DeanL. you could always add this later and then see yeah, or nay.
A lot will depend on your gasifer engine loading. Fuel wood species. And how you are shape- size processing that wood.
My own owned, once experimental Victory Hearth #1 (where this slip in “insulation retainer”, “combustion shape former”, “rodding down protector”, “sacrificial liner” was first developed) has flush faced jets to the liner. Later the minimum jets were increased from five to six, and the jets did protrude. Both ways works.
Important to make the jets nozzles screw-in, screw-out anyhow for sizing changing.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Thanks Steve, I was trenching water for local farmer with my mini hoe for last 5 hrs,what’s your thoughts on using 8 nozzles like Steve Honkus kit has and maybe run smaller orifice and if I get bigger genset I just open nozzle orifice and diameter and choke plate and restriction ? Hard to run phone and run hoe
Dean, if you had a way to also raise and lower nozzle to restriction height then you could tune it to different engines, but as the Peterson design stands you’d just have to build a second hearth.
Maybe have a separate row of nozzles that are plugged depending on the engine?
Cody i think you can just raise your restriction pipe up and put choke plate on top to get choke plate to right nozzle height, and raise your grate up , the ash will just build up to choke height , the restriction and choke plate lift out to change its only a change of an inch or so.
Ha! Ha! Now you made me crack out Ben Peterson’s Wood Gasifiers Builder’s Bible book.
The third addition the 2020 two books mastery addition. Page 29 in The Hearth Golden Ratio chapter:
You said a 1000cc engine. Six jets. With correspondingly different other dimensions over an eight jets system for an up to 3,000cc engine.
This third addition 2020 book expanded out from the first two earlier additions as going DOWN to 500cc engines and five jets. BenP has said if you want to go drastically up or down to build with ten jets and use every other one. Reducing everything changeable with slip-ins and drop-ins down dimensioned as chart listed.
S.U.
Tom, Ben has evolved his design over time. Some of it isnt the gasifier itself but gadgetry to make automation a little easier. What I appreciate about his gasifier is you don’t need the whizbang stuff to run it though.
If there is no need or a way to improve on it. Then the builder can just say it is done. Use it and injoy it. And Here is a book on how to build it. $$$. Thank you for my effort and monies I put into it.
Bob
Has anyone ever used trembling aspen ( white poplar) we have tons of that, in the shop I burn tamarack (larch), it’s very hot so I mix poplar with it, we have some maple and white birch here but that’s about it for hard wood, for soft wood we have white spruce and black spruce, we call it swamp spruce it grows it wet areas a hundred old tree is only 8” dia very tight grain makes good 2x4 strong, and some jack pine what would be best wood or blend for gasifier?
With soft wood, expect to refill more frequently. Any wood should work you just have to figure out the quirks that comes with them. I’d say to go ahead and start making chunks or blocks and let them dry up, build up a surplus.
Edit: also separate the species so you can figure out which works best. Find a happy medium between performance and availability. Once you get an understanding of what each tree does you can take notes to remember if you’re forced by circumstance to make do with your non-favorite.
Hi DeanL.
I do not know. I do not have these woods.
Hopefully someone who has used these woods will read and contribute thier exprences for you.
Be damn nice to get your this: YOUR topic; back on track away from the BenP haters.
I will be now deleting out my off-topic comments and hope others do too.
Best Regards
Steve Unruh
I use coppice maple, dead on the stump, with the lil pinholes in it. Next, I use birch. Then I use the softwood edgings cut into blocks. Its the same taiga as Northern Canada.
Good Morring DeanL.
Understand that these internet forums have folks from all over the world; in different living situation. And especially guys with different goals sets. If you were coastal; if you have salty ocean experiences think of the surf zone. Livley. Action filled. Always changing. You adapt to thrive. Always ebbs and flows daily.
Here’s been my turn wood into shaft power priority. Maybe similar to yours.
Able to use ANY wood, anytime of the year, to make home electrical power.
And now I know this can be done. Done anywhere where trees and woody brush can grow.
Some of this can be achieved by the flexibility of usage designed into and built into the gasifier system.
Some of this is by best practices for a gasifer, wood preparation.
And the final piece to the puzzle is to set up and operate the gasifier-engine-electrical generation system as a COMBINED energy system. Use the systems heats to pre-dry down the input wood fuel before it’s put into the hopper.
Realized home power stationary you do have the space and weight allowances to do this. No mobile-use limitations.
Mid-continental Canadian Greg Manning, and New Englander Stephen Abbadessa both insisted you had to harvest uptaking water woods like aspens and poplars and willows only in their winter leaf off, sap-down dormancy. NOT having all of the wood cells sap filled.
My river sides cottonwoods are the same here. Cut in full leaf and it will take years to dry down. It can rot here first. Mid-winter cut, split and off the ground stacked then it can be one summer dryed here.
Birtch? Like maples they sap up fill too. If you can make syrup from the early sap up-flows you’ll want to fuel harvest in mid-winter leaf-off, sap down.
Not sap harvesters hardwoods folks I talked to in the hardwoods US mid-Atlantic area and they say they wood fuel harvest when out of leaf too. Thier forest snakes are in hibernation then. Easier to lift and swing, stack aside the branches when not in leaf, they’ve told me.
Even conifer woods have this plumping sap up. Your Swamp spruce. Your jack pines. Here in-my-expernences you do want to harvest cut them in sap-up growth season. You are going to have to cut-saw-shear them down into sized gasifier chunk wood. You need the intercellular sap to make that processing not-equipments damaging.
Any dry; especially hard, hard dead woods eats up and can break off saw teeth. And quickly dull wear, and edge curls shearing edges.
S.U.
One other advantage to winter cutting is it promotes coppicing. Sap is in the roots, which gives the tree enough energy to shoot up some new suckers with 3, 5, 8 new small trees.
Got some hours on my imbert build, our lovely government liberal () has gas at 2.09 per litre and my Chevy holds 130 litres wow I have I find a Dakota but it’s hard every thing is newer , trade you leaders, of our country (sarcasm)
Hi DeanL.
Glad you did add in those between the air nozzle forming Vees.
I asked Ben Peterson how he had come up with the concept for these.
He told me that he had bought a bunch of dome glass cooking pot lids on E-Bay and then charcoal burnt watching down at the gasses flow patterns.
He said he could get only some little time before the radiant heat would shatter the lid.
Then he set up again and again with a new glass pot lids trying different flows forming internal shapes.
Ha! Advanced developing can get expensive; and be hazardous.
This is one of three patent worthy features you get with the book purchase.
That’s it just blame it on the gov. Like they even can do anything. So now you’re doing something you know you should have done before prices got all loopy. Better late than never, so they say. But this gasification thing just just doesn’t work as a short term effort. I hope a few of you all stick around and play the long game with us when prices go back down.
Anywho, welcome to you.
Rindert
I’ll need to get Ben’s book, I don’t understand the purpose of the v blocks, unless it has to do with keeping the blocks away from the wall? I’d like to see them up close and see if I could guess how it benefits
) has gas at 2.09 per litre and my Chevy holds 130 litres wow I have I find a Dakota but it’s hard every thing is newer , trade you leaders, of our country (sarcasm)
