Ok revised the DXF-10 ash bin. Having the exaust port out the clean out door bad idea. PITA!! So move the clean out to the left side and then had to relocate the grate actuator motor to the right side. I tucked it in closer to the machine so its not hangin in the wind anymore. I eliminated the grate support plate and just expanded the grate out to fill the entire ID of the reduction. This allows for further expantion of the reduction. Grate has been tightened up but also more vents are added so it can breath a little better. The hose connection of the exhaust has been eliminated for a direct couple of the barrel drum filter. Should breath better and no more worrying if that hose is going to hold up. lol.
I plan to design a more refined Fusion module to go in place of the drum as an option. Im am planning on building this out of aluminum!! We will coat it with some chemical protection spray we get from McMaster. However if we are not dropping any condensate here it dont need it. But will do this as a precaution. I have yet to see one drop of water in the filter system and I probably have around 40 ish hours of run time on this machine now. The only place Ive seen any moisture is the ammo box and this is just the hay feeling moiste. No actual accumulation here.
Ok so we are now trying to impliment the DFX-10 into our daily power needs. I made a quick revision today and installed the bell reducer. Wow that really made a significant change in flows. This thing runs like the crossdraft units. Not exaclty set it and forget but at least today its been running very stable. That could change tomorrow though lol. So now considering make that standard but that will add a significant additional cost. May just make this restriction plate an add on option. That way I can keep a lower base pricing.
Ok even so, I have had some tar issues that aint no lie. Ive been lucky enough where Ive been able to free up the sticky vavle just by hand pulling over the engine until free. So Ive ordered two 30 gallon drums to add on. So there is the existing one that is now integrated onto the unit. That is basically a drop box pre cooler. The two additional units, first one will be a hey filter and the second one will be a fine filter. The fines from the chipper would be a great use for them here I think.
Ok running the shop; the input from the generator ties into our inverter. When it charge mode, the inverter charges the battery bank at what ever amperage we set it at and then it also inputs the generator input in bypass thru the inverter. So when it is charging there is zero power coming from the battery bank. So this set up does not work very well with a woodgasifier. There is barely enough power to run the charger so there is not a enough surplus to support our shop loads.
So to get around that, Ive ordered a dedicated 48volt charger from Aims Power. This works just like chargers in these inverters were it will drop the load if the input voltage gets out of range. This is good for a woodgas set up. Keeps the engine from stalling out. So now this will aliviate the generator from supporting shop loads on top of charging. It can then run our air compressor when needed and it should be able to do that.
I sold the Super Handy and Harbor Frieght chipper so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the WEN 224 cc dual fuel generator with electric start. So now instead of running our 9500’s we will be running just littel gas sipper at a reduced charging rate thru the inverter and then the the 8750 or our other 9500 that is set up for wood gas will output via the external charger. So eventually all this will pay for its self in fuel savings. I think the WEN if we reduce the charging amps will be able to support most of the shop loads. If not we will just switch to our other non wood gassed 9500 for those times when need that extra power.
Landworks drum chipper is now set up to run woodgas. It actually runs pretty good. I filled two buckets prior to the video. Im thinking wow this thing is running like its on gasoline. So go grab my camera and yeah first few sticks I shoved in there it bogs and then stalls. lol never fails as soon as I point a camera at something. Oh well it is what it is, Ive stalled it out just as easily when on gasoline. Over all it ran pretty good today.
As soon as you wanna show someone it’ll either not show up or misbehave. Just like when Scooby would try to show someone a villain and they’d disappear as soon as the other turned their head to look.
LOL yup never fails. I swear it worked off carera…
Just looking at the larger WEN generators. Yeah they are hard to beat and I think WEN offers good products. This one here has what I think is the same engine as the Predator 9500 inverter units. Its the 457cc engine. Come to find out this engine is one of, if not the only single cyl engine in this class with a hydralic oil system. We are working on year 2 on both our 9500 units and niether are smoking yet. That was typical for the old 420cc 8750 generators. But we do change the oil monthly where we did not before. lol.
Having the parrallel capability is nice. but we dont need it with our inverter set up in the shop. It would actually be cheaper to just buy external chargers and network multiple generators together that way. Regardless what we put into the inverter we can only take out the rated output of the inverter anyways.
For $800 bucks this thing here is a deal. Plus its orange and black so you know its going to work. Things that are orange and black are always a good product
Ok new barrel filters are built and installed. Yeah these big 30 gallon drums seem to be the ticket, yeah we aint messing around, these are big filters. First one is down draft filled with hay. The second one is up draft filled with saw dust and fines from the chipper. Gas is coming out dry and cool. The hay in the ammo box was clean as a whisle and we put 4 to 5 hours run time on it today.
The grate I think is still too passive. I have some briding and that maybe from the grate dropping too much char. So we will be updateing the grate again.
The blower is also going to get moved the final filter so we are not running tar and all that heat thru it. When it bridged today I went to blower mode to get it back up and going and spit tar all over the place plus its ooosing down the back side of the gasifier all over the hose and coupling and then a big pool of that ahky stuff resting on the smaller precooling drum.
If the new grate works and after I make these revisions tomorrow I think will have this one licked.
I have had real good luck with Wen stuff. I have a 2000 W. Inverter that has never missed a beat and I think it was about 200 dollars less than the Preditor.
Ok made all the updates today and recieved in the Aims 48volt converter. The new grate I think is finaly right. Dont know quite yet as Im still running. But I would need to clean out the ash bin long ago with the last revision. So it must be working out; the machine is breathing and running very stable (which is just mind blowing really with only an automated hopper vibrator).
Moved the blower over to the final drum filter I plan to take a looksy at the flare tonight after it gets dark out. So Ill be putting some hours on it tonight and will run all the way until then.
The Aims Inverter is not even phasing the generator. This is a 1 kW constant load and the generator can still run our air compressor on top of it. So I have a second Aims converter on the way. These are nice in that we can adjust the amperage output with a pot adjustment. So we can dial them both in to load the generator enough where it can sustain without bogging it down.
Looking good Matt. With the filtering system you have now that wood gas is going to be triple clean. I like it and it is K.I.S.S. even if it does make a little tar at start up. It will never get to the engine.
Yeah Im actaully pretty blown away. This started as a Youtube DIY video series and somehow turned into one of the best systems Ive ever created. It might not look as steamlined as some of my other system. But the damb thing works and its left me sort of lost for words with the whole charcoal thing I just went through and now arrived at this thing that is just running incredible.
Yeah the inlet to the engine is dry as a bone. Nothing there and clean!!
Yes it is amazingly when I met you at Argos you were trying to run wood chips in your slotted nozzle unit with two stages of burning chambers on maybe it was wood pellets I think? Went to straight charcoal then to mixed now just choose now your fuel. With a totally different more KISS design three nozzles down draft design you are back to running wood chips but bigger in size.
Good job.
Quite impressive Matt, running your shop off grid! The EG4 , how much kWh? 48 V?
And another thing, please put a watertable under your plasma so we can enjoy your inventions for a long time. Bad bad smoke from plasma. Not to much in your case compared to our galvanised plates. Nevertheless, easy to avoid.
The second Aims converter / charger came in today. Didnt really get a full day, but yeah adding the second one we can tax out the 8750.
With both chargers maxed out they can output 2120 watts. The 8750 can not quite sustain this it can do it for a time but not quite sustaining. So I have to dial one of chagers back a bit to around 1800 watts and it can sustain this output. The shop idles at around 600 to 900 watts so on average will gain around 1 kW so at the end of the day we should end up with a net gain if we run all day. This is even running the welder and the CNC machine. I am planning on gassing the WEN when it comes and we will run this in tandem with the 8750. It will be direct plug in to the inverter and it should be able to sustain the shop idle power. Or I will get another charger and run it with the WEN we will have three external chargers. Then we can just pull from the batteries and forget dealing with the internal charger bypass mode.
I just had my WEN 11000 DF delivered on Tuesday. I am moving to a small shop and no possible way to get 240 to it. I am already sourcing parts for the DXF-10. I had a thought i have a HF-5gal tank and a 11 gal HF tank. I think i am going to use the 5 for the inside and the 11 for the shell. I have some high density 2 inch ceramic blanket from a project that never made it to light. I also have a 2x2.5ft diy cnc running linux cnc and mesa cards. I have a big interest in your last HF gasifier running on pellets. looks very interesting and i would like to reproduce it for fun. also working on your charcoal kiln. i will need fuel.
Dont waste your time with the pellet version. It did not work and pellets make tar that can not be cracked. The binders they use will make a very thick tar and it will make a mess of your engine.
It should be able to run all three chargers on gasoline and that is about what the ouput of what we were outputing from the 9500’s. So it will do the same thing for half fuel cost. We had to have the 9500 units to support the shop while battery charging and in some cases we had to run both of them to support the air compressor. Now we can just shut down one or more of the chargers when we need to support other equipment like the air compressor and still support all power requirements daily off this single tiny generator. That is on gasoline though. Woodgas? well then we will need to either run our 8750 or 9500 and can then run the WEN in tandem with either one. At least I think anyways, I have not tried running two generators off the DFX-10 yet. But think it will support one large generator and the smaller WEN.
Our oldest 9500 developed a wierd problem where is sort of misses. If we wiggle the on / off switch it comes to life. Cant really seem to figure out the wiring on that switch all the wires check out to ground. Im really baffled how that switch even works. Anyways not sure if its the switch, coil or some other little gadgets that are inline of the wireing of the coil to this switch. Anyways this generator according to the hour meter has 2120 hours on it and it still has plenty of compression and does not smoke. This one is now going to be dedicated for woodgasing along with our 8750 and new WEN. The other 9500 will be retired and preserved for back up situations. We made some changes to the 9500 that will be wood gassed to make it easier to work on when needed. If we tar up a valve we can now remove the fuel tank and carb in about 5 minutes versus 5 hours tearing off all the panels. LOL We can do it where it sits. The way we fix a tared up valve is we remove the fuel tank, carb and spark plug. We then bring the piston to BDC and push the vavle open if its not already. Then just stick a torch in the intake port until it frees up. Once its moving we then crank the engine over while spraying a lubricant or Kerosene. Once moving again back to gether it goes and its ready to go.
Oh one thing about that WEN. Yeah that 110 / 220 switch does shut off the 110 outlet when switched to 220 volt. Why? I dont know. I dont see why I couldnt just re wire this.
220v is just two opposite 110v circuits. They may do it to keep the circuit balanced or it is a cost cutting reason or both.
For the other one, it is probably a bad switch. but it could be a number of other things as well. It has separate ground and negative. and separate ground and neutral. For instance it could check out to ground but not to negative.
I guess the first thing we could do is swap the switches from the 9500’s. At least we can rule in or out the switch. Yeah its wierd I used the negitive post on the battery and all made connection.
