Office Hours - Woodgas Hangout

don_mannes · July 20, 2013, 1:28am

Dustin, this was Wayne’s truck and he was giving rides before the generator was hooked up so the char bed was hot. I can’t remember if he was idling the truck engine along with the 5000 watt generator or not. You would have to ask Wayne how long this could run with just the genset before it cooled down too much. It was running when I came on the scene so I can’t tell you if they used the pusher blowers to fill the 1 1/4" hose before pulling the recoil starter or not. Sorry I can’t be of more help.
Don M

Wayne · July 20, 2013, 1:00pm

Good morning Dustin,

Back in 2008 when we made the “ Coast to Coast and back trip we were scheduled to stop at location and events along the way. It wasn’t practical to take folks for a ride to try to prove we were running without gasoline so to demonstrate we had an 8 kv generator with the gas tank taken off and a long hose ran to the truck gasifier. This way everyone could see the only connection to any fuel source was a hose that contained no gasoline. We would take this opportunity to prep wood for the gasifier .

The truck gasifier would be warm ,( not necessarily up to normal temp yet ). I would charge the system with the pusher blowers to push gas through the long hose, kill the blowers and let the generator pull the draft through the gasifier . We usually would run the generator operating a table saw with me cutting wood while my partners were explaining the system.

We usually ran the generator 30 min to an hour .

Also in the winter of 2008 I put on demos at a college campus in Kirksville Mo where an energy conference was going on . At each break in the conference I would operate the generator powering the saw. Next day at a farming conference / event same town . About an hour is as long as I would operate at a time.

If one has a good char bed and the gasifier is warm I think he can make gas that will be OK for a small generator. This would be OK for charging up a battery bank with a truck gasifier . For any longer use I think this would be asking too much of the gasifier and I don’t think it could handle that amount of turndown ratio.