Koen would be the man to say how small the diameter can be.
Isn’t the housing wall thickness a structural issue? Or I do not understand the question.
I have been using 20 and 30 lbs propane tanks, if that helps. Gary Gilmore traded me a 16 gallon (or are they 15 gallon?) barrel. It is in such good shape that I could not bring myself to use it. But now I have a lite weight design to try and that barrel will find a home.
The best container to use is the one you already have until you have your gas legs, so to speak.
Thanks for the info Jeff.
I think I killed the 5 gallon bucket and am just thinking of the best way to make my new one that will last and be easier to open up than the lid on the one that I killed.
I’ll probably use a compressor tank, they are plenty simple to weld on.
You can tell I’m not a farmer. Lol. I will start looking for them. The Columbia Basin or Central Washington State is pretty much farming. There should be some laying around in the farmers scrap pile somewhere.
Bob
Hi Allan , if you come across some steel pipe from maybe 6 up to 8 inch dia and and maybe 6 foot long that would make a great little gasifier once you weld a plate on the bottom and legs to keep it upright and then a flange on top so you can have a sealed lid for filling and removing the gas , i have a 8 inch tube that stands about 5 foot on legs and will run a small 3 kw generator for about 1 and a half hours before it gets low on fuel and too hot , but then only takes less than 2 mins to refill and pull fresh gas through .
Dave
I tried to fire it off this afternoon with the little charcoal I had made that I had left from the unit I’d made before and it just didn’t have enough in it to do very much producing.
I had bought a couple bags of Cowboy Brand hardwood lump charcoal and took them up to the shop to see what I could do. I set everything up just outside of the shop door to stay out of the wind then filled the tank up about halfway and lit the thing. It kicked right off, so I turned the blower down to the low setting. (just under 6 volts) I don’t know if it was the store bought charcoal, that I only filled the tank part way or turning the fan down after getting it started, but it started shooting out the inlet at the bottom of the gasifier like a friggin’ fireworks show. I turned off the blower and then the ball valve and screwed in the plug for the inlet a few threads and got busy stamping out the hot embers that it had shot out.
Believe this for darned sure…I’ll wait for a day without any wind so I can get out in the middle of the driveway to do this next time. LOL
Please feel free to voice your opinions. I will get this!
1: Always fill to the top
2: the system between the nozzle inlet and the vacuum blower must be airtight 100%, otherwise you’l have some fire work.
3: The charcoal is the most important part, make sure that the lumps are anything between 1/8" and 3/4" with an even spread as much as possible.
Special in the beginning, adapting to the habbit for using the best fuel possible ought to be trained…
Thanks Koen.
Addressing the charcoal and sizing has to be my next step.
Putting everything away tonight I did notice a tare in the hose going from the outlet to the filter bucket, so either that was part of the problem or I’d done it while trying to shut the thing down.
Yes,
I asked Gary G. that exact question. He says any commercial charcoal sold for grilling, including “Cowboy Lump” brand, are not fully converted and still have some volatiles within. You can put it in a retort and finish the conversion, then use it as normal.
If you are getting a blow back out of your nozzle while the fan is running it is normaly a sign that you are not pulling hard enough or there is a blockage not allowing enough suction through the charcoal , i always get some small amount of blow back or flame coming out if disconnect the fan when connecting to the engine .
Dave
Another question for you all,
When I do get this working correctly and am ready to put it on an engine do I need to take the blower off or can I just shut it off and let the engine draw straight through it.
Thanks in advance.
More or less as soon as you get a good sustainable flare then take the fan off and connect your hose to your air gas mixer and away it should go , just for test reasons would be the only reason to use that shop bought charcoal though , try not to run the engine too long on it and maybe run some normal petrol through the engine afterwards to burn off any possibility of tars around the valves and carb .
Dave
I took one of the bags of store bought charcoal and ran it in the barrel in a barrel “charcoal maker 5000” today, so we’ll see how it turns out in the morning while I’m at the shop.
