Hello, I am prepper but new to gasifiers and to forums for that matter. I am asking for advice on gasifiers to run a 10Kw generator (Generac) for home use located in Upper Peninsula Michigan. Plenty of wood, snow, and frigid temperatures. I am somewhat handy but I know welders willing to help me. Thanks for any advice. Jawbreaker
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What’s the engine, the displacement of it, number of cylinders, is it carbureted or fuel injected?
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Hello Dan, Welcome to the group. Where abouts in the UP to you live? I would say for openers study about “charcoal” gasification. The "simplier is a good start that requires NO welding. TomC
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Not sure. Will look it up and get back. thanks for the quick response. Dan
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Iron Mountain area. I’m all for simple.
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I agree with Tom, I’d say if the engine is smaller than 1000cc I would look up Thrive Energy System’s YouTube video for the ammo box charcoal gasifier. Doesn’t need any welding uses plumbing parts and an ammo can, a TALL one, as the body.
Charcoal is an easier fuel to make and process without a lot of sweat like wood chunking can be. Charcoal is cleaner as well. And I don’t mean Briquettes I mean real wood charcoal.
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Dan Look up Gary Gilmore either on this sight or particularly look up his Youtube. He is the inventor of the “Simplified gasifier” TomC
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Or you could buy a unit from @Matt at Thrive Energy Systems. The ammo box videos are a tutorial to build your own but he also sells totally fabricated ones from new steel.
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Thanks . will get started on these suggestions. Hey Tom, I miss Schaeffers restaurant. did you ever get there?
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Forgot to mention one thing.
If you want a gasifier that runs on regular wood for a generator, go on Amazon and buy the Wood Gasifier Builder’s Bible. It has entire schematics for your welding friends to build one, with complete parts list etc. Plus it’s just a good book to study on in general for woodgas.
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thanks again for the help you guys. I’ll be back with more questions.
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Welcome Dan. You are now among friends. I prefer my jaw unbroken. I am a prepper as well in Leelanau County. I run a 8500 W piece of crap generac on an updraft charcoal gasifier. You can be running is no time at all. MattR has good videos on how to hook up your generator intake to remain duel fuel and easy filter. Duel Fuel himself lives up in the Keweenau. I’m sure he’ll chime in.
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Dan, Welcome to DOW. Good advice from the guys posting above. Charcoal is best for stationary generators. With the tilt drum charcoal maker on here you can make a lot of charcoal while doing chores around the yard or shop. MattR on here made elaborate wood gasifiers in the past with automated controls. He has since went to charcoal. His Thrive Energy Systems units are probably the closest plug and play units for preppers. At Argos I watched his M-1 unit. It was 5 minutes from pouring in the charcoal to the generator running. Once the air was set on the mixture there was no more adjusting. That means you can fire up the genny and walk away. Matt shows in one of his latest videos running some wood in his unit.
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Hi there friend.
I want to ask you what you are prepping for?
On the one hand its kind of everyone’s civic duty to be ready for an emergency of some sort at a local level.
This might mean many things to many different people, but in its most basic form it means we should be able to help ourselves and help out others in an emergency natural or man made for a brief period of time until relief effort can be organized at a community or higher level.
That’s a very basic interpretation of the concept as I understand it…
Have plenty of canned goods, keep you car’s fuel tank full, have a flash light with batteries, a first aid kit, maybe a portable generator…
But how far to you take that?
What can you prepare for?
A storm shelter in case of tornado?
A fall out shelter in case of war?
A cash of food in the woods?
At what point are you preparing for something that you can realistically counter?
Is it a practical pursuit, or would you time be better served trying to prevent the very thing from happening that you are afraid of?
Also I would not try and run a Generac on wood gas.
Its a light duty machine designed for temporary back up power and its much easier to screw one up beyond repair than it is to try and fix when you do need it.
Much better to stick with its intended diet of petroleum products.
Its also much simpler to add a tri - fuel carb and concentrate on simply keeping your generac functional.
It has been my observation over the years that people are reactionary.
They buy something after the fact…
Generac and others are doing a brisk bit of sales these days because of the fire danger in California.
They buy these sets and then forget about them. ( then they develop faults that go nu-attended to until they are actually used and broken down ).
I don’t recall how many residential Generacs or Cummins units I have ever ( if any ) seen that were genuinely used and worn out.
But I have seen some go to scrap that were exercised to death, or neglected to death.
I am not saying you should not peruse woodgas, just have a reasonable expectation of the technology and its uses.
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Pretty much explained here Wallace. Paragraph 12 is the nitty gritty.
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Yes I see, there is a religious component for some I over looked.
Thank you.
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I want to watch your developments regarding the 10kw Generac.
Be very careful of the tars. I worked with some guys who killed a 20kw generator in less than 50 hours. The gasifier was WAY over-sized for the load. Warnings went unheeded. I suspect it was due to tars gunking up the valvetrain. When it all cooled, no more compression!!!
By the way, I’ve worked in Iron Mountain before (pulp and paper industry). Been a few years since I worked in the UP. Nice area.
And Tom Collins, I stopped at the airport in Crivitz many years ago and met a nice guy who flew the same type plane as we did back 50 years ago- a 1958 Bellanca Cruisemaster.
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Todd; You probably almost flew over my house. I’m about 1 mile from the airport. TomC
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I drove on that trip. His plane was one N-number away from the basket case Bellanca I owned at the time and 7 digits away from our old one. Sister planes hand built in Minnesota.
I flew with my father in his Turbo 210 Cessna once to Escanaba. Never been around a white-out before!
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Welcome Dan. Something else you need to keep in mind is that you will not get the full 10kw of output from the generator when using wood/charcoal. Since woodgas is less energy dense than gasoline, you will see somewhere around a 30% drop in power depending on a variety of factors. So, plan accordingly for how much load will be on the generator at any given time.
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