Hello, I’m new here. My name is Caio. First of all, I apologize and ask for a little patience with me. I’m from Brazil and I don’t speak English. Excellent work by all of you with the forum. I’ve been researching gasifiers for years and, surprisingly, I found the forum 3 days ago. In Brazil, there isn’t enough literature or any incentive on the subject. I made a simple ascending gasifier that I managed to run on coal for a little over 1 hour. I’m super excited and looking for information for the next step. In my region, there is a lot of sawdust at an affordable price (1 real for a 40 kg bag with around 45% humidity). I thought about turning it into pellets and gasifying it or turning sawmill leftovers (here they are given away) into coal and crushing it. However, I’m looking for a system that works better with little human interference (if such a system exists, lol). The idea would be to power a generator of no more than 15 hp and connect it to the grid. I hope you can understand. Thank you very much!!
With the pellets I am worried about the tar and coal with the continuous feeding. I thought about feeding the system 8/8 hours if possible. I would like your opinion on which one you would use and a model to start with.
Welcome to the forum! Pellets bring a lot of problems to a gasifier system. When they get wet they turn into a mush and the humidity of the hopper can make such a condition.
You mentioned sawmill wood as well.
I believe you could make use of both fuels to make good charcoal if that’s what you are most comfortable with. You could perhaps make a sawdust stove as the heat source for the charcoal retort, that way every big piece of wood can be turned to char instead of wasting it on heating the retort.
I think for smaller engines charcoal is the safest bet. Anything short of 500cc at the very least. 500cc and up you could run off of small chunks of regular wood.
Cody, thanks for replying. Tomorrow I’m going to my friend’s sawmill to take some pictures. I thought the same as you that the leftover wood is more practical to gasify, but it is a bit limited to maybe 250 kg per day worked. Sawdust is available in infinite quantities, lol. Even though they are sold at a low price, all sawmills have a lot of it available. My first thought a few years ago was to use unprocessed sawdust like the S80 Missouri, but from what I read here on the forum, it’s kind of utopian. But the quickest, easiest and cheapest way would really be with the leftovers.
Welcome Saio, you are looking for the same holy grale as me 
. The Missouri is real, only not for sale anywhere.
Forget pellets and forget buying wood. Pellets and buying is for lazy people, bether stick to the fossile options. More convenient.
The forum is all about diy, fuel proces included.
I think the key factor is heat and make sure no tar can pass this heat.
Charcoal is an excellent way to start.
Just some thoughts from a armchair blabbler.
Do you already have the generator you want to run on woodgas? What is the displacement of the engine?
Also if you could manage to run through 250kg of wood in a day I would be very surprised. I believe with a Ben Peterson gasifier you get a few hours out of a hopper running a 500cc engine. The hopper load is maybe 20kg unless you expanded it.
joep actually I would produce pellets since the idea is to generate energy at a cost below 0.20 cents (here it costs 1.25 kWh) and pellets would not be viable since they cost around 2 reais per kg. They are not really used here, it is even difficult to find, believe it or not.
Cody, I chose to buy a 210cc stationary engine and an alternator. I’m not an expert in generators, so I imagine that engine maintenance would be easier and more practical to put a rectifier bridge on the alternator and transform it into direct current and connect it to a photovoltaic inverter.
O básico está ± funcionando vou enviar um link antes disso peço desculpas pela bagunça a cabeça borbulhando faltou tempo pra limpeza (nunca pensei em enviar vídeos pra ninguém rsrs)
Hi Caio, welcome to the forum. The Ben Peterson is the probably the best option if you want to use pellets. Here is some links for some charcoal gasifiers you may find helpful.
Gary Gilmore has designed a real nice and simple charcoal gasifier. The design is so simple it can be made from almost anything you have available.
Matt Ryder has made some really nice gasifiers made specifically for a generator setup. Most of those are charcoal also.
Let me just say I have no hands on experience with charcoal gasifier. Hope you find something useful in those threads.
bronlin thank you very much I am very happy to find the forum and see it active and working. I have been swallowing the information that has been repressed for years I think I will go crazy before everything happens lol. I will take a look there. I have already found Matt Ryder on YouTube I sent an email and he was receptive. Maybe the easiest way would be to transform the chips that I have available into charcoal in the barrel as in the video above to start raising money for books and equipment. Here things are more complicated (from what I saw books that cost a few hours of your work at the convention become almost two weeks here) but no problem. By putting it to work I transform waste into money (I will connect it to the on grid network and transform it into energy credit) I do not know if it is like that there but here I inject energy into the network with photovoltaic panels or biomass or hydroelectric and it returns to another meter that I prefer in credits. That would be the main idea. A big hug thanks for answering
Caio,
Welcome to the forum. From your videos it looks like you are well on your way to success. Keep up the good work. If books are unaffordable, there are many gasifier books available as free pdf downloads on-line, including from this website. Thanks for posting your work.
Steve, thanks for the comment. It seems like I’ve just been born crazy, even when I thought I had a minimum of knowledge, I come across thousands of gasifiers, fuel diameters, temperature equations, melting nozzles, etc. But great, I believe I’ll get a lot out of you and in the near future I’ll be able to contribute too.
Welcome here Caio.
In the library section there are many publications about gasification to read.
As Steve said, by the looks on the videos you are already on your way and understand the processes. Keep it up and good luck 
Caio, forget making pellets. Dont believe everything you see on YT. Very difficult and you need serious equipment, at least a 7,5 kW press, augers, dryers etc, to make a continuous flow of pellets. Been there, done that. And then you still dont produce any woodgas.
Nice puctures! Looks like a Koen gasifier and a Hookway retort. Looking good!
Tone mentioned capacitors. I am waiting for them and want to use a three phase motor , rectifier and solar inverter. I think a car alternator has a bad efficiency.
My experimental setup is grid tied, standard three phase running 3050 rpm. Works great.
Hello Ciao, I would like to mention only a few features that apply to the conversion of wood into clean gas:
-larger pieces of wood turn into gas more slowly than smaller ones
- the “reduction” process (cleaning) must take place at a very high temperature with the presence of carbon
if we use small wood chips or sawdust as raw material for gas, it is necessary to ensure that enough charcoal is produced higher up and that it does not burn there
, that the inside of the gasifier is of the same diameter, that there is no fuel bridging
, so that the flow of gases weakens below - it raises the mixture of fine coal and ash and thus withdraws the ash from the process
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum.driveonwood.com%2Ft%2Fa-guide-for-driving-a-vehicle-on-chargas%2F5615&psig=AOvVaw1Gw-4Pvkb17BY2vFPxYL3q&ust=1725020052797000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCNCv89iWmogDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE
Welcome to the site Ciao. Here is a post a while ago by Eddie Ramos. Here is from Argentina and has driven all over southern South America. If you could contact him you would get a lot of valuable information in your native tongue. I couldn’t find a link to his youtube channel,
Johan, I’m taking a look around there. I like to read and execute projects. I’m a fan of “knowledge doesn’t take up space”. Joe, I’ll do that. I’ll start with coal, it’s definitely the easiest way to deal with it at the beginning. Tom, I have to understand the project better. I did it and it worked, but I don’t know to what extent. Now I know I had a problem with the bridge, but one day at a time.
Tom Thank you very much I will find him