Another tip is if you ever plan to run wood fuel. Dont run it with the ammo box, that acid will eat right through it. I wouldnt run wood in that anyways. But the way you have it set it is not for charcoal. You built the wood core so its actualy not correctly set up to run charcoal. You need to remove the guts completely and block off the back jets and only use the front nozzle with water drip.
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already planning the gas cooler. i have the valves closed on the 2 air jets. I also have no restriction plate in this its straight 9in center all the way through with almost 2 in high density insulation. So far i have no plans to run wood chips, charcoal seems like it has way to many benefits over wood chips. As always thanks for all the great feedback i am only crawling and Matt is truly a master if this craft.
Thank You
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Yeah keep it as is. Its working so dont fix it LOL
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Nice build there Darrell , very neat and tidy indeed , hope you manage to get the charcoal retort running very soon as that store bought stuff isn’t the best for engine’s. although Matts design should cope with the small amount you may get from it .
Dave
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here is a test of a northern self reliance injector on the ammo can gassifier. Great success.
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Yes the store bought is crap. I had such a hard time with the ammo can gassifier just because of the store bought charcoal. i did a bit of scouting today and lots of wood to work with. very excited.
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This is day 2 of my test on the ammo can gasifier and the northern self reliance ejector, with a aquarium pump. My wife said you cant see the gasifier in the dark so i posted this to. It works great. I would like to try to set this up on a cooking stove, like camp stove conversion.
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Well I can post the Nozzle thread. So reposting here. Although I did edit the last post over on that thread with this one.
Ok finally video is uploaded.
Ok summery for today. The machine ran a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes. This is very promising as 2 hours if I remember right is about typical. or should I say; was lol. However, it drank the 2 liters within the first hour and 15 minutes. There was a good 45 minutes where it had no flow at all and then at the end after I wacked the nozzle with a hammer I had flow again but only for the remaining 45 minutes. I dont think the nozzle was actually boiling though as the wick was messed up so water was bypassing and just dripping out the vents.
Based on what I saw today I think this unit can process at least 3 ltrs of water if not 4. It ran very strong with the mixer valve at 60% open this is also more than typical. 40% is typical.
Ok so I found some numbers of how much Hydrogen 1 liter of water will produce and the BTU value. This is from the interwebs so dont roast me. But I have come up with this same number over and over again so I think its accurate. 1 liter of waters adds 14,326 BTU’s. So my goal is 4 liters per 10 gallons of fuel and for me 1 gallon is about equal to 1 lbs. So 10 gallons equals 10 lbs of charcoal fuel.
1 lb of charcoal is around 9500 BTU. So 95000 BTU per hopper load.
Total BTU combined if 4 liters of water can be achieved is 152,304 BTU gross. This is not factoring the oxygen to carbon shift. I cant wrap my head around that as the charcoal is part of that number. I bet it adds another 10,000 BTU maybe more?
I cut the nozzle back apart and rebuilt it. Yeah the wick is a no go, it is what clogged up from the rust inside the water tank. I hate saying this but if I go to this jet we will have build some things out of stainless; I really hate stainless steel. But I guess I can justify it as so far this has shown huge promise!!. I also relocated the water inlet to the side instead of on top. I flushed the water tank out and then added a small amount of motor oil. The oil should form on top and coat the walls as the water is consumed. Just dont let it fully empty as I think the oil would carbonize in the nozzle chamber. But that is the fix for the time being.
So tomorrow I will re test and hopefully I wont have any hic ups.
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Well I have seen enough to make the decision to employ this new nozzle on the 2025 models. So since I will be stocking stainless sheet there will be some additional parts made out of SS. The lid, side brackets, water tank and flare cup. I have SS parts to re build the nozzle but this time I will be doing some tuning as this so far seems to be able to extend farther into the charbed without degradation. So that is the next test to get the hopper to empty into the center. This I could not do before and this years extended nozzle was degrading.
Also making more fuel and trying a pre drying method. Simply adding a drum on top and filling it up with the next batch to run to pre dry it even after its been seasoned.
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I ordered steel today.
A sheet of 14 ga. P&O Mild Steel 60 X 120" is $81.90 per sheet
A sheet of 14 ga. 304 Stainless 60 X 120" is $337.72 
The nozzle parts in 304 isnt too bad about a 30 dollar difference and the pipe is longer than the original version.
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Well stacking that drum gave me a new idea. Im going to turn it into a double retort. The issue is you can only make it so big and tall and then be able to lift the drums out.
But I could make it modular. For the top outer drum I could just weld it to the lid of the lower retort and punch vents at the bottom. Then just an outer 55 gallon drum with its bottom cut out to stack on top. When its done you just put the lid on the top and shut the valves off. The nice about the top one is I can use a 30 gallon drum as there is no burn box to deal with. This could make it way more efficient.
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Its in super nova mode now. Actually I would make the top retort just like the lower and punch a hole in the top of the lid of the bottom one so gas from the top one can pass thru. Then the top outer will just slip on over the top so it can be assembled and disassembled.
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I was recently given some beat up semi truck diesel tanks. It’s some heavy gauge steel, like what they made heater oil tanks out of. Might weld those two together on each end and fashion a lid. Do you think if I just cut out one end totally flush and used some of that McMaster gasket tape that it’ll hold up to the temps? I’d leave a lip on one end for a flat gasketing surface and maybe center fasten it down.
I just would need to cut out and patch the fill lid holes and use one of my 300 gallon tank bodies as the outside burn chamber.
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You dont need to seal it it wont hold any ways. As long as the lid can lay flat and not allow a flow through it you should be fine. These drums I use have fitted lids so they work very well. When the process is over I just put a top lid over the outer drums and cut the valves and thats worked for me. I then have the charcoal left over in the fire box for the next run. I just squirt some charcoal lighter fluid on it and hit it with a flame and its up and roaring again. Dont over complicate it just follow the basic concept and it should work.
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Something I do know that will happen. Is when I add that top outer slip on drum it will draft 100% better. It will run crazy hot and to be honest Ill be afraid of that thing as I learn. Ive done this before just adding the top outer before and had to knock that thing down off it.
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40 yrs ago I was installing automotive spray booths. Booths were 60 foot long and 30 foot wide and the bases were all quarter inch stainless and the tops and sides were 10 ga. stainless. I’d like to see what one of those would cost now. The bases were actually tanks large enough to stand up in and capped with flood sheets.
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So took a look the fuel in the upper drum and it actually just dried really well. NIce golden brown color.
So today I rebuilt the unit and replaced the 20 gallon retort with a 30 gallon. I can stack two 30 gallon drums on top of each other then can stack the 55 gallon outer shell and still have the hieght to place a lid on it for shut down. So basically what this is; is a two stage retort process. Upper is kiln and the lower is the retort. I built the upper the same way as the retort. However the bottom of this drum is cut out and the lid for the lower is welded to it instead. I did this to make it easier to set up the center tube for upper easier.
Last couple runs took around 3 hours for the 20 gallon retort. So testing this larger with fuel that was dried last night. Plus I wieght the green fuel before installing in the kiln stage. Ill wieght it again tomorrow to see how much water it drove off in this run.
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Ok so here is pic of the fuel that was on the cement there for fueling the firebox of the unit. This is what is left over from this run. I started around 4 pm and it started gasifying around 6 pm. I feed every half hour but missed the first feed as I was maknig food. But every 30 minites is roughly when I feed it to really keep it going and hot. Anyways once it started gasifying I throttle the valves back 50% and its been self sustaining every since to even now (its about 7:30pm as I typed this). Just throttled up the valves as its in the last stage of the burn and the fuel I put in there at 6 is still there just big charcoal logs basically. So plenty there to keep it going and Ill have that char left over for the next run for getting it started. Its a beautiful thing!! This run it ran very clean as well. There was about maybe 15 minutes where there a lot of smoke in the stage where it started to gasify but once I throtled the valves down it cleaned up. Still some smoke in this mode but not bad at all still very clean.
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Concluded the run at 7:55 pm. So total run time was just under 4 hours and it fueled itself for nearly half that time.
Im going to let it cool for an hour or to when ever its cool enought to handle as Im really currouse what the fuel weight is in the kiln.
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Ok I couldnt wait I have good weld gloves so ripped it apart and got the weight. Not bad at all, it knocked out roughly 15 lbs out of the water wieght. This was fresh split wood you can see in the pics the difference between it and some seasoned wood behind it. It was reading between 40 and 50 percent before the run and is reading now between 30 and 40 percent now. I think Im going to let it air dry and run again later. Next run Ill put the seasoned wood in both stages and try this fuel in the kiln again later on after its air dried some. If I would have started with the already seasoned wood at 15 to 20 percent Im sure it would nock out nearly all the moisture. So its proved it works you just need to start with already seasoned fuel before and then fuel with near 0% moisture I bet will take even less fuel to get into gasifying mode making this really super efficient.
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