As for using split logs I have not personally seen a system capable of running an engine on a small scale. If there is one out there some where please send me a link!!! I have personally seen a machine set up as a boiler that shows some promise of running an engine. However, its gas out put may partially be wasted with the amount of gas this thing makes.
Storing this gas scares me and I will not advise on this except to never do it. Just a little bit of oxy in the mix and you will have a very big explosion. Besides your biomass is already storing it, just take it when you need it.
If you are going to convert your home to off grid using gasification technology. It will be easier for you to make your home fit the gasifier, not making the gasifier fit your home. What I mean by this updating your appliances to energy efficient electric versions. You could go to DC LED lighting and if you are going to build a CHP system then your hot water and heat are already taken care of. If additional heat is needed then I would get a pellet stove or going to geo thermal. Combining renewable energy systems will make them all that much better if they are working together just my opinion. How long you need to run your system depends on how big you build it and the size of your battery bank. None of this will come with out a life style change, you will need to run your house hold more efficiently.
The small 2k and 5k power stations I am building and offering now will just be for power generation. These are not off grid systems a better use for these are supplemental power, a cabin or emergency back up. These machines are the stepping stones to our CHP systems that will be capable of off grid applications. As you have seen here I am experimenting with capturing waist heat and there may be an option later for heating on these smaller units. But it will be limited on these little machines.
Once these machines are fully debugged we will soon after start our full CHP system. This machine will feature liquid cooled engines for heat and hot water and will have plenty of power to give your home.
Here are the engines we will offer the Kohler will be what comes standard and the GM version will be offered as an upgrade.
Good Morning MattR.
Most excellant answers to a complicated set of questions.
I can fill in some details if I may.
Cordwood/Stickwood gasification for motor fuel is a Holy Grail I pursued for about 2 1/2 years. It actully can be done for about a small percent of a carefully hand loaded batch burn in a crafted hearth. So . . . unable to constantly maintain a continuous reduction pass through char bed that renews itself the average woodgas quality is very poor and you overall make a min of 80% HEAT and only ~20 usable fuel gas for the amount of fuel wood used. Refernced against the typical properly chunked wood fuel gasifier at 70% fuel gas and only 30% heat.
I wasted a lot of time, effort and money on this that would have been much better invested in automating gasifier fuel wood chunking preparing and processing.
StephenS. the old city gas plants from ~the 1840’s up until as late as the 1950 made heating fuel and illuminating gas. Mostly from fossil coal but they did have raw wood hearth producers used too. This gas was CARBON DIOXODE. This was when you actualy could easily kill youself sticking your head in an oven. Modern natural gas and propane gas systems are mandated to have a stinky make you puke irritant put into them for thier legal liabilty reasons. Small system produced woodgas has min 8-10% up 20-22% deadly carbon monoxide in it. It is one of the three primary engine fuel componet gases in woodgas.
It only takes 1% CO over a very short time to kill you. You do not ever want to route woodgas into any human or animal occupied space. You will be held reponsible for the brain damaged and the killed.
MattR the newer four pole double ball bearing Hitachi motor/generators are much better than the older Delco Remy two pole units or the very rare old Robert Bosch one’s. All are contious belt drive, “A” circut set up and can use the same type of motor windings cut-in/cut-out and generation voltage regulator assemblies.
Thanks for the responses Matt and Steve. I had given some thought to the idea of using efficient electric appliances and LED bulbs in the event that wood-gas couldn’t be stored effectively/safely so at least I’m not completely off base.
I guess the next question is are there good quality/cost effective wood-chippers that can either be run off the wood-gas or a battery bank to facilitate fuel production available?
Also about what size or perhaps a better way to phrase it is what sort of Kw and BTU outputs are you looking to achieve with your CHP systems Matt?
I like the idea of a thermal storage unit + radiant floor heating as the circulator pumps aren’t a large draw - is such a setup realistic?
Don’t forget one of the best uses for wood is directly heating the application itself. Turning wood into gas and back into heat is usually unnecessary. Many outdoor gasification boilers are available now. There are some excellent designs for rocket stoves, TLUD gasifier/cookstoves, and so on - directly using the fuel for heat, without smoke.
I still wouldn’t be comfortable doing this indoors without ventilation. Perhaps on a screened porch.
On the later CHP Systems the first one will feature 10 kW electric out put. As far as BTU you are way ahead of me on that. I still have some resaerch to do there yet.
I have an immediate need for a sales associate. This is a unique position that requires the knowledge of this technology. Finding individuals that have this knowledge is difficult let alone finding someone that has even heard of the technology. So Im offering this position to you folks here on the forum.
You can do this at home as long as you have an internet connection and have basic computer skills. I would require a trip here to our manufacturing facility once a month to go over product development, scheduling, etc.
Compensation is paid on commision and will be what you make of it. There are other duties that will go along with this position, such as marketing and promoting the product line. Other duties include maintaining our manufacturing schedule, creating quotes and invoicing, work orders, etc. I have developed a very broad product line in a very short time. I am working on expanding this line into full turnkey systems with automated support systems. I’m anticipating very rapid growth once these systems are out in the world. I have orders for four of these machines already and have large investors that will be reviewing one of these machines. So any one with knowledge of handling investments, this would be a plus.
Those that are interested can inquire through the site or contact me through our website; [email protected]
Hey all, its been crazy busy as always. But I managed to crank out the 2015 Micro Series I last week and started testing. This one is mine and all mine lol, and so far this guy has been very impressive. Consistency I thought was going to be a big issue with this tiny guy but it is surprisingly quite consistent. Periodic grate shaking is a requirement but no bridging at all. This is running pellets though. The market intent with this is for camping and similar applications so foliage is the intended fuel for it. I am going to back off the jet ring this week and chop up some foliage and test again. We are going to offer upgrades for this with the grate and hopper automation, along with a fan cooler for the gas chiller and the wheeled cart system. We are also going to outfit a Harbor Freight / Tractor supply 2 kW generator with our automixer and trailering attachment system to compliment this guy as additional equipment.
We needed to get a lower cost unit unit into the market and this is our answer
Wow I didnt realize I had so much history on this thread. You can see one of the very early versions of the M-I at the top. I cant believe how fast things have evolved.
Nice hearing from you again Matt.
I sure wouldn’t mind seeing a video of what that gasifier can do. How big of an engine and how long it can run? If it can run on pellets, do you think it can run on wood chips too?
Video maybe coming later in the week if I have time to pull it off. I think 3 to 5 hp is going to be most practical, it has a 1 1/2" restriction in it with a three jet / 6" hearth. Im sure we could go bigger on the engine but then practical usage diminishes when your filling it all the time.
I dont see why it wouldnt run chips as long as they are small and dense enough. I have scrapped the tapered down hopper to help these little machines run more consistently, we lose capacity but consistency is a better trade off. We are getting a mountain of free chips soon, so we will have an abundance of test fuel to run in her.
Hey all, here is the new M-IV this is a build in progress. Ill be working on the media filter and gas chiller this weekend, hope have this ready to go early next week. I put it side by side the M-I for comparison, we offer the M-2 and M-3 so you will need fill in the blanks until we build them
Busy busy, Here is the 2015 M-Series IV fully equipped. This has a lot of features handed down from the ES machines. The M-Series has gotten a full modular design for this year similar to the ES models. Additional features are available as upgrades, these include the external removable jetting and the automated grate and hopper agitator systems. A new feature we are now offering is a fan chiller system, this includes a shroud that wraps around the condenser coupled to one of our high output blowers built special to adapt for this application. Additionally the wheeled chassis is still available but it is an upgrade option for this year. This is to do our best to keep our pricing at a minimum.
We are considering expanding the M-Series into larger machines. This will be a new product line as these larger machines I would no longer consider a Micro machine. This product line will be dubbed the Flex Series Machines and the now M-Series IV will get re badged as the first offering of this product line as the Flex Series I, we will then offer two more larger versions of this machine up to a 16" hearth and will add a liquid cooled condenser system as an additional upgrade option.
We do get to test this one, hope to get some flare time tomorrow. We will need to purchase chips though and its early in the season so they may be to wet.
Here is a new product we are launching. This is basically one of those soup can camp fire stoves, but pumped up on steroids and smashed together with our M-I Imbert.
This can be ran in a natural aspirated mode or with forced air. I am working on a few options for the forced air systems. The system that will come standard on this is a compressed air system that can be either pumped up with a bike pump (for those that never want to run electricity to run this) or a Harbor Freight DC tire pump can be used as well. I bought quite a few of these pumps from HF and they work quite well, this is one of the good buys from HF.
Another option I have to develop yet is a DC fan system. It will simply use a 3" 12 V computer fan, with some sort of manifold attached to it. This is so we can put a ball valve on to control flow. This thing requires very little air to work. however, it does need some help to get the flows started. This is a down draft imbert on the primary burn and then updraft at the secondary burn. I use the forced air to get things flowing and then switch to natural aspiration. When the machine is ran in a forced air mode the flare is quite clean similar to what we see with our M-I, So the 12 V dc fan option will be better fit for those that want a cleaner burn.
Yeah Im not sure how I keep going, it is after 1 am as Im posting. haha
Well here is the latest and greatest, this is the first of a series of generator packages built specific for wood gas. These will be available to anyone who has a gasifier to run them.
I plan to take the smaller Harbor Freight gen sets and implement our mixer control and install the generator/alternator starter systems. These will be our economy versions. They will probably be in the $800.00 to $1000.00 range depending on what we have into them.
This machine we are working on now, is more a premium system. This has our mixer controller, wheeled chassis system that conveniently attaches to the M-IV gasifier, full enclosure, and an added gas dryer. This is an AC system, and we will offer a DC version that will be basically identical to it. The exceptions will be the Mecc Alte DC head, the on board battery bank, charge controller, and inverter. The DC system will be a bit more than the AC counterpart as it will have these extra components that will add to the cost. But the user friendliness of the DC systems are well worth it.
Ok I am near completion on this, I still have a few iterations I need to make yet. We will continue running and testing this, load testing is next and the mixer control I think is just about there. I need to add a hole for the engine fan intake…Oops! and then I also need to put an exhaust vent on the other end. I am planning on adding fan there to aid cooling. The sheet metal is there to reduce noise and help protect from the eliminates.
Here is a quick walk around of the near completed unit while in operation. More to come and I did get permission to bring this to Argos.
That would be awesome, we are working the latest V8 system. This will be a 50 kW output system It will be fun to show. Your welcome any time, Im usually here I don’t ever get to leave!!
