Profound thinking - I made a spreadsheet!
I feel I deconstructed Syngas and Gasification just now and now I feel pretty smug. I don’t favor some important concepts here and I tried to address them.
I don’t like the clump concepts of “Syngas” and “Wood Vinegar” and “Pyrogenic Acid” and “Lignin”. These are all clump terms where associated compounds are batched together. Sometimes these clumps have a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Out of respect I stay quiet but no longer.
I did want to get the familiar compounds like methanol out of the wood. That sound reasonable. Sure, why not? Just cook the wood and collect the gas and condense. Viola!
Um, no.
Not only do these compounds ie methanol etc have a boiling point, they also have thermal decomposition point where these compounds disappear and become something else. So when you cook these compounds at a random temperature however convenient that temperature might be like at the temperature of the noncombustion of cellulose, they are destroyed and turned into something else and there is nothing left to condense. Huh? Where’d it go?
This isn’t always bad. Some of these decompostion products are useful.
Please remember the only product from the combustion of wood is Carbon. Everything else is contamination.
There is bad news but its too much for me to assess right now but it has to do with overlap temps, and the characteristics of the decompostion compounds and how they contaminate. Right now Methanol is a straight shot where the others are more cloudy. These new products beget more tedious QA.
It looks like you have to bake this stuff out of the wood mass if you can before you make charcoal. Get a digital toaster oven and drill a hole in the side to get the vapor out.
The tars, as usual, make a big compound mess, you might have to treat this with solvent first maybe. Ugh. Thats a big investigation reference job.
I made a big spread sheet to keep things clear for me. I included two common tars. Camiferyl Acid and Sinapyl Acid. You can have a copy if you want.
Compound
Melt point low
Melt point high
Boil point low
Boil point high
Decomp point low
Decomp point high
Decomp products
Phillip