I’m going to be very interested in seeing your gasifier on an engine, Darren. If you are actually able to run your 5500 W. generator on less than 2 pounds of fuel per hour than then that would be excellent. I have never actually metered my fuel use running a 6500W genset on updraft charcoal but I have to guesstimate around 3 to 4 gallons of fuel per hour of run time. Maybe I’ll try an actual test when the weather clears up some.
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Thanks guys. I’m learning a lot here
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I’ll try with numbers that don’t lie, but you have to use them correctly, don’t blame me if it’s not completely accurate, because I’m superficial…
Completely dry wood contains on average 6% H (hydrogen), 50%C (carbon) and 44% O (oxygen).
H has a molar mass of 1, C has a molar mass of 12 and O has a molar mass of 16.
If we imagine an ideal gasifier that would operate without heat losses and without additional air, we would get approximately 24% CH4, 74% CO and 2% H20 at the output.
The figures show that wood gas is somewhat humid, despite ideal conditions, but in practice we use wood with about 10-20% moisture, the gasifier has a lot of heat loss, the air in the surroundings contains an average of about 1% water (10g/1kg of dry air), … in short, far too much water enters the gasifier process.
Our infinitely wise Creator, who invented and created everything, said to the first people when he expelled them from paradise for sin “thorns and thistles it will bring forth for you, and by the sweat of your brow you will earn your bread”, well, it is no different when using wood as fuel, but if you work hard, understand and take into account the characteristics of these processes, you will soon
" eat bread" and " have the wind in your hair"… 
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Excuse me this time while I state the energy balance of wood;
-average wood contains approximately 4 kWh / kg of energy
-if we assume that we have an 80% efficiency in the gasifier system (which is very good), we get gas with an energy of 3.2 kWh from 1 kg of wood at the output
-if we assume that our engine has an efficiency of 35%, we would get 1.12 kWh of working energy at the shaft
-if we consider that the generator has an efficiency of 90%, we get exactly 1 kWh of electricity at the output
Summary: from 1 kg of wood, in a very well-designed gasifier-engine-generator system, we can get 1 kWh of electricity
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Well I guess I nailed it on the thermal acoustic engine. Lol. When it gets up to the right temperature and starts pushing out gas it oscillates at a fairly low frequency. You can hear it but you can also feel it. It’s still running right now and it’s still doing the same as when it started with no interruptions. Seems to you making quite a bit of gas for the amount of wood used. It’s now going through a cooling pipe into another larger pipe with a filter. I’ll inspect the filter when it finishes. So far so good.
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Thanks for the calculations Tone.
Darren, this does look good but judgeing by the size its way underpowered for a 5500w generator. This amount of gas on the picture is about enaugh for an engine like that to idle. Yust thod to give you a heads up before you melt something 
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You should hear it resonate. It’s really amazing how it behaves like a thermal acoustic engine.
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By the looks of it, no similarity between what’s shown in the video clip and an Thermal Acoustic Engine…
For reference:
It does however resembles a tubular vertical gasifier with many “but” involved…
Air intake at the bottom ?
Where is the combustion located ?
Where is the glowing coal ?
What is the fuel looks alike ?
What is the fuel ?
Your first video shown a bottom lit “updraft” gasifier, similar as I build here in Thailand cooking stoves.
Last video shows a similar system, charcoal gasifier, with extra filter behind, or even a “Fema style” with some extra filter behind
Any way, looking forward to see more
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Hi Tone, its ok, not so superficial… 
Some woods are a bit different , chemical analysis are not as useable for gasification purposes.
Rule of thumb, closed retort charcoaling device, yields about 30% carbon, 70 % volatiles.
Carbon will not gasify without additional O’s to combine into CO.
Whatever opinion any person might have… Can he presents a functional / performing gasifier 
Whomever build one, shows his work…my respect …
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I have been able to do quite a bit of testing. The current gas fire did run the 5,500 watt generator but only for about 1 and 1/2 minutes. It could not quite keep up and was overdrawn. Moisture starts to take over once that happens.
But it did run at full speed. I’m going to make modifications and increase burn rate.
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Excellent knowing it works is the base to improve and adjust to the size of your engine/generator .
Did you manage to get a video ?
Dave
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No I did not get video. I was going to but it died and I just didn’t think that would be acceptable. I’ll get video when I get a continuous run.
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The one thing i have found on here is the people post the good and the bad of there builds and that way its a more realistic documentation of how things run or not , an example would be to look at YouTube video’s where there are so many 2 min successes and you never see them again those builds probable wouldn’t work in a real world scenario .
Dave
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Thanks for the report. Like Dave sayd its wery important we show failiure also.
Indeed, the water was unable to reduce to H2 and CO and passed on (also CO2). Along with lots of heat, Mr Wayne calls this “heater mode”.
Good luck!
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Congrats on a running engine Darren. I am wondering about the moisture. Not sure what your design is but any moisture in the fuel will kill an updraft. I have no experience with pellets as gasifier fuel but I know they are fairly hydroscopic and would have to be kept from damp conditions for storage. Also as you test things out you will need to stay close to that air feed valve. Until you get things running right it will require a lot of tweaking.
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Hi Kristijan,
An experiment to try ;
What would happen if we put some carbid rocks in the wet gas stream ?
I will have to test that as well, just received a few Kg.
I assume if any moist passes the reduction zone then it would react with the carbid and give us some fun ? ( i mean improvement on the gasification process / engine performance )
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I assume you mean calcium carbide that decomposes to acetylene. In that case, it is made from lime and charcoal. So you really just need to add lime to the reactor.
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Now thats a thod. Not only that, the byproduct is calcium hydroxide, lime, wich can bond to any CO2 in the gas to form Ca2CO3, chalk. 2 birds with one stone. Hope you dont mind me checking this idea out one day, this culd be a solution for tiny engines.
Carbide is expensive thugh but a electric arc fernace powered by solar pannels is a viable option for cheap home production.
Sean, unfortunaly l dont think the temps in the gasifier get hot enaugh. Otherwise it wuld probably alredy happen as ash consist mostly of calcium anyway
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I’ve seem to remember it’s around (over) 3000°c for the forming of calcium carbide to take place?
It’s basically a way to “store” energy, a lot of input needed, but a pretty stable product.
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