Dear Steve,
Not by myself, but I know that Vesa Mikkonen wood gas vehicle wood gas car wood gasifier windmill windpower Vesa Mikkonens woodgas page in Finland has much less emissions on woodgas compared to petrol (with carburetor and without catalytic converter).
Try the water drip. According to Don Mannes, it is a remarkable plus in power.
Regards,
Til
Also Johan Linell in Sweden did tests on his old Volvo with good results. Test results are shown 8:00 minutes into the video.
Oh, and don’t forget about Wayne’s results from Auburn university.
Hi everybody:
Hope everybody is doing good.
We have being working with Steve on an updated drawing Rev #7 of his project.
Basically with no more bungee cords, a bigger flute type of Schedule #80 steel pipe nozzle, a water drip system, a heavier gage steel cyclone bucket, and a improved filter system.
B.R.
Eddy Ramos (Argentina).
Eddy,
Thanks for all your efforts and enduring the much going back and forth to get every detail correct. Looks great.
Hi Steve,
Is the somewhat thiner nozzle pipe holding up?
Kristijan,
I haven’t dug down through the charcoal yet to find out. I’m curious, too. After a few more drives, I’ll check it out. It seems I may be getting better gas now. I’m trying to master temperature control with EGR and water drip. I was concerned about having trouble lighting and monitoring the temperature since the charcoal is not clearly visible, but that hasn’t really been a problem. I can see well enough. Since the nozzle is about 4 inches from the bottom of the barrel and the reaction zone is above it, I don’t have the depth of charcoal fuel which I had before. I think it will be OK, especially when I start to burn hardwood charcoal. I have yet to do a test to see how many miles I can get from a reactor full of charcoal before overheating. The upper part of the barrel does seem to be getting warmer quicker than it did with the lower reaction zone. I think I’m getting potent gas more quickly than before. It also seems that I’m getting more resistance in the gas flow, probably because of the smaller area of nozzle opening. I’m closing the air mixture valve a bit more now.
According to Eddy’s compilation of information on your gasifier, the wall of your nozzle is 10mm thick. Mine is 3/16 inch which, if I’m thinking right, is about the same. I bought a 12 inch long 1.5 inch ID steam pipe nipple to use for the nozzle which is thicker than the standard 1.5 black iron pipe which is about 1/8 inch thick. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.
I had an interesting time Sunday evening. My church had a back-to-school hot dog dinner followed by home made ice cream event. I was the after-dinner entertainment. I demonstrated the charcoal car and gave rides for a half hour or so. I was so afraid that it was going to embarrass me like it did the last time I tried to show off for a crowd (“Pride goeth before a fall”), but everything went well this time. It handled me and two passenger quite well. I’m practicing for a possible exhibit at an antique tractor and engine show in a neighboring town in October. More later.
Here is a link to a pdf of the brochure I prepared to give out last Sunday and at the upcoming tractor and engine show:
Charcoal-Corolla-Brochure-9-25-18.pdf (1.3 MB)
Also, below is a poster for the tractor and engine show. Thanks to Don Mann for the idea and historical information. If any of the information in either needs correcting, please let me know. Thanks.
You can tell that my project is nearing completion when I start becoming concerned with “cosmetics.”
I finally did a test run yesterday with a reactor full of charcoal to determine length of run and charcoal use until temperature requires shutdown. At 15 miles the barrel lid temperature was 200 degrees F and gas leaving the filters 100 degrees F. I shut it down at 21 miles with a lid temperature of 300 degrees F and temperature of gas 125 degrees when exiting the final filter. At shutdown, the flex exhaust at the entrance to the filters was too hot to hold your hand on. I was using from one to two drops of water a second and some exhaust gas for most of the trip increasing both for the last 7 miles. It ran well and had good power except for the last few miles. I suppose either I was cooling it too much or the top of the charcoal was getting too close to the reaction zone. I averaged 2.8 miles per pound of softwood charcoal for the trip. I was hoping for 30 miles before shutdown. That may be possible with hardwood charcoal which I hope to try within the next couple of months.
Kristijan’s nozzle design combined with its location in my reactor is resulting in somewhat higher burn zone and causing the top of the reactor to heat up more quickly than previously with the stainless steel pipe nipple nozzle. The nozzle pipe is 4 inches from the bottom of the barrel making the nozzles about 6 inches from the bottom. When I shut down, there was about 12 inches of charcoal above the nozzles with about 7 inches depth of charcoal consumed for the trip. There is 27 inches total depth inside the barrel.
Actually, most of my trips to town and back are less that 20 miles, but I would like to do better without any major changes and still keep it simple.
Is there any particular reason why you put the nozzle in so high? It culd be flush with the bottom, l always had it like that.
Whats the nozzle diameter? This linear nozzle arrangement was designed exactly for lowering the reaction zone. To make 4 lower reaction zones instead of one tall. Not sore (apart from the nozzle position) whats causeing a problem?
Kristijan,
The nozzle is so far above the bottom of the barrel because the air inlet location was based on the original Simple-Fire design with a horizontal nozzle in order to protect the bottom of the barrel. I just screwed the nozzle of your design in place of the open end pipe nipple. I suspect that the increased velocity of the air is pushing the reaction zone higher, too. The open-end pipe nipple was 1.5 inch. The four holes in the side of the pipe in the current arrangement are equivalent to a 1 inch open-pipe nipple.
Greetings All,
I dug out the Leitinger nozzle today after two months of driving on it and was very pleased with what I saw–such a simple solution which works so well. I found very little slag or clinker. Photos below show nozzle in gasifier, previous nozzle (stainless nipple with stainless shield added) which had 20 miles on it compared with Leitinger nozzle with 65 miles. Finally a close-up of two nozzle holes.
Glad to see the design serves you well! Keep the char burning 
@KristijanL,
I like the that. You’re among the famous now.
Imbert, Hesselman, Källe, Svedlund, Keith and now Leitinger 
The (Leitinger Gasifier). Or (KL Gasifier) for short.
Bob
The classic way-say would be:
“System Gillmore”
“System Leitinger”
S.U.
I think in that context you have to put an E on the end to make it sophisticated.
“Systeme Leitenger”.
Nice nozzle.! Obviously less damage to the Systeme Leitenger than the one I use. The size of the four holes is less than the size of the one inch nozzle and I wonder if the higher velocity of air is a saving factor. My past experiments with this style nozzle did not turn out as well as Steve’s. I’ll look in my nozzle collection and see what I can find.
Gary in PA
I think that too Gary. Althugh the sum csa of nozzles is rather large, for some reason it does seem the glow zone is longer and narower thain usual.
Edit: l did some math, the Sum csa is about 70% that of a 1" nozzle
I remember that Koen wrote that the faster air gets into the hot coal, the warmer the focus gets away from the nozzle.
