I colored it in for you. The blue and red is incoming air. Red is hot air or changed to woodgases. Red ,green is cooled wood gases.
Remember it is not to scale. It is just a flow of air and gases drawing.
Bob
Remember it is not to scale. It is just a flow of air and gases drawing.
Bob
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OK thanks Bob Mackey- i had a brain thought today - what if one could build hopper half heated on one side, and a condenser cooler on the other side of hopper- you could get the extra heat benefit, and still pull the excess tar out though the smoke condensor- I was thinking on maybe building a cooling rack for the hopper cooler seperate from the hopper, in a cooler location, and pump the smoke in a circle with small slow moving piston pump- but then it might cause the fire too clime up higher in the hopper,unless it was pumped back in next to the air nozzels ,I GESS I RAMBLES ENOUGH.That might be more of a stationary unit- if building for EV home generator- Or mine might be- i just have the monorator condensor on this build- I seen some of the claims from years ago builds saying heated hopper was better- i seem too have tar free fuel when i built my heated hopper design few years ago-I only used it about 20 times. Its sitting in my shed to use on other truck or home generator back uo ,or EV charger- I think i would like too build a charco gasifier next when time permits. BY the time EV are affordable might be another 100 years- unless some one builds there own EV- and or batterys.
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Kevin, Chris Saenz and Max Gasman and some others did that with the Plank Gasifier. Hot gas came up through the hopper in a pipe/tube and heated up the fuel from the center to drive moisture out and the monorator removed the moisture.
Ben Peterson’s Builders Bible design has a mix between a monorator and a hot hopper. Exiting gas goes through a mantle in the hopper right before the nozzles, below the monorator.
I’ve been wanting to build a triple walled gasifier for a hot minute. But also having at least some monorator so I can use raw wood with less fuss. Downside to a totally hot hopper is apparently they can steam crash, moisture cooling the active zone too much. I’m willing to sacrifice some fuel capacity if it means I can run really raw wood.
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Interesting contrast CodyT. between MaxG’s hot output gas heated center located “Plank”; and Ben Petersons redirected hot output gas ‘Pyrolysis Accelerator’ ring cavity on around the peripheral right at the tars gluing level.
By the added heat energy’s numbers then transferred into lower wood hopper they should function and benefit the same.
But would they? Be worth the physical changed aspects they introduce?
Anything stuffed into the wanted downward wood fuel bits stacking area does cause settling flow problems. However, putting the heating adding into the center would seem to encourage a stronger center upward heat plume.
Putting the added heat on the peripheral will discourage the chronic problem of tars condensing and collecting there. Soften and get any deposited tars there, gravity and flows direction moving downward for face of nozzles burning.
All of these types of Change-Improvements, are better determined by fabbing; works using; and then deciding their worths.
S.U.
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One interesting thing to note, apparently the fully jacketed hot hopper Imberts didn’t have as many hopper corrosion issues that single wall Monorators did. Hopper walls didn’t seem to get creosote sticky glued on the walls either.
I believe the Soviet Engineers met each idea halfway with a condensing collecting lid. Tone’s hopper topper he added to the tractor gasifier pulled that idea off very well. Using tubes to add surface area instead of making the hopper taller, improving that circulation. Since it’s an addition it’s also future proofed, replaceable in the event of corrosion problems.
I still wonder where Imbert got his theorized figure of a triple walled preheated gasifier being resilient even up to 30% moisture content.
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Kevin I like what Cody and Steve have said above. The one thing I have notice is there is a lot of great ideas to incorporate into the gasifiers of all types, but putting them all into one gasifier is not possible. Some of the the ideas like the plank takes away wood hopper space and other ideas causes to much bulk. The gasifier will become just to heavy with the these great ideas. Lol Keeping It Super Simple, KISS is the best way to go. This is hard for me to do with all these great ideas that have been done in the gasification world though the years. We just have to pick and choose now, on what we want in the gasifier build. It is like a candy store. We just can not have every piece of candy in the candy store.
Bob
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I agree, and like you say it is a trade off adding weight when adding more feature’s- I can see why a big percentage of uropeons- or germans- ran there cars on wood gas charcoal- keeping it much simpler, far lighter and much less fabrication time,and less maintanence.
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GREAT points BOB M and Cody,and STEVE-AND yes a whole lot of fabbing.
And thanks Cody- you brought up a lot of good facts about hopper heating, and moisture getting flooding the hearth- without a steam condencer set up. HAS any one heard from max gas man- or is he still kicking.?
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