Been there, done that. Not too long ago I sifted out some freshly made char and let it sit a couple days before I moved it for storage into a plastic tote. Got distracted and didn’t get the tote moved into the shed I store it in. Came back to find the tote melted into a puddle and the char all nice and glowing again.
I like me some Charlie Daniels. This has been my anthem long before he put it into words.
I store my charcoal in the burn barrel with a lid and bricks to weigh it down, then I’ll move it to another drum with a gasketed lid to cut off any other oxygen. So maybe a day and a half before I crush it and bag it.
Edit: I forgot to mention I wait for the burn barrel to cool down before I transfer it to the sealed barrel.
First try on 2022.03.29 was a miserable failure. Too wet. Liquid sludge seeped, and in some cases sprayed every where.
Then too dry. Think dust bowl wind storm. Only this time in charcoal.
So we spent half a day cleaning up.
Second try 2022.03.30
Charcoal dust left over from yak-a-yak-ing. Smaller than 1/8th"
Flat die pellet Mill. Pretty basic. Under the green shroud is a right angle gear from a Suzuki Multi-Cab. Rpm’s controlled by pulleys.
This is the binder. Locally it is known as “Gow-gow”. A mixture of an undetermined ratio of the worst quality rice and cassava flour. Usually obtained from cleaning out the traps, nooks and crannies of the milling machine.
Most folks mix this with babang, (rice bran), and crack field corn for poultry feed. Costs about 12 cents a pound. And everyone knows how to make it the old style.
Mano-mano mixing. Trowel, metal bucket, etc. So far the mix is …
1 kg charcoal dust
200ml water
50g of binder.
Finished pellets drying in the sun.
Tomorrow, depending on dryness … we will clean up the bottom of a kettle and do a burn test in the kitchen rocket stove.
If that burns pretty clean, then I will kludge up a particle filter out of a paper towel and water bottles tops.
Put that inline right before the air intake on the motor. We want to have some sort of visual indicator of post filter - pre engine fuel quality. Lowest of tech of course.
Wish you luck. The thing is, chemicly, there is litle difference between your binder and raw wood or whatever biomass. Esencialy, runing this charcoal trugh the updraft gasifier is like runing a mix of engine grade charcoal with 5 % woodchips/sawdust mixed in. I dont think anyone wuld be prepared to risk that. I realy hope l an wrong
Sure, I’ll go find it and edit it into this comment. Have you seen Matt’s video on his ammo box gasifier?
Matt found a better way to make his nozzles without needing to cut threads on the nozzle pipe.
He uses the 1" couple and puts in a 1" to 3/4" reducer bushing. He then takes a 3/4" pipe and cuts slits in the end so it fits a 1/2" pipe easily. When you thread the 3/4" pipe into the coupler it bites down on the 1/2" pipe to hold it down. This way you can swap them out quickly and take the whole nozzle assembly out without needing to dive into the barrel. Removes from outside.
Best part is since you can use plumbing couplers that means you can just braze that bad boy into the barrel. If it doesn’t work out just plug it with a 1" plumbing plug.
This kinda works like a downdraft but I think it also behaves like a cross draft without the risk of having too short of a charcoal filtering area.
Ammo Box No Weld Gasifier Build Tutorial Segment 1 @ 06:20
Ammo Box No Weld Gasifier Build Tutorial Segment 2 @ 14:00
So this is a diagonal down/cross draft. In the case of the ammo can from 6" down to approx 3" from the bottom of the can.
That is a helluva nozzle.
The 1/2" plumbing inside the nozzle is for water drip system.
With air and steam wrapping the longish end of that 1/2" vaporization tube, and the focus of the heat right there … what’s the lifespan of that 1/2" tube?
Is this setup kinda a water filled, ( I forget the french name for it … tuyre? …) nozzle?
Burn zone would follow the air flow down and across the grate, so that grille has to be pretty stern stuff.
No inside hopper filtering, so I’d need to beef up the external filters.
Gas output heat is gonna be much higher. Need to switch the exterior plumbing to higher rated stuff?
Also don’t use the nozzle he showed in the video it melted away apparently. Use a nozzle like I quoted from his thread.
But the exit temps is also why I said maybe 10" above the gas exit. Will cool the gas down a little bit more. If you only plan to use charcoal you wouldn’t need to worry too much about tar creep.
