This is got me to think more on the new design I am working on. Eliminate this narrow area where charcoal pieces can get stuck. I am thinking on putting the insulation on the outside of the lower gasifer barrel all around leaving more space for the pieces of charcoal to settle out in the barrel.
Is there any way you could make more space gap in your gasifer lower barrel by removing some of the corrugated roofing inside.
Bob
If the paint gets burned off the bottom barrel it will rust quick if it gets wet .
hmmm, if I had a leaf blower that would be really easy way to clear the charā¦
Marcus, with my Rabbit gasifier I used a very small pot under the cyclone. I emptied it just about every day - only soot. In about a week of everyday driving, tiny char started to appear - a sign of char reaching up to the grate in the gasifier housing and time for a cleanout. It seemed to me, even only an inch of empty space under the grate prevented char to get airborn.
Just saying - food for thought, laying awake at night
Very good point you brought up Wayne on keeping the rust off the out side of the gasifer. It is bad enough that we have acidic wood vapor in the hopper, cooling rails, condensation tanks, eating the metals on the inside that we can not do anything about with the mild steel we use.
On the outside we can keep it painted. Any color will work as long as it is black my favorite color. No need for high temperature paint.
Marcus one more thing to try after you get everything cleaned out of your truck. Now I have a heavy right foot if you know what I mean. I think your right foot weighs about the same as mine. Lol
Try driving the truck like you have a hard boiled egg between the bottom of your foot and the gas pedal. Or maybe I should say drive like a little old lady. But not the one from Pasadena. Lol
And see if this will help you with this charcoal flying up and getting stuck where the sun doesnāt shine in the gasifer and plugging things up. I have found pieces of charcoal in the bottom of my Hayfilter. Talk about a heavy Right foot.
Bob
Soft driving I refer to as Big Toe driving. Just apply the big toe instead of the whole foot.
Norman how much of the pine have you already chunked up? Maybe chunk them a bit bigger into cigarette pack size or bigger.
famous quote of Henry Ford
I still have about 20 bags of it all decent size. I tried at first to keep things about the size of my original sawed wood, but have been upsizing and no bridging as of yet and no tar so Iām guessing Iām in the range i should be
Thanks for the video Marcus.
Wish you could have done that wash out job here in my pasture .
Sure makes the grass green !!
With hindsight it may have been a good idea to have two clean out ports in your bottom barrel .
That is some very big charcoal you are slipping by your grate. If your grate was only 3/4" to 1" that would help. Because you can not change the 19" diameter part now. If you remove insulation on the inside you will burn the paint off on the outside. How about welding something like a rake around the grate edge with the tip pointing up. Leaving the grate spacing the same. But what I see troubles me. Why are the pieces of charcoal so big coming out of the bottom of the gasifer. They should by reduced to small pieces in the reduction zone area. Maybe your hard pulling on the vaccum is causing the charcoal to slip off the grate causing the whole charcoal pieces to slip through the reduction zone to quickly and not burn up.
You do have a bigger engine then mine and it is definitely not stock.
For now try the light foot approach and see what happens. It seems your grate is not as big as mine in diameter to the size of the bottom of the gasifer opening. Hard to tale looking at the video looking inside. I just noticed no charcoal at the edge of the grate.
Bob
was thinking on what you said with the leaf blower and it made me think, I wonder if I could add in a port on the crossover pipe something like some 1"pipe with a cap on it that I could insert a air blower into and push all that char back down into the barrel. I donāt think I have heard of anyone else having this issue, and I think its cause my firetube capsule is bigger then the recipe called for and kinda closed off that area smaller then it should have been
Iām sure some on the edge of the grate got knocked off when I did the initial sweep out, but more then that Iām sure the pegged out vacuum was pulling char off the grate as soon as it got there. Got outside of that central parameter that @SteveUnruh spoke of, just needed to get it centered back up. Truck was still able to run like that, just couldnāt produce enough gas flow getting past that char blockage. I think Iām going to start a 3 day cleanout program. I was doing five days and by day 4 the vacuum starts creeping up and day five it clogs. At least on this pine fuel it seems
How many miles round trip do you drive daily times 4 days to work?
Bob
With the current road closure 80 miles a day, so320 miles ish?
I have been dumping mine at about 300 to 325 to make sure I always have good gas flow. And I like to use the bigger pieces of my charcoal for my rocket fuel mix.
You could use your bigger pieces like I do.
I have been lighting up my gasifer after I checked the charcoal bed. Then pour the charcoal in the center of the pile of wood that is still in there at light up. Fresh would on top and talk about a easy start up. I also sprinkle charcoal on top of the fresh wood.
My pieces are not as big as yours. It works best with straight cherry wood. But I have done it with a mix of poplar and cherry wood.
I was thinking you could make a rake ring that would fit down inside your bottom open of your gasifer housing and sit on top of the grate. This would help hold the bigger pieces of charcoal from slipping off the grate on long hard pulls with the vaccum your engine can develop. It probably the RV cam you have in the engine and larger cu. In. of the engine. If you can keep the charcoal in place the fire lobe will move down on a hard pull and burn the charcoal up into smaller pieces which then can pass through the rake slots or down through the grate holes. The small pieces then will not get stuck in the 1" spacing around the gasifer housing and barrel insulation.
Just thinking and writing it down on how to fix this clearance problem in the gasifer with out taking it all apart again.
Bob
I think another part of it is a do have several hills I climb, steep and long and best done at high rpm, creating even higher vacuum. Lifting the grate I think would fix it, and I see in my mind something like your talking about, in my head itās a circle cage built out of 1/4 stainless rod, maybe 3/4 grid spacing. Slide inside the restriction and sitting down on the grate so any char would have to pass through that opening. For now it will have to be clean often, with moving time is short and no way I can afford to down the truck at these fuel prices. Soon the commute will be over 100 miles per day
Help me understand, is it between the grate and the fire pipe that you get the big pieces?
Itās between the fire tube and the insulation that lines the inside of the lower barrel
Yes the bars would be welded on the ring pointing up into the opening of the gasifer housing some it could not slip and move out of position. You would only have to clean out the charcoal to the restrection opening and to the grate. Then put the charcoal and restriction opening back in place.
Yes cleaning it out every three days should stop most of the plugging.
But like you said the big hill climb and high vaccum draw. Well then climb it on gasoline and then go back to wood. Now you eliminated that high vaccum draw in your driving. No more big pieces getting stuck in the gasifer on the hill climb.
Bob
Efi would be nice for that, little hybrid action