If the gas leaving the gasifier shows no or very little smoke it should be tar free .
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JustinH, as JoepK indicated pre-testing for tars falls back into the 1980ās thru early 2000ās trend that woodgas developing was 90% done by . . . frankly geeks for presentation to geeks.
You can tell this approch by lots of āflare-staringā; white paper filter media minuet examining; and vacuuming out the gasifier hearth bed examining it layer by layer like an archologist dig siteā¦ Disturbing the beds evolved set up. And every testing run then being like a fellow alway staying stuck in 1st gear.
Here on the DOW the Game is powering IC engine working for purposes.
So to check you produced gas for tars have a sacrificial/super-easy to repair āGoatā engine.
An old still engine running walk-behind lawn mowers are the easiest. Go to the Project Farms youtube channel and select his alternative fuel testing videos. He uses different walk behind mowers loading with the flywheel stop brake band. He uses one vertical single cylinder B&S with a see thru acrylic cylinder head.
And then lastly, he uses a relatively expensive fuel injected generator set.
These goats he compression tests and cylinder head removes before and after. Easy.
Now my personal favorite goat testing set up is a modern 8500 OHV slant cylinder electrical generator set.
Tar it to stuck down intake valve usually just bends the push rod. Straighten it and, go back to DOing. Learning a lesson.
ALL woodgasifier WILL produce tars at starting up, warming up to stable reactions.
ALL woodgasifier WILL produce tars if you run the fuelbed down below the air nozzles level; consuming your needed evolved char bed and then dump in full loads of fresh raw fuel wood. char bed. The engine lesson taught by this is to re-stock the char bed from saved pre-made woodgchar chunks. Or back draft run it in open topped smoky mode to in-place re-evolve what you need lower down.
Your engine will tell you all of these things and more. Your engine running any way on your made fuel will put smiles on your face and motivate you to keep pressing forwards.
Regards
Steve unruh
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well made a trip to the dump today, managed to pick up two 20lb propane tanks, a 30lb ropane tank, a 60ish gallon water pressure tank and a 30 gallon water pressure tank. i already have on the property an old 100lb propane tank and various scrap bits of metal, so its looking like i have most of what i need to start building a full sized system which will (hopefully) go in my truck.
i would however like to get a good air tight primary reactor for my small system to test out before i move on to the full size system, i may use one of the 20lb propane tanks for that first. no point jumping into the big unit until i know the theory is somewhat sound in the smaller unit.
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did a bit of tinkering, shoved some rock wool in the bottom of reactor 1, seemed to seal better for sure, i was having trouble keeping reactor 1 lit, but that seemed to help. also i reduced the air inlet opening of reactor 2, i think it was pulling too much air and subsequently was stealing air from reactor 1.
if you notice the color of reactor 2ās coal bed is not as bright as it would be if i were running charcoal only. it kind of flashes bright then dark then bright again as it runs. however when i use my blower there is no visible smoke that comes out at all. there are also no signs of tar that i can see, even once the engine cooled down the throttle and choke plate moved freely and the engine pulled over as normal.
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also i found something out very interesting, in this video i first let it run as normal, pulling from both reactors. you can hear the engine rpm, i then remove a vent plug from above reactor 1 and shut a ball valve preventing reactor 2 from pulling any smoke through, you can hear after i do this the rpm of the engine drops. i then open the ball valve back up and reinstall the plug and the rpm returns to normal.
this tells me that the moisture from reactor 1 must be acting in the same way that a water drip would, adding extra hydrogen to the system. it may not be as much hydrogen as a convential water drip would add but there is definitely a difference. its much more noticeable in person than on the recording from my cell phone.
for this test i actually left the bottom of reactor 1 open because i believe it was starving for oxygen before, this was just a simple way to make sure it stayed lit the whole way through, thats why smoke is bellowing out the bottom lol
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There you go JustinH . . ā¦ proving that āOnly Burning is Learningā.
And further proving that āAnd Only IC engine running is learning Wellā
Regards
Steve Unruh
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