I originally said play cause I have zero idea what I’m doing right now. I’ve been trying to look into charcoal gasification for over a year now, and most of what I find are videos of people running lawn mowers and generators with little to no explanation as to how they do it. I keep getting pages and pages of bbq tutorials, showing how to start a charcoal bbq, and how to cook with charcoal!! the only videos I’ve seen where someone’s actually running a car off of charcoal is from this forum, so I’m looking forward to trying it out again!!
Oh, and I was wondering if there’s any point in making the charcoal into briquettes or not?? Cause I was thinking of making a mold that I can press briquettes in, so I can possibly have max capacity in a compact space?!? For example, if I put some wood in the bottom of a five gallon bucket, I could compress charcoal in there so that it had a gap at the bottom, and air holes going through to the top?!?
The briquettes won’t have the same porous structure that charcoal has, and you would need a binding agent to hold it together and could add junk to the gas.
Best to cut wood into briquette sized pieces then convert to charcoal. You get some shrink but it works out alright.
I was thinking of doing something like this, but have it were they’re 1/8th smaller than the gasifier, and about as tall as it would be?? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HQfp-XIxNq0
Than I could measure the average range I get with each, and put enough in for where I plan to go?!?
If you’re concerned about measuring distance to hopper capacity, I grind my charcoal down to small flakes using a cheap electric wood chipper. Very small efficient sizes. About 5 gallons weighs roughly 9 pounds.
Assuming you get at worst a mile per pound you could then calculate distance from the volume of your hopper.
These are more like flakes than small chunks due to the chipper blade.
Very small and fill up nicely with no major air gaps.
Ok, thank you!! Right now I’m just trying to get the concept down as much as possible. Right now l do framing, so I was wanting to see about taking the left over lumber to power a small engine for a grid-tie system. I can get 2 1000 watt grid-tie inverters for around $160 each, which would cover all the power usage at my house over a 24 hour period, and reduce my utility bill by around $280 a month if it works.
If you use the flame cap method of making charcoal you can just toss the wood scrap in and it will break apart naturally.
Take a drum that can seal with a lid, tilt the barrel at about a 45 degree angle or so using something to hold it up, and start a small fire at the bottom of the inside. Just keep throwing wood into it over time making sure to let each piece get burned down to coals before adding more. The flame keeps oxygen from burning away the coals being made. Once you get close to full you can set the barrel back upright and set the lid on with a brick while it cools. Once cooled you can use a locking ring. If you lock the lid down while it’s still hot it could either blow the top off from the pressure or collapse the barrel once it’s cooled down. The latter happened to one of my drums when some hot coals weren’t snuffed out and it rained when i locked the lid down.
That’ll make it easier to process into engine spec sizes. Gary Gilmore says a size range of 1/8" to 3/4" cross section charcoal is ideal for an updraft unit. You can sift it out using hardware cloth mesh to get out the undesireable sized pieces.
Before I grind my material I pre sift my cooled down charcoal using 3/4" sized screen so I can keep a more diverse range of pieces. My chipper takes them down to very small sizes.
Then once chipped I’ll sift out the fines and dust.
It’s really tempting to throw in big pieces of lump charcoal but it’s the difference between weak gas and strong gas. Smaller pieces mean more surface area to produce and self filter the gas.
Well now this topic has become interesting to make-DIY-Electricity-with-wood: me.
Now AlanM. is saying he wants to make home use electricity.
And Robert-MarkC has shown a small make electricity woodgas system.
Fellows the way to sort out your use system is by INPUTS versus Desired OUTPUTS.
Even though your goals appear to be the same your different Inputs will drive your actual systems, you build and use.
Robert-Mark you show stove firewood splits in the back ground of your system.
Sure looks to be hardwoods. That means lots of limbs that could be barrel method converted to excellent grade engine fuel char coal. With processing steps . . to be sure. NOT as many as the women making powdered/pounded char dust; then into slurry-made char fuel briquettes.
But you also show chicken raising in your picture back ground too. Easiest way to cook and eat chicken? Bake it whole. Stew pot it whole.
Any other way makes for many more handling steps. Just ask any fried chicken maker how many more steps!
So you could also just limb-sticks, bits cut up into chunks and raw wood gasify for your generator engine.
AlanM you say your woodfuel source will be framing lumber cut off scraps. So a softwood been kiln cooked-fixed, dryed. No bark.
Pine, or fir, or spruce: this kiln fixed stuff will only make fragile want to crumble into powder charcoal.
You certainly want to just saw and hatchet chunk it and raw wood gasify for your engine.
Kiln fixed dried wood; if kept dry; and your woodgas system can be fairly simple.
Green wood with sap moisture and pitches is where your system has to get complex.
Bio-mass charcoal videos from around the world are for people with far different Inputs. And especially desired Outputs.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Steve , 100% agree in fact i mentioned just the other day how softwood is not great for charcoal generators due to the large amounts of dust , and as for the split hard wood you see in the back ground that’s what i make most of my charcoal from while i am heating the house .
Hi Stovie , I have a system that does make electric at least 4 days of the week during my winter time when sun is lacking , it is a very simple basic system that can be build easily in a day , there is no guess work involved its all been proved by many on here , if you are interested in building something we will talk you through the most basic easy system on a very low budget .
You are miles better off starting with a simple fire , a system that Gary Gilmore designed and runs to this day , look him up on YouTube .
The Nozzle was the only stumbling block in the early days but these days there are a few ways you can go to get good long life out of them .
Your feed stock if its ex framing pine will make charcoal , but it will be very dusty , BUT if u are using a stationary generator it should cope ok as once sieved and loaded into the gasifier it should work fine as long as you have decent filter material .
Dave
Hi Dave, thanks for the YouTube info, I was a bit worried at first when the first five video’s were about the execution of Gary Gilmore, but soon found his videos below those.
I was also wondering how dirty chargas burns, because I was playing with polishing the head of a flathead engine to keep as much heat in the cylinder as possible, but found that liquid fuels only kept it clean for about a hour or two. But it was about 100 degrees cooler for that time period.
It was reading around 140 for a hour and a half, than jumped back up to around 260, and would get up to 260 within a couple minutes from then on, so I was wondering if chargas would be a bit dryer??
Also, wood gasifiers REALLY confuse me right now, so I was going to start with chargas, and start working towards wood gas as I start to better understand it!!
If you’re looking for reading material, Wayne Keith’s book Have Wood Will Travel here on the website is great. There’s also Ben Peterson’s Wood Gasifier Builder’s Bible that you can buy on Amazon. Ben’s book is more aimed at staionary applications from what I understand, I just ordered it so I don’t know what all his book entails. Both are well trusted books made in this Century.
Charcoal units are definitely easier to make, but even as a charcoal guy myself I have to admit the end goal is to build a wood gasifier. Especially one that can reliably use raw wood that wasn’t specially curated just for a gasifier.
Carbon buildup in small engines can happen in less then 30 minutes on gasoline. Check out project farm on you tube and all his fuel substitute videos all tested on small engines he removes the head between runs and compares carbon buildup residue as part of his conclusion on how well a motor would run on a given substance in a emergency situation. Iv been proding him for years to run his see through cylinder head engine on a gassifier so we can get a clear picture of temp and burn time since woodgas seems to get compared to propane a lot I’d like to see them run side by side and he has been toying with the idea for some time but hasn’t built one yet
I’ve been trying to look into charcoal gasification for over a year now, and most of what I find are videos of people running lawn mowers and generators with little to no explanation as to how they do it. I keep getting pages and pages of bbq tutorials, showing how to start a charcoal bbq, and how to cook with charcoal!!
