Unless I can use wood chips to fuel my gasifier, I won’t be getting more serious about woodgas/electricity generation than I am now.
So, I keep trying to come up with a wood chip management scheme that will work for me.
I put up a new youtube video on the subject last night and I’d appreciate any comments you all have on the subject:
Also, if you have any experience with conifer chips (what, if any, problems does the tree resin cause), I’d appreciate that, too.
Morning PeteS
Excellant, excellant video you have put up.
For scrounged chipped fuels excellant sorting techniques.
Excellant advice for gasifier fuel using you are giving.
I highly recommend this to all comtemplating using chipped wood fuels for gasification.
De-res’ed down to 240P even a stone-aged, early 2000’s dial-up fellow like me was able to view this in 2 hours 20 minutes. Well worth the time. Dense information you have pack into your 10 minutes 30 seconds. Compliments.
Best Regards
Steve Unruh
I can give gasification on conifer chips expereinces later when my IPS server/phone provider allowed minutes refresh. S.U.
Hi PeteS.
Again excellant wood chip info you have put up.
I hope many read your important real world practical information.
My first two pictures show the tools I use to sort out the accumulated woody debris from under the woodsplitter. Left to right they are a silage/ensilage fork, a spading fork and a five tine pitch fork. This wood feather/wood whisker trash has a high amount of dried pitch resin in it. Righthand pile will be used in the woodstove as fire starter. Center pile as mud abatement in and around the chicken house and chicken run. Lefthand pile as weed control mulching at the base of the acid loving raspberry and blueberry plants. As you know now none of this stranded and particle crushed stuff would flow well through a gasifer without clogging or hanging up. Lefthand pile only maybe as a 10% fuel additive to actual chunks.
On your “found” “free” woodchips - well, you are still lucky. My County this year changed from chipping to a shredding machine. Saves them much expensive hand labor, the 2nd and sometimes 3rd truck and trailer for hauling away, and time to get property dumping permissions.
3rd and 4th picures are of conifer Douglas Fir shredded. 5th and 6th pictures are of different types of native deciduous saplings. Last picture is what actually was flung onto my property perimeter walking path. I miss my roadside fencing hedge. Gave privacy and kept the Auzie Ruby-dog from fence bolting and car chasing.
High resinous woods gasifiy with fine energy. Some of the quickest, most powerful fuel woods that I’ve used. They do tend to run very sooty. Expect more downstream filering and piping manintence needed. Very, Very easy to run your self out of char bed before all of the volitiles are burnt off and converted to allow the remainig char left to free up and then fall down and char bed replenish. In your case I’d recommend mixing with the slow, low power rate release deciduous chips to counter this and get the best features of both. In my case with my side jet type gasifiers and virtually NO hardwoods I’ve found I must always shut-down/cool-down set-up for the next run with lots of char left above the nozzle hieght. ONLY start back up with the driest, least resinous wood fuel. And ONLY put the high resinous fuel wood in a HOThigh flow load demanded gasifier. Resinous woods NOT good for idling loads, cool running or shutting down on. Will make a sooty clogging, glued together mess inside.
Ha! Ha! At that; much better than pure bark fuels with their super high mineral ash grate clogging content and poor, poor char coaling.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Thank you, Steve.
Lots of useful information in your post.
I tried shredding some “longs” a couple of years ago in a 12 inch diameter (small) hammermill that I had.
http://www.spaco.org/Woodgas/WoodChipGenIntegration.htm
That stuff has no chance of ever feeding in my system, so i hope our county never does go away from chippers.
Pete,
Here’s some pics of my woodchip classifier under construction. I have since added plywood separators to keep the classified chip piles separated. I have also tried various means of powered rotation, but haven’t found one I’m completely happy with yet. I simply toss in a 5 gal bucket of chips then slowly turn the classifier.
http://driveonwood.com/sites/default/files/gasifier%20026.jpg
I’ll look for some updated pics.
This is nothing more than a 55gal drum cut into 4 pieces with 1/4x1/4, 1/2x1/2 and 1x2 screen screwed between the sections. 2x4 wood frame with 2" castors. Pic during assembly:
Welcome to the site Billy. I remember your stationary setup from the Woodgas Meet of 2010 over there in Kansas. That electrical box holds a lot more than meets the eye. I just appreciated that you kept the unit inside the pole barn away from the harsh 95 plus sun. That other character with the woodgas truck and all those people around him kept the interior from getting too crowded 
Hey Doug! Glad to see a familiar face! I’ve been out of the woodgas game for a while, but am beginning to get the bug again. My copy of Wayne’s book is in the mail, and I’ve been making my way through the videos.
Pete, speaking of the 2010 meet, here’s a video taken at that event. You can see the completed classifier against the back wall. We laid down corrugated tin in each “chip stall” to keep the chips out of the dirt.
Hey Billy welcome aboard and thanks for posting sir!
With the thousands of people I have met in the wood gas circles it is very hard to remember names and faces but I remember Poker Face Bill very well. ( At the woodgas event in Kansas 2010 I took Billy for a ride in the dakota . We pulled up to a highway with fast traffic and as we were waiting to enter I was explaining to Billy that the truck could sit and idle a while and still have power . As a semi truck was coming at about 70 mph I acted as I was about to pull out in front of it to demonstrate this . Bill was wearing his poker face showing no emotion but the pupils of the eyes were like a aperture of a camera lens going from small to wide open) Thus the nickname Poker Face Bill.
Pleasure to meet you in Kansas.
laughing I remember that trip well! I’m still looking for those serial numbers, but can’t seem to roll them down far enough!
Thanks for the laughs.
