No budget Non-premium member build

[BrianHWA (Brian Hämäläinen (Etelä Karjala, Finland))]

Hello BrianW. I’ll start by saying that I have not made a single HP or Watt from woodgas.

I believe that an “updraft” wood gasifier is NOT reducing the Pyrolysis gases/tars so you are just burning the Pyrolysis gases, much like a campfire. I’m fairly sure that this either won’t power an engine or, if it does, it would only be a “one-way trip” before one needs a new engine.

Such gases need to be pulled through a hot char-bed to Reduce the gas molecules and crack any tars made in the Pyrolysis phase. This is why raw-wood gasifiers are almost entirely down-draft, with a very few “cross-draft” designs thrown in. I wish I could help more, but I just don’t have the experience for it.

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

It is best to heat up the hearth enough to crack the tars. However, even Wayne started his journey with open top downdraft gasifiers and created clean viable motor fuel. He also had barrels full of wood making charcoal, probably so that his gasifiers would burn cleaner. So it’s not necessarily necessary to have tar-cracking capabilities to drive a truck down the road (speaking from logic and second-hand experience). It’s just better.

However, due to the way that the flare reacted to the fan, I believe that I was, indeed, burning wood gas. I say this because when I turned the fan on, the flare went out. Then when I turned the fan off the flare would light and stay lit. But when I turned the fan on again, the flare would grow and rage violently until it would blow itself out in a few seconds. After the flare went out, if I kept the fan on, the smoke would thin out and then the flames from the reactor fire would poke up out of the top of the wood hopper. So there was a distinct difference between the woodgas flare and the hearth fire flames, so to speak.

By the way, I’m not too worried about ruining my engine because I already need a new engine. Compression is low on cylinders #1, #2, and especially #3, the bores are worn smooth on all the cylinders, and I get somewhere between 5 and 7 miles per gallon out of my 1973 360 ci engine. The truck weighs 6000 pounds. Also, I overheated the engine a time or two, and the oil has caked up the inside with carbon pretty good. I noticed this when I replaced the head gasket.

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

It just occurred to me that in my previous tests I never measured the temperature of my producer gas after I sealed my wood hopper. This is how I light it: I unscrew the lid, put paper in, light the next piece of paper with the torch, drop that into the hatch, then add a bunch of kindling. I turn on the blower for a few seconds, then listen for crackling. Sometimes I get up and look in to see if it’s taking. When I’m sure it will go, I add the fuel to the fire (3x3x1/2 pallet pieces), seal the lid, open a vent cap on the top of the hopper, and then turn the fan on. Smoke will come out the vent hole and the fire will work it’s way down toward the nozzles. The last time I tested it, I would do all that and then cap the vent tube and turn the fan on. Then I felt the pipes and drums with my hands to make sure the gas coming out was hot. If it wasn’t I would open the vent and blow more air out the top to work the fire lower in the burn tube. As long as the fire was above the nozzles, the air would go through the nozzles, through the hearth, and through my whole system just as cold air. Hmmm. Is that why I couldn’t produce flammable gas before in downdraft mode? Just because the fire in my reactor was higher than the nozzles so I was just blowing cold air through my whole system? Hmmm.

Maybe I should get some suction blowers to help lighting and help to heat up the burn tube.

BBB

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

On August 16 I took my reactor apart. I don’t have locking rings on my drums; to take my reactor apart I have to cut the top of the barrel off with a cutting disc on my angle grinder, and then to close it back up I have to weld it shut.

Photos 1 through 4 show what I pulled out of the reactor when I tore it down.
Photo 3 in particular shows the warping that my burn tube has experienced. Not good. Not good at all. This is mileage limiting heat and warping.

Still, warping is not cracking, and since I have no alternative, I will just have to keep looking for some suitable burn tube material, and in the meantime keep using what I got.

Now for the modifications: I did a soapy test to check for leaks. I found none, but I reinforced the welds where the nozzles enter the burn tube, lowered the grate to increase the distance from the nozzles to the grate from 7" to 12" (Photo 5 shows this), made an insert to further reduce the restriction from 9" to 6.5", added three layers of sheet metal insulation around my burn tube, and shoved everything back into my 55 gallon drum. This was difficult, and I decided that it would be the last time I would gut my reactor: either I would make this iteration work on the truck, or I would use different inserts to make it work with a small generator after building a working WK reactor.

The results: This time I decided to flare directly off the reactor with no cooling or filtering whatsoever, and then add parts as I got them working. Photo 6 shows the flare that I got straight out of the reactor. Again, I now believe that the fire was higher than the nozzles, because the longer I had things going, the better the flare became. At first it would barely light at all, but as I kept at it, the flare would light when the blower was off, then go out when I turned on the blower. Eventually I could turn the blower on and crack the blower valve just a bit and the flare would stay lit for a couple minutes. I decided to add the cyclone filter.

Kaboom! My first explosion. What happened was my cyclone filter was detached and full of air until I connected it to my reactor. I knew I had to wait a few minutes for the oxygen to blow out of it, but I guess that it never did, because when I lit the flare off the cyclone filter, the flame went down the tube, into the filter drum, and exploded. Luckily my safety caps worked, and one PVC cap was blown up into the air, but that’s all. I shut off the blower, replaced the safety cap, turned the blower back on, and relit the flare. Not a big deal.

I got similar results with the cyclone filter on: flare would stay lit for a couple minutes with the fan on low and the fan valve cracked just a little bit. Any more fan would blow the flare out. I am thinking that I need cleaner, cooler gas to have a stable flare that doesn’t put itself out, so I heartily add the cooling pipes. When I turned the fan back on and tried to light the flare, I got similar results. It would stay lit for about two minutes with the valve cracked just a little. With the fan on low and the valve wide open, I could light the flare with the torch and get three foot flames, but it would go out immediately if I removed the torch. This time the flare was near the ground, so I could set the torch on the ground and the flare would keep burning because of the torch. I wanted to let that run until I ran out of wood, but the zinc compression fitting I had connecting the reactor to the cyclone overheated, melted and finally cracked, which blew woodgas into the air. I decided now was a good time to shut things down and find a better way to join the reactor to the cyclone filter.

Next I would need to make steel flanges to connect my reactor to the cyclone, install a heat exchanger to the system, add to the size of my cooling rack, and install a hay filter of some kind.

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

Sometime between August 22 and August 31 I built a hay filter similar to Wayne’s. I had tried 4" PVC pipe ten feet long, but that didn’t work for me. (Mostly because I didn’t have fire in my hearth, methinks.) So I used a 55 gallon drum with two inlets near the bottom and two outlets near the top. The lid is from another drum; it has a bead of silicone caulking around the edge. It sits on a flange that is about one inch wide, with another bead of caulking. I just cut a smaller hole in the top of the drum. I had a couple handles with screws that I screwed onto the top of the lid. I cut some EPDM rubber to make airtight gaskets under the handles.The lid is secured using self-taping sheet metal screws.

In the first photo you can also see the flare piping I have been using. The outlet pipes are capped off with 2" PVC now.

In the next photo you can see the steel flangs I made to connect my reactor with my cyclone filter. It’s just four steel corner braces from Lowe’s. I used regular silicone caulking to seal the flanges, which has been working surprisingly well. I have high temp red RTV in a tube, but I have not seen a need to use it yet. I don’t want to use it until I have to.

When I connected my hay filter for the first time, I used a PVC wye splitter after my yellow cooling rack. Then came two pairs of 2" cooling pipe. (I added more cooling pipe because I never got my gas temperature down to ambient with prior setups.)

I saved some chainsaw dust from my last tree removal job and filled up the 55 gallon drum filter about two thirds full. Then I put some hay on top of that to keep the dust out of the outlet pipes. Next I put some rabbit wire on top of that. Photo 3 shows the first flare that I got with the new filter. I was pleased as punch with my new filter.

The flare started out small, not staying lit, with clean blue flame. Then once the reactor heated up, it was a bright yellow flame. As the filter got broken it, the flare turned cleaner. I noticed a lot of yellow in with my blue flares, and I think this is because the fuel/air ratio is not optimal. That will be adjustable in the cab, though.

My flares were more stable because the gas was cooler, but I think that I still need more cooling. The flares do go out after a few minutes of burning. Next thing to do will be get more cooling pipe, and install a heat exchanger.

BBB

[SteveUnruh]

Hey BrianW
A few very operator engine running experienced points.
Screw that first Blue flare for IC pistion engine running!! IF you were to IC piston engine adjust for that crap gas it will not have very good power; and will not want to run on any other more energy dense woodgas.
Your #2 flare is great engine power gas. Your #3 will work but be an ignition timing bugger.
You DO NOT filter into good engine gas. Cooling only de-humidifies, Some; condensate washes, But especially DENSIFIES the engine fuel gas.
Untimate test before engine of woodgas usibilty is will it spark ignite and stay lit. Use a flint tipped welders striker for this. The engine does NOT have an open continious flame inside of it.

Your problem is still in that hearth core!!
Your jets to restriction out to the grate is too shallow resulting too small of an active volume with huge gaps between the air nozzles effective HOT spews.
For a low internal velocity system you’d want to raise the jets 3X the hight. ADD more jets to a 4" perimeter spacing and tighten up the diameter to ~12".
For a High Velocity system, raise the jets 2X. Again, add more jets to a 4" perimeter spacing. Tighten up your diameter to ~10".
Your sucsess will not be determined by your air/gas preheating. Many successful with direct to the outside, vertually unpre-heated air. THEN you must use very dry wood. For your current build style just go the Imbert/Hessleman way and manifold connect the jets within the gas space. Let in air flanged out the side into this manifold tube like it appears you are doing with your liting port.
This individual air tubes originated in the 40’s for below deck Baltic sea marine systems to COOL things with no outside air exposure and should have been left there. Hard to build. Hard to seal. Only so-so effective. PITA.

Get your hearth sorted first. THEN filter and cool just to protect and give engine power.
Don’t want to use a WK hearth . . . . then look at Stigg Erik Werners tank built hearths - they work. Or Mike LaRosa’s brake rotor hearths: LaRosafiers - they work.
Both of these searchable here and out on the Net.

Regards
Steve Unruh

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

You are absolutely right. That first flare was before things got warmed up. The second and third flares would run the engine. I thought the gas was getting cleaner, therefore it turned blue. You say that’s bad?

Steve U, or anybody else, please don’t think that I’m frustrated or will become frustrated with your help or lack of help. I’m hoping for, but not expecting, all the help I can get. As a matter of fact, I expect you not to help me, if that makes sense. I’m not asking direct questions, because I would expect my answer to be, “The answer to your question is in Wayne’s book.”

I have a flint and sparker. I will try to spark ignite the gas in the future. That’s a good idea.

Your suggestions on the dimensions for the hearth and the nozzles are bang on. I wrote that I didn’t want to cut my reactor open again. However, I have been thinking recently that it may be a good idea to gut it one more time. My sheet metal insulation is installed wrong. It’s wrapped around the hearth, instead of being up against the outer drum wall where it’s supposed to be. Not doing one bit of good there. If I don’t cut my reactor open I will have to insulate the outside of my reactor with fiberglass.

Anyway, about the hearth, I did lower my grate down the last time I had it open, and I installed a 6.5 inch restriction with a cylinder that goes down about 1" above the grate. So from nozzles to grate I have about 12" of charcoal. You are right though, a ~12 inch diameter on the nozzle ring would be better than 18" diameter. More nozzles also would be better. I just happened to have 1-1/4 inch pipe and calculated that six of those would match my double 2" pipe for the whole system.

I have lately been focusing in on the hearth and have collected about enough information to build a pretty good one. 12" diameter would be good. About 12" to the restriction. Just tonight I have finally figured out the flow path for the incoming air around the hearth. I am contemplating whether I should just go ahead and build a replacement reactor based on what I now know, or wait until I have Wayne’s plans and specifications and build one to spec, or if I should tear my reactor down again and try and jerry rig a way to rebuild my current hearth. I would need to re-route my intake air to make room for the monorator, build some kind of tube for the burn tube, maybe use flex pipe to get the intake air to pass through the hot gasses… That’s a big enough job. I am currently leaning toward getting the proper plans and building a whole new reactor with the correct specifications. Whatever I decide to do, I will need to get more materials. In the meantime, I am just finishing up some minor adjustments, and I want to pipe the clean cool gas into the the engine and see how it runs.

I really appreciate your help, Steve!

BBB

[SteveUnruh]

Yes BrianW the oh-so Woo-Woo blue gas is terrible low energy IC engine power fuel gas.
Look here on DJ’s presentation page for engine power flare:
www.woodgas.nl
Think of it like this.
For a pure burn “flame” you want a well air mixed and metered natueal gas, propane gas, white stove gas(oline) blue flame. In open air and pressure you want for cooking a clean, complete no stink burn.
For illumination “flares” you want either a carbon rich glowing flame/flare; or a HOT flame heating up a glowing mantle to white hot.
For real POWER go with an old gasoline blow torch flame!!
For real POWER you want that kerosene blasting salamander heater flaming!!
Go watch/smell a liquid diesel fueled steam-cleaner generator, hear, see, smell the Power!!
The internal combustion engine with it’s contained-in heat and pressure will clean-up combustion stinks just fine as just more HC fuels. YOU pre-clean; pre-burn these out why you will have less IC engine power.
“Screw the Blue” for internal combustion engine maximizing power.
Steve Unruh the engine guy.

[bboes (Billy Boes)]

Wise words, indeed!

[Handy_Andy (Andrew Heath, (Southwest Michigan))]

Now that’s an interesting fact I didn’t know. I wondered why my unblue gas ran so well in my lawn tractor.
Also, One person said that when the gas is ready for running, it will smell like creosote rather than campfire. Is that true in the DOW camp?

[BillSchiller]

I think if it smells like campfire of creosote, the gasifier isn’t hot enough. It really has it’s own smell.

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

Or, Screw the blue. How about flamethrower yellow, drive a fellow.

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

A week later I was able to complete my new heat exchanger through the cyclone filter and I set up my generator with 50 more feet of 2" EMT for cooling. I now have about 124 feet of cooling pipe. The result is that my preheated air did not quench my unstable hearth so much, and as a result my flares continued to burn for almost two full hours. The gas quality did drop off significantly, however, when a fuel bridge caused my char bed to disappear.

Photo one shows the top of my heat exchanger. I just drilled eight 1-1/2 inch holes in both the top and bottom of my cyclone filter, put the 1-1/2 inch pipes through, and then drilled 1-1/2 inch holes in four sections of 2-3/8 inch fence post tubing, welded everything in place, capped the appropriate ends, and plumbed the rest with PVC. Whereas before I plumbed the leaf blower into the sides of my reactor, now I blow air up through my heat exchanger and then to the reactor.

Photo 2 shows the cooling pipes that I’m currently using. The U-shaped 2" EMT tube comes out the top of my cyclone and connects to the top of my yellow cooling rack, to two more 2-3/8 pipes, to the wye, and then on to 80 feet of 2 inch EMT. I think I have enough cooling, since my hay filter is pretty cool. I will eventually have a condensate tank mounted on the truck, so there will be even more cooling.

Photo 3 shows the best flare that I was able to get.

I thought that I may need to clean out the ashes, so I decided to add an ash clean out port to my reactor. I also decide to remove the sawdust from my hay filter and fill it full of hay.

[BillSchiller]

The flame looks good. Just curious, do/have you checked for leaks? A water or soap bubble?

[Chris (Chris Saenz)]

Creosote = tar = bad. You don’t want to smell “barbecue” or creosote smells. Woodgas is distinctly different, not too unpleasant but definitely an acquired taste. Acquire it very slowly, please - it’s 20% carbon monoxide.

Flare color is deceptive because it relates to combustion quality - a propane flame can be pure blue or yellow by opening or blocking the air vents. Oxygenated woodgas streams will flare blue all the time, telling you nothing. A “pure” gas flare tells you more about the gas content, because CO is an oxygenated fuel (see the O atom). It can burn with less oxygen than H2 and will show up first in a weak gas stream.

Good woodgas flares contain hydrogen, which burns white. Charcoal gasifiers commonly get pure blue flares. Together they make a purple-white flare with blue at the base, like pictured above. Slight yellow in the flame is glowing soot / carbon particles.

Red-yellow daylight visible flares are a sign of tar. This gas will make an engine run VERY well, for a short time (wide open air); soon enough the tar will seize the valves, and you’re done.

[alextaylor62 (Alex Taylor)]

Hey Brian,

Don’t know how you’re obtaining all this pipe and these plumbing fittings, but if you’re paying retail, you could have already bought Wayne’s book. Every time I go in the door at Home Depot I ALWAYS come out at least $50 lighter.

I’m just saying . . .

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

Bill, I have checked for leaks between the air nozzle pipes and the burn tube. For the heat exchanger I covered all my joints with caulking. Checking for leaks is an ongoing process, as my system is pressurized.

Alex, you are right. I can afford Wayne’s book, and I intend on buying it once I am done tinkering with my own setup. I started building before I knew about Wayne, and since I started, I have been in a constant state of “about-to-be-finished-and-successful”. For example, I am about to finish building my cooling racks, and then I can mount my system to my truck and drive. Also, I know that I’ll need the stuff either way.

[SteveUnruh]

Ha! Ha! Thanks fellows for the “Screw the Blue” IC engine validations.
Posts read this morning have me out of context quoted now as the Devil Incarnate saying blue flare gas would not IC engine run. Read above. NOT what I said at all.
I said that a PURE produced gas stream flowing able without outside air mixing to blue flare would be a comparatively weak motor fuel gas. Have a Very slow in cylinder compression combustion front: 1941 “Auto-Zuiggas-Generatoren”; Reichmarshal Albert Speers 1943 opus; 1950 “Gen-Gas”; 1974 “Pegasus Gasifer” (retitled Drive On Wood); 1983/4 "Producer Gas - Another Transport Fuel . . . ".

In my experiences true pure blue flare gas requiring a unique ignition timing to be able to maximum power.
And that blue gas power will be blown away in gross useable shaft power, woodfuel use economy and down stream maitanences and expenses (to collect and dispose of the carbons fuels separated out) by stronger flaring more energy richer woodgas.

I know this engines real from working in Ben Petersons VictoryGasWorks Shop.
His GTL feed gasifier system had a four stage high-tech filtration system. This was the one with the BIG squarish sloped sided fuel hopper. His last filtration stage was sintered porous ceramic “Caldo tubes” array. A bag house capability without a bag houses burn-up then over heat damaging tendencies. ANY produces gas In could be made to come out “blue flare”. Could tap off the same batch made produced gas stream to flare, or engine run at any of flour different filtered/cooled stages.
The Shop 5.5 kW Briggs and Stratton gen-set with a factory fixed set ignition timing made the best sustainable documented kW/el power with the single stage filtered woodgas.
The Shop big 240 CID Onan/Ford I-6 required the least distributor timing advance with first stage filtered wood gas - the MOST ignition timing advance (far beyond safe cranking timing sets!) with the same batch made fourth stage “blue flare”, now GTL feed stock gasses.
Those the facts. Read 'em and weep.

Blue flare gas is GEEK gas. Geeks engines ussally run not Real, not long term Useable, not in year around Real World conditions.
As ChrisKY points out most any HC gaseous fuel can be made to flare “blue” “clean” - actually completely combusted, with the proper air mixing and the right flare/burner/mixer.
So “blue flares” youtubed up are too often stunt produced flares. Liars-flares. How would you ever know? Visiting. I LOOK for these liars air hole bleeds. I call out liars. Correct the self-deluded.

Ha! Ha! I am feeling a little like the great illusionist Harry Houdini who always said his stunts were his own body developed capabilities and the rest slight of hand, mind tricking illusions. When he faced down; and time after time debunked the Spiritualist/Believers showing their actual stunting as strings, air nozzles blowing and magnets pushing/pulling they targeted him for removal and silencing.
So . . . I’m next to take a cheap shot in the gut, eh??

“Screw the Blue Flare Liars” There. Make it easy. Just get the right SU. The Canadian oil executive SU, and the progressive/rock singer SU, and the poor Christian councilor SU weary of getting my hate mails.
Washington State Steve Unruh

[BillSchiller]

Thank you Brian for bringing up this flare quality topic on your thread. A very educational piece

[Woody (Brian Woodrow)]

I just received word that someone has paid for a one year membership and a copy of Wayne’s book on my behalf. All I can do is say, Thank you.

My thread here has not yet caught up to the present time (I’m still posting in the past tense.) I was hoping to get caught up soon because I don’t want to post in the past tense anymore. (Reason being is I wanted a more active thread, as I post my experiences little by little, and then get responses from folks little by little.)

As of right now I cannot access the premium side of the website yet, and so I will continue to enjoy free speech rights until I begin building my big boy Wayne Keith reactor. My plans for the next few days are to run the gasifier every day and watch my vinyl tube for tar.

Again, thank you for the gift. I am now beholden to a “day-in-the-ilfe-using-woodgas” video. I can’t wait!