Water splitting in gasifiers

Wallace, I learned something also. I would have thought that the moisture in the gas would have a lot more latent heat than dry gas, thus making it harder to cool.

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That’s what I would have thought too Jeff.
I learned something new today, thanks Matt.

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@Jeff too

So here is the wiki explanation of this. So when we have a gas that has the potential to turn to a liquid in a cooling environment. The latent heat is given up and shed. In the case of gasification this is the h2o that is suspended in the gas for the most part.

In my case I do not believe there are any gases within the temperature range of ambient external cooling for this effect to take place. The due point for H is - 20 C and CO is something like - 190 C. With out any or very small amounts of h2o in suspension I am getting very little effect. This process starts immediately after leaving the grate. especially systems that have large ash bins.

So those that see higher temps, this is something that needs looked at first before further trouble shooting. How dry is your gas, if your not making tar, this is most likely what is going on. You have a good water shift going on :slight_smile:

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Automakers are now playing with systems that remove the humidity out of the intake air. This humidity saturates the intake air volume ( Less O getting in). So by removing the h2o in suspension more air gets in. Then there is also the cooling effect as the air sheds some heat allowing even more volume to get in.

How are they doing this? They are using a cyclone!! This is exactly what I have been doing for a few years now. The new system have two of them in series. I have to wonder if the condensate I am finding, is condensate at all. It could be from the humidity in the intake air!

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Not saying you are wrong necessarily, but increased water content in the charge air usually causes an increase in power and performance. Why would they want to take water out of the air?

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Yes water injection works, key word here “injection”

Mist in the intake does the opposite.

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He does a good explanation of water injection, and also touches on the moisture removal in the intake air.

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I’m not too sure Matt. A lot of street roders have been doing it for a very long time. Here Pat Goodman has aimed the nozzle straight into the carb. He calls ith injection but you have to actually look at what he is doing. Some of the old WWII fighter planes would do much the same thing

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GM had water methanol injection in the 60s on their first turbo car.
It let them use boost with a relatively high compression engine.

But when you ran out of “turbo rocket fluid” you could not run the turbo.
This was the down fall of the system you always had to top up the injection system with more water/methanol.
The idea of getting your water directly from the exhaust is a very interesting one

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Did you watch the video. What he is talking about will make sense. The idea is to cram as much oxygen into the engine as efficiently as possible, with a separator plus some cooling, this is basically free. Then when you get into the water system, the water system is direct injected to get those benefits.

He explains why the humidity is a problem.

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Olds were such innovators of the day. A lot of 442’s in the fam sort of my roots as my Dad and Uncle restored those old cars.

Yup note the turbo again. Cram it in!!

On this newer system the turbo is also required for this. Think about boiling water, if you want to boil water at lower temperature you can put into a vacuum. Its the same when you are trying to condense it. In a vacuum the moisture will want to stay in suspension. So a turbo add pressure to alleviate that issue.

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The less water i have in my gas, the less heat gets out of my gasifier, less heat creaping into the gasifier metal encasing, the cooler my gas stay’s, the more power i get into my engine…

If i try to have real bone dry wood into my oven to turn into charcoal… it takes much longer for getting all volatiles out coz the heattransfer inside the retort is less rapid…

However, if i want to enhance cooling capacity / heattransfer rate inside the combustion zone of my ICE, then water injection helps a lot, preventing pre detonation, more optimal ignition, more torque

So much we can learn from each others experiences/failures/successes/sharings…

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