tire is off the rim. I figure f I can’t seal up the large hopper opening properly , I probably will never have a chance of finding any smaller leaks by blowing a back flow of air through the gas outlet. Unless my thinking on this is wrong, at least that’s why I haven’t tried soapy water and a backflow of pressure yet.
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Would someone please explain this gasifier to me. The four holes below his V shaped hearth.
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Hi Tom , if you do a search on YouTube for a old system i think it was called a G3 I i think it was made by a chap called Luke , he made a gasifier from a tube with a cone that sat held up a little from the bottom of the tube on a turntable type movement with a small gap around the edge of the cone and tube that acted as the nozzle ,air was drawn in through a series of holes about level with the top of the cone i think and drawn down , a quick search for the video i remember came up empty but there were a few made by other people you will get the idea from watching them .
This system seems to work in a similar way from the few seconds i could see , but rectangular instead of a round and burning sticks instead wood pellets like the G3
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TomH,
The best benefits to get from his rectangular system stick-wood video is his use of a good strong variable speed sucking vacuum.
And his showing the system gas temperatures.
His tractor woogasing video is more conventional, understandable. The benefit to it being he is using visual and sound to qualify his gas for engine running NOT a flare. Expereinece.
This stick-wood system is a slit-throat type. Same as a PowerHearth system. Same actually as Vesa Mikkonens “O” throat hearth for woodpellets. Peripheral air jets and rotating center torpedo shaped multiple holes air bulb.
Look at Hugh’s weld lines on his rectangular. He made the center whole first with the tapered bottom walls. Throat slit at the lower meeting up. The straight sides lower with ends and bottom welded up onto that, to form the lower gas collection chamber.
Look along in his video at his from the top liting up all of the way across the whole char bed.
Now how to add the airs at the top of the sloped sides distributed across??
“I think” the answer is in the side welded plugs above the visible drilled air holes. I’d say he is enclosed tubes looping up his incoming airs thru the hot gas stream up to his once was side air jets tubes. Distributing his air across at eight points at the top of the char bed.
I did stick wood horizontal too in a made-in-Yugoslavia cast iron hearth stove.
Same, same, problems I figure the Soviets, and Hugh ran into. Better at making heat than engine woodgas.
Just chunk up the wood to get back Operational control, and wood use efficiencies.
Stick wooding and you have to system sit and poke down for stick knots and lumps char breaking up, and char bed settle too much. What you saved in chunking gets labor intensive later operating the unit.
S.U.
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It’s neat to innovate and brainstorm but I feel like uniform fuel should always be the desired feedstock. Pellets are a little specialized for my taste, harder to make yourself without a mill and constant supply of electricity and sawdust but I see why Vesa made a design around them. I still need to order his books.
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My understanding of these systems is obviously limited. I do better if I get information on paper. The DOW book, Ben Peterson books, even the GEK system posted in instructables. I haven’t taken the time to look much in the DOW library. I’ll have to remedy that. More of a copy cat than innovator.
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Don’t beat yourself up too badly TomH.
I virtually wasted my first two years just trying to use only the-new-to-me Internet info sources as a lets-see. At 36-42 kbs old phone line I could not realistically view any videos. But I did do stacks and stacks of print downloads. The wife complaining, I was hours and hours tying up the phoneline. Wearing out her printer. Burning thru her ink and paper. True, and true.
I missed out on a lot not watching some of the videos.
The majority of the electronic bulletin-board and forums talking was confusing speculations. Patents trollers. Lonely’s, just looking for responses. Angry-mads looking for piling-ons validations of their angry-mads.
Did not help that my woodstoving experiences of thermal-mass and using stick woods forms got in my way either.
Later I did search out and buy the books that were never offered as downloads. Did order and buy publications in real-by-god paper that I had downloaded.
Much, much better . . . but still.
Real understanding and capability only happened for me by operating under year around changing conditions woodgasifier fueling loaded running engines.
So bodge something, anything, together and begin.
No matter what complete system you would buy; from whatever source; until you have operational understanding you will muck it up. Guar-an-damn-teed.
And once you do have operational understanding you can in some way, in some fashion, make damn near anything work. Maybe work not long. Requiring full cleaning out and hand reloading every batch cycle. But you will run an electrical generator or pump for a daily use need cycle.
S.U.
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Well I just wanted to check in with another frustrating progress report. I got my lid re-made and it is probably as close to airtight as I am going to get it with just being hinged and spring loaded. I also remade the seal on my ash door, and sealed up any suspect areas in my air pump and fired it up for another test today.
It was definitely doing something, just not what I wanted. Periodically I would hear a little huff and see a puff of smoke shoot up past the spring loaded pressure out the lid then the lid would settle back and it would take a few minutes to repeat the cycle. I presumed that this was woodgas building up in the hopper and periodically backfiring. I still was getting nothing that would light on the output where it was supposed to though.
So I shut it back down and noticed something I never had before - a little smoke leaking out of the seal of my medium filter, which told me if smoke could leak out, oxygen was probably leaking in there too - so now I have to wait for it all to cool down again and then I’ll pull the lid off the medium filter and see what I have to do to make that seal airtight. One of these days the stars will align and I’ll get this thing right….
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What are you using to bring air to the system? One of those valves up top?
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Got a shop vac handy? Tape that sucker up to your air inlet or gas outlet and turn it on, while it’s still hot it may light up and show you were the leak is with smoke. Or better yet it will stoke the hell out of the fire and produce a good flair. High speed air will do something one way or the other. My truck won’t light a flair on just the blowers, it won’t get to a hot enough temp for at least 15-20 minutes of straight blowers. But before I hooked up pusher blowers Steve suggested a shopvac straight in the air inlet and I’ll be damned if I didn’t have a flair in less then five minutes! That early gas would run the motor but very weak on power for 10-15 miles. What is your gas exit temp from the gassifier? This could also be a clue got a cheap ir gun that you could spot the outlet with and get a temp reading?
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Cody, yes the valve up top allows air to two 1/2’ pipes that go down directly into the hearth zone.
And Marcus, yes, I was wondering about that too if maybe I should hook a second blower to the air inlet and shoot some air in there. But I definitely have to get that leak in my medium filter box fixed. I don’t know if it was always there, but it certainly was obvious today.
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Hi, can you make a simple sketch of what your unit looks like in cross-section, I’m having a little trouble understanding what it looks like?
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Hi Jan, I will try to sketch something up this weekend and post it. I did not follow any sort of plans, but I started out with the concept of the FEMA design and then it became a hodgepodge from there when I discovered it just wasn’t working. I will see what I can sketch out for you when I have a little time.
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Hi Derrick, do you still use the ignition tube?
Is it welded to the firetube or just put in there?
It must be perfectly “airtight” both in the firetube and the outer housing, this is often a problem with gasifiers, heat expansion, and abillity to easy take it apart.
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Yes, I still have the ignition tube, I did weld it into fire tube and coated the welds inside and out with stove gasket cement, just to make sure that there was no undetected void that could leak. When I have a little time this weekend, now that I have fixed my hopper lid to be (relatively) airtight, I am doing to take Dave’s suggestion and blow forced air in the gas outlet and spray everything with soapy water to see if any leaks are revealed anywhere that I previously thought was OK.
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To be perfectly honest. I would look at a more holistic approach to your energy needs.
Using propane or gas to generate electric is =expensive=. 43c/kwh using 2018 numbers. It was never a cheap way to produce electric, just easy. I don’t know if propane costs will drop again. I would be looking at replacements for it. It is a byproduct of oil refining and NG wells. It isn’t going to go back down.
I’m all for you building a gasifier. But most of the designs here aren’t typically 24/7 designs. For transport or for recharging a battery bank it makes more sense.
IF you are planning on sticking with it, buy the WK book and that gives you a firm basic understanding of what you are doing. Trying to piece it together bits of information into something that works isn’t going to be worth your time. But certainly adapt to your resources.
As far as holistic. Don’t cringe, but I would be eyeballing solar panels and a battery bank. Then use woodgas to top off the batteries. It is a lot closer to what off-grid folks use. You can probably run a generator off the vehicle to charge up the battery bank.
For other ideas:
For your AC needs, you can use geothermal. It will also shoot the 50ish degree air up in the winter and it is relatively inexpensive.
For heat, you can also do thermal solar which works in Michigan. It is more or less a box with the inside painted black with a sheet of plastic over it then you slowly push air through it. I just thought about it, but you might be able to use old pallets with leftover construction insulation board. It isn’t commercially as viable as PV, but if you can scrounge materials, it is certainly cheaper. You can do it for water heating as well using a tube like a garden hose inside then slowly pushing water through it.
Some of the more common easier/cheaper solutions, would be to insulate. Most southern houses aren’t insulated. LED bulbs, etc.
There are about 100 other things that may be possible, but only 10 are relevant to your situation.
Quite frankly, I understand not having the cash to pull it all off, but for the most part it is one chunk at a time, then that frees up cash for another chunk.
One more thing, you can rip on Brandons economy, but this rise of oil/energy prices was =predicted= back in 2008 to come in the 2019-2022 range as part of a 10-15 cycle that goes back to the 1950s. It has happened your whole life. The only reason gas didn’t shoot up to 10 bucks a gallon is all the work that started back in 2008. Which started with lame duck legislation that allowed for fracking then followed up with 2009 reinvestment and reconstruction act to push alternative energy and ev’s during the boom oil cycle. Otherwise, we would be mostly screwed right now. Even Trump didn’t back off the policy much. Most of what he did was superficial.
That being said, you have covid issues due to the trillions in covid relief, and people artificially jacking up prices anticipating a minimum wage increase due to far left democratic propaganda pushed by Klueless Kamala.
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Sean, I agree wholeheartedly. It is frustrating now because we are shooting ourselves in the foot nationally by shutting down our own oil production, while going outside the country to OPEC and other places and asking them to ramp up their production for us, so I just can’t understand how this policy is green or of any benefit - we are just paying someone else to pump the oil we need instead of doing it ourselves. Yet nevertheless as you said, even before Brandon the fluctuations in the market were apparent. Oil would always seem to creep up after a scuffle in the Middle East or a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, but when the crisis was over prices would never recede.
The extremes of Brandon’s economy have just taught me to try to work more with what I have and be even more self sufficient than I already am, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I figured I already have the generators, so there’s no investment there, and I sure have all the wood I’ll ever need -so I figured that was a good start. I have looked into solar as well and initially thought of that before gasification for my generator - but the downside is that to produce the same kilowatts that I can with a generator, my battery bank would have to be huge and that’s where I found the expense is. I found the solar panels are actually very affordable, but I can’t figure out a way to do the batteries on the cheap, so that was my restriction.
Nevertheless, as you said, a little at a time - if I can get my gasifier working as I hope, I know it will not be a 24/7 solution, but I will be one step closer, and then I can look towards what can I do next? I still haven’t given up on solar and batteries, but it may be later down the road when I have saved a little more to do it comfortably. These days I won’t finance anything, I own everything I have free and clear and live debt free and won’t do something unless I have the cash savings to do it comfortably. But it is all achievable. One of our biggest handicaps in our age is the mentality that “I have to have it now” and then we finance it at outrageous interest rates. I think more in terms of how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, lol! But you know what, even if I woke up tomorrow and Brandon had a change of heart and opened all the pipelines and a barrel of oil dropped in price and gas and propane were cheap again - gasification is something I should have achieved a long time ago, since why buy anything that nature provides for me for free? Heck I have so much dry deadfall on my property that I am constantly having to clean up. Even for winter firewood, I rarely have to cut a living tree, most of my firewood comes from whatever deadfall came down in the storms over the past year. And then the young saplings are constantly coming up and replacing all of the stuff that comes down naturally, true sustainability!
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I don’t want to say a lot because this is a wood gas forum. But Obama’s policy was convoluted in a way because it addressed like 20 issues all at once. The first is the realization, we have oil, but it isn’t cheaply extractable. We could have 6trillion barrels of oil but if it costs 200/barrel to get it out of the ground. It doesn’t help because gas will be 15 bucks a gallon. That is what they aren’t telling you.
Realize this is purely a fight over money by people and companies with millions or billions of dollars invested, and not all of them are people from the US and some of it by adversaries are fighting to keep their piece of the pie. We stagnated development of alternatives because of circular arguments and some laws that locked in oil or ff’s in general.
Then there are other issues as well like coal plants are nearing end of life, oil and gasoline pipelines are 50+ years old, and both require trillions of dollars in reinvestment money to rebuild. We are running out of coal, and oil. So what do you replace it with? We certainly have both resources but we do we have enough to sustain for 50 years at the same low cost? no.
Then you have to realize we aren’t the only country with this issue, but we have close to the lowest energy prices in the world, so we are also the hardest country to reach cost competitiveness, and the cost of changing is in the 10s of trillions. It is a huge uphill battle. And there is no possible way it happens quickly.
The kicker to the whole thing is the policy was -designed- to allow for off-gridding and make solar easily accessible to as many people as possible. . Everyone needs electric, and if everyone has solar, then it is trillions of dollars in avoided infrastructure costs. AND it protects the consumer from price gouging by utilities.
The trick is the battery storage which is coming down in price but it will continue to decline in price.
As far as putting a moratorium on drilling for more oil. Brandon fell into a trap because the far-left is pushing for it, but the manufacturing isn’t there yet. EVs across the board are sold out for a year. Part of that is battery manufacturing isn’t online and the other part is the chip shortage so even the natural upgrade of more efficient gas vehicles isn’t happening as fast as it normally would. There isn’t much you CAN do if manufacturing capacity is maxed.
There are a few other issues. One is there are 1000s of uncapped non-producing wells that cost on average of like 20k to cap. They are leaking methane. who pays for it? Then as soon as you start drilling out of control, and they lose their ass because oil prices drop again, do the taxpayers bail them out again? It costs millions to drill a fracked well, you need two of them in parallel, and they only last on average for 7 years. There is a droughts out west and I think there is growing suspicion fracking is allowing NG to leak out and causing higher then normal temperatures which is preventing normal rainfall.
Then you get to the world political stage, people are playing chess, and you just can’t use checkers strategy. I don’t know if he is doing the right thing or not. But the far-left typically works against the US best interest and typically in Chinas.
The last far left one I read was in australia about requiring chicken to have 1m of space and having perches and other accommodations. Well what will happen is that it adds extra cost to the price of chicken and eggs and places that don’t give a shit about the happiness of chicken will buy up all the cages for cheap and set up their own chicken farms, say china, then export the products to these countries because they can do it cheaper.
I would not be surprised if that was part of a desired effect. Let’s see something like 14B in food is imported from Brazil. I mean that is 14B that is up for grabs. I would rather you get it then someone in brazil.
Good. 
I always mention solar because it is -easy-. I can see chunking wood getting old very quickly if you are trying to do the whole off-grid thing with just woodgas. I want to see you successful.
Batteries are an issue, but it depends on what your savings will be. and in reality the LFP batteries are more expensive upfront but have far more charge cycles so they end up being cheaper over time. But they are coming down in price.
As far as not borrowing money, it is a good general policy, it isn’t always the policy that makes you the most. What it is designed to do is keep you from overspending or buying stuff you don’t really need. For instance buying a 2bdrm house instead of a mansion. You can get a loan for a mansion but you can’t really afford it and have no real need for it. Second it gets you into the habit of saying, I can’t afford that or I don’t really need that accepting it. It is -great- for that.
Where it fails is if you spend 100/mo on electric, and can get a solar system with a 100 monthly payment that covers your electric needs and it is a 10 year loan. You aren’t actually paying -more-, you are just paying different people. Even if you are paying the bank 50/mo in interest, the other 50 bucks is yours. You are just taking advantage of an investment opportunity. It most likely won’t ever work out that nice in the real world, but that is an example of where that system falls short.
Every single legit self-made multi-millionaire, and billionaire have used other peoples money. It isn’t a sin. But you have to have the self-discipline to only borrow when you can make or save money. otherwise the cash only option is really the best policy.
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