I make the Gas Stations, the Victorias, Isabellas, and Anastasias. Two weeks ago I took a job teaching at a university. Since then I have struggled to get my latest order out the door. My customer has been great and I have kept him informed the entire way through. I also tried to make up for my tardiness by including extra hardware. HOWEVER(!!!) this is completely unacceptable on my part. When I promise a delivery it needs to be met. That means there needs to be some changes.
From now on I am not going to accept orders or promise hardware until it is COMPLETE and on the shelf available for sale. You will be able to check my inventory by looking at the bottom of the “Get Hardware” pages like this one:
I am also going to train my welder to do the assembly work so I can fill his winter slow periods. Hopefully this strikes a decent balance between production and the craziness of my schedule.
This is a little off topic but hopefully useful. Yesterday I taught at the Camden Maine Maker’s Fair. It was a great time. Instead of dragging Victoria down, I taught a class on control with Arduinos. Here are the slides if anyone is interested:
I have been unsure about where to go next with gasification because the Victorias just boringly run. Sure, I could make them bigger, but that is not a huge technical challenge. Running 24 hours doesn’t interest me because the Gas Station will eat more fuel than I(and others) am willing to make if you try run it that way. Plus you really don’t need to. Six hours of battery charging is all I would ever do. I need something with more interest factor. I think it is time for the Ranger to run on hay hockey pucks.
The challenge will be to control the temperatures so the ash blows through and does not clinker. This is a fuel with a known high ash content and problems. That could be an interesting project, to have closed loop control with an Arduino so I stay below water gas shift temperatures and make just CO.
I just thought I would post the link in case any one else wants to try this fuel. It’s a major step forward to my end goal of ag residue powered farm equipment.
Yes. It was like a wood pellet on steroids. They are made by packing hay into a cylinder so they can be cleaved easily with a hatchet to make logs into pucks.
The salesman had all the correct answers(to me). He understood liquification of lignin and proper pellet making temperatures so I am pretty optimistic about running them.
When you say high ash content, how high? I think as long as you have gas flow and you keep the flow… flowing you may not need to worry about clinker… id break up one of those logs and see what it does in your victoria as is.
No question I will give that a try. I will just have to either take off the nozzle caps or make up a new smooth wall hearth so the large fuel doesn’t hang up. The logs are about 2.5" in diameter.
It’s part of my eventual goal of running large farm equipment on just ag residue. These pellets are made of leaves, soybean straw, and corn stover. They are REALLY nice!
I am going to take these to school to show the faculty so I can get the full resources of the University of Maine’s engineering department behind the project. We may have a whole new generation of wood gassers coming shortly.
