Can’t wait to hear it purr on woodgas…
I figured for the price, it would include a little gas tank and battery.
Yeah Carl, I wish it came more complete, still need the starter, flywheel, headers and few other things. But this is the most cost effective solution, to piece this same engine together would cost quite a bit more. I was working with both Jegs and Summit trying to do this, but we could not beat this pricing. I now have connections direct with GM Performance and we will become a dealer. So hopefully we can get better break on pricing.
So been a bit busy lately, the last few months Ive been working on our structuring of our manufacturing. Here is the end result, we have built most of this in just the last 6 weeks and this only what Im showing in the pictures. We have a lot more waiting in staging areas waiting for assembly.
Well anyways things are now finally starting to flow, and the new LS-1 25 kW system is well under way. This machine is getting the new exhaust heat recirculation system and the media filter is going away. We will be adding a very high velocity three stage cyclone system to replace this. The power steering pump will be repurposed to drive a high pressure atomizer jet system that will mix oil into the gas mixture before entering this final stage filtering system.
The A/C pump is also supplied with this engine and this will also get repurposed and used as a compressor pump to drive the pneumatics systems. Not sure if I’m going to be able to pull this off, but I will need to figure out how the recirculate oil in the line circuit to keep the pump from seizing up.
As Patrick suggested I went to a manual flywheel and had to create some tooling for this. This is so we can machine the flywheel, so that it will center the spider couple. This worked out very well and will be quick and easy for us to do on future builds.
The green Lister machine is coming along nicely and I hope to have this complete mechanically in the next week. Then comes the fun part of the electrical systems, lots of wires.
Henry Ford would be proud. I’m glad to see turn-key units being manufactured in the USA. It gives wood gasification (of all flavors) some real credibility. None of us want to be labeled “crack-pots”.
Yeah Carl, I did some research on the automotive industries, in the very beginnings. What they did with what they had is just mind blowing. To do this today would still be a great challenge to pull off.
Nice work, Matt! I’m wondering how many kW this thing will put out (taking into account the derating of wood gas)… Any idea on what you’re expecting to see? Thanks!
Troy
Hi Troy,
The machine is hopefully under rated. It should be capable of 30 kW, but 25 kW is what we are offering it as. This is a torque motor and should yield around 100 hp at 1800 on gasoline. So knock off 50% and we should yield right around what we need with room to breath. I am planning this same motor for a 50 kW system, and will play around with turbos and adding in some gearing to gear up the motor.
So things are coming right along, seems like you work your butt off and nothing happens and then it all just comes together. So this first hopper with the new HGR systems came together real nicely. You can see the vent holes in one of the photos for re entering the superheated gas back in just above the hearth nozzles. This first HGRS will have our blower to re circulate the gases, this is just incase a natural flow either won’t happen or won’t be enough. The condenser for this will be fan cooled and an exhaust heat exchanger will be placed along the gasifier on the back side of it. The system will pull the gas through both hoppers using the big secondary hopper to aid in gas cooling to set the stage for the condenser. Now all the little details and there is a lot!!! Hoper to have it complete and ready to debug and test no later than the 30th.
On some other fronts we are working on the 2015 line up now and much is going to change. We will be eliminating the E-Series as stand alone systems and only offering these on turnkey systems. The evolution of the E-Series is using more of the other systems to be utilized in the gasifiers processing systems along with the advanced filtering systems. So to offer this as a stand alone system will require me to basically redesign all those features out. So we need to do something different there.
So to replace that system we are working on a complete redesign of the M-Series that will take the place of both lines to be offered as one stand alone product line. The new M will inherit the E-Series modular design, a variant of the air preheat system, externally removable jet system and automation as an add on. The new M-Series will still get the wheeled dolly as well. The new M is getting a much simpler design while maintaining all the new technologies of the ES machines. This will allow us to manufacture it faster while offering it at a much less MSRP than the current systems. The new M is going back to its roots as a micro gasifier and we will offer four sizes starting with a 6" (M-I) and ending with a 12" (M-IV) I hope to start a pre run on all sizes in November and they may be available by December.
Looks very nice Matt.
Can you help me understand about reintroducing already made gas back into the hopper to pass through the fire tube again? Does it not ignite as it passes through? Have you tested the output gas before and after and find it’s more condensed? What percentage do you figure you are pushing back through? It sounds interesting enough.
Lookin real good Matt!
Ok well here is the deal on this. Our competitors have some great ways of reintroducing heat back into the systems. So with much respect we leave their designs to them and leave them alone. So if we want to do the same and collect this heat, we have sort of a problem or a challenge. How do I get exhaust heat back into the system? So this is my answer, instead of heating the hopper vessels, auger tunnels etc, I came up with heating the hopper gas directly and then reinjecting it back into the machine. This way I am applying waste engine exhaust heat directly to the raw fuels and not the vessels that contain it.
So now some of the unforeseen features of this system. This is all just theory but I believe something like this system did exist many years ago in the WWII era. But anyways I think some of the gas re entering the system may go in the down draft direction of the machine but not all. The idea is not to burn these gases at all, but to use the hopper gas as a heat carrier to preheat and dry the fuels. This system will work in a closed loop and the hopper gases that are in our standard systems is probably more combustible than the secondary gas they produce. If some of the gases do go down and get processed this will be good in that it will become part of the source of combustion, so that should help in efficiency and also help yield more carbon. I don’t think full combustion is going to be an issue, those gases are there regardless if it is circulating or not. The basic idea of circulating it is get as much moisture out and bring as much waste heat back in at the stage where the tars will become and issue.
What I am worried about is refilling the hopper after the machine has been ran a while. I think if the hopper is always refilled completely this should not be to big of an issue either. The lid on the big hopper is also a very big blow off valve.
We will have to wait and see what happens there. There will be switch to shut off the blower, when I refill the hopper I will go and turn it back on and then run like hell. BBB
Well Im starting to put all the wires on this beast. This machine is our next step in our evolution, this one features the first version of the HGR Systems and our first automixer. I have taken up the Arduino and picking this up pretty fast. I have some programing experience (ladder logic) so this is a bit different. But once you get into Arduino it is actually pretty easy to learn.
If my code works I will put this out to be open sourced here.
This machine is the precursor to the 2015 models. some of this build is still based on the first two prototype machines. Much will get refined for next year, the ES_IV will get some slight refinements, the media filter will get replaced with the new wet cyclonic filter and the enclosure system will see improvements as well. As soon as we get next years line up ready we will be launching some major R n D with a completely new E-Series and some advanced automation systems.
Lots of good things to come
Thanks for the update MattR.
You will be making 'ol Louis Chervrolet grave stir, sit up and take notice.
I figure you will be individual late model Chevy coil-over-plug electronically controlling this, eh?
I see you are woodgas introducing below a gasoline carburetor. Are you intneding to pre-air and woodgas mix? Or use the carburetor as the air flow control?
Regards
Steve Unruh
Hey Steve,
Yes this will be controlled with an MSD ignition system. This uses the original crank and cam pos sensors and also a MAP for ignition advance.
The gasoline carb and our system are separate systems with individual air intakes. Im going to try and use the carb as is (closing it completely off with its butterfly valves) It may leak slightly but if it is not enough to effect the flaring of the machine it should suffice. If not we will need a way to close this off completely just another challenge, but we are getting used to all the challenges haha
Fired it up on gasoline today, and yup it sounds like a race car. lol
We uncovered a major set back though, my lead welder, that may no longer have a job soon missed some internal welds inside our exhaust heat exchanger. We had some major exhaust escaping into the reactor, not good in front of our customer argh!!!
So tomorrow apart it comes, this is sort of major surgery as this is the one component that is buried deep inside the unit. We’ll need to remove the gasifier completely to access it. I hope with all of us working on it we can have it all back together after lunch and resume our testing.
I feel your pain Matt. I also own a company and realize we are only as good as our weakest link. Time for damage control and show the customer who you really are. You got this.
Its a pleasure to your sets evolving (i hope i got that right)
These set backs hopefully will stop… would love to hear it roar…
Hey thanks, we are back up and testing again. My welders mistake is now my investment into him. He now knows not to make mistakes like this, and hopefully will not make another one like this.
But anyways back to running on gasoline for now, I need to do some jetting on it. It is running a bit lean, might just need to drill out the seats a bit. The carburetor is a modern clone of the Rochester, 2GC 2 barrel. Very simple and reliable.
Tomorrow should be a good day and we should finnally get to run the gasifier. If goes well we will fire up the engine on woodgas later in the day.
Great way to learn, but we all hate it for some reason. Ha Been there, done that.