Oh, wow. And just when I thought all the really good ways to skin the woodfuel prepping cat has been dredged up.
Good one HerbH !!
Just mind those fingers!
Be easy now to fab a horizontal U shaped strap guard to keep the fingers away from the head end area yet still have cookie clearnce underneath and visiblty above.
And some push sticks for those last few chunk outs.
I have this one thumb tip squashed like a stepped on grape from way back when, stitched up at the splits and numb and cold sensitive since. Kinnda aches watching this. Iāll be skipping audio on the video.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Thanks Steve, always good to get your ātakeā on stuff. The U shaped strap guard idea and push sticks sounds like something I should do alright!!!
At the risk of boring everyone I have some more pics of my fuel processing system.
- band saw cutting ācookiesā
- pile of chunks from new cookie spliter
- spliter running
- getting fuel out of hotbox
- loading for a nice Saturday afternoon ride, āpricelessā
Iām still working on video, something wasnāt ācompatableā. latter, Herb
Ha! Looks like a fireman shoveling coal on a locomotive. Enjoyed the pictures Herb.
I love seeing what your up to Herb.
Had a great ride Saturday, almost 2,000 miles on the Caddy now on wood accept starting and sometimes I turn the injectors on and let it pull a little gas if I need to get out of the way. I wish I would have kept track of how much gas Iāve used over the last 2000 miles but itās not much! My best guess would be about 12 gallon, at that rate itās getting over 166 mpg. Not to bad for a Caddy! Latter, Herb
Morning Mr. Herb,
It is real nice when we can think of gasoline as being the alternative fuel !!
Keep up the good work .
SWEM
Hi Wayne, yes thatās right. No longer being āover the barrelā is the greatest feeling ever, makes it all worth it!!! Thanks, Herb
BTW, Hope you had a nice birthday Wayne :o) ā¦ Mike
Well another lesson learned! The last few times I stuck my small clean-out shovel in my ash clean-out Iāve noticed less and less room between the bottom of lower drum (inside) and grate. I thought the burn tube was probably settling some and it probably is but the more I looked it over I found that the whole bottom of lower drum is sucked up almost against grate now!! I can fix it without tear down but it goes to show the power of vacuum! Wow!
I guess I would have to say that the Caddy really sucks!!! Latter, Herb
Herb, Thatās pretty funny ā¦ Sean in Florida started building square but I think he had to add cross braces to support the flat sides. Who thinks about the bottom ?? Hereās a couple of pics of one of my infarcs ā¦
http://www.intergate.com/~mlarosa/images/woodgas/crushed-filter.jpg
http://www.intergate.com/~mlarosa/images/woodgas/oops-collapsed-filter.JPG
I just added more duct tape and castleations in the outlet pipe and drove with it crushed for many many miles. I think I was up around 30 inches when it happened. It was way higher than usual and I wondered what was going on. Stuart Perkins was in the truck. He handled the Kansas get together. He got a hybrid ride but an old neighbor showed up after he had left and I had patched it up and got a real ride ā¦
Fun fun fun ā¦ Mike
Hello Herb and Mikie ,
Yes the vacuum can be a lot of force on a container . 30 inches of water applied to a 55 gallon drum would be like a 450 pound guy standing on the end of the barrel.
I know you recommend about 4" in between grate and bottom of drum and thatās the smart way to do it. I only left 2" in there trying to keep it low and I didnāt do the ammo boxes because itās only about 8" off the road right there. I clean ashes out about every 200 miles and that works ok for what I use it for. I sure never counted on the bottom getting sucked up . Iāve been a metal fab guy all my life and have made many "things"out of metal but Iāve been surprised/fooled on this more than any other. itās very interesting though and I like working out problems anyway. latter, Herb
Herb, Maybe the bottom is getting too hot and the steel is softened ?? Just a thought. Take a look at it after a long night drive and maybe it is even glowing a bit with the glowing char on it ??? Mike
Good suggestion Mike! Iāll do that. When I was building it last Winter I did put another layer of thin sheet metal in there with a very thin sheet of insulation between them. I took the insulation out of an old house furnace, it was on the inside of outer shell, donāt know if it is for high heat or not but I figured it couldnāt hurt. I often wonder what happened to it. Do you think it could live in there? Itās only about a 1/4 thick! Thanks for your thoughts and the pics. Herb
Herb, Sounds good to me. I was going to suggest similar as an experiment. Another thing might be to tack weld or just bolt a 3/16" plate to the bottom and drill through and put several 1/4" screws through and smash the threads. Furnace cement might get washed out in that location but a thin layer of autobody putty will probably hold up well. If the vacuum is the real issue then reinforcement will be required ā¦ Use washers inside the ash pit of course ā¦ It it continues to flex it will eventually fatigue and crack. Any air in the ash pit will ākill the gasā as Wayne put it me. I grin every time I remember him saying that to me years ago. So true but all it is is that the gas is so hot at that point that any air will allow for combustion and for some of it to burn up. I think the highest temperature I ever saw after my cyclone was around 700 degrees F. It was after a long hill and the truck was running fine but I knew I had fire in there. I had to stop because the paint was burning off of everything ā¦ That was back when I had a 55 gallon drum for 9 seconds of reserve gas and for a settling bowl (cyclone) for the ash and slipped char. it was also a pre-cooler ā¦ Mike
Thanks for the ākill the gasā explaination Mike. That is the kind of info that really helps me and Iām sure lots of others understand this mysterious creature called gasification. How did the ā55 gal 9 sec reserveā work out and do you still use something similar? Herb
Herb, The 9 seconds of āpassing gasā :o) took up too much space in the bed of the truck. I finally built a decent solid (large) cyclone and eliminated it. Without the barrel I have to think ahead and keep revving the engine at stop signs and the such. Even with the barrel I would take off and get around 200 feet down the road and the engine would try to stall but it has a stick so I just waited patiently for the gasifier to catch up. I had a rod on the top of the drum lined up with tape strips on the rear window and I could tell how much flex the drum lid was experiencing. This is why I donāt build with drums. I had to patch a lot of rust holes in it as well. Metal is too thin for winter operation in the salt belt. I was forever brazing it. Mike
Ha! Ha! MikeL you are just too damn common sense practical.
One fellow we we both know built a BIG gasifier system with an expensive elaborate four stage progressive high tech filtration system. ONLY time he ever made one with quite a few now large flat panel areas in it. An excellant fabrcator, he always put the very professional X accross center panel creases on all of his flat panels. Well at different times with different internal clogging and pressure differentials these would pressure flex BANG! and scaring the hell out of you. Got to where you could watch and listen and know exactly in the system where a problem was all without any manometers or pressure instrumentation. Good thing too. As all SS almost no heat visual tracking was possible with simple paints appeance changing. Infared heat guns did not want to work on the SS shiney. Hard engine pulled or in shut off heat soak and one slip with my direct contact probes and maybe could be a hot/spot Ouch! to a raised burn blister! He never has used flat pressure panels since. Only for the beauty covers.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Always good to hear about the inner workings of a gasifier especially from a couple of experienced hands like you too.
Took the Caddy to a family gathering at a state park about 30 miles from here today. I loaded up out of the hotbox. Iāve been noticing the Caddy doesnāt have the power latly that it has had. I didnāt fill it up because I had told the kids I would bring the grill to cook on which was the gasifier and I wanted to end up with the char only for a clean ācookoutā, worked good. For fuel for the trip home I used some baged fuelwood that has been in the trunk for a long time. I noticed that it was chopped up a lot smaller then what I had been using out of the hotboxā¦ That thing ran a LOT better on the way home with the smaller chucks. Do you find that the smaller the fuel the better, to a point?. Herb
You bet on the smaller fuel. If you are figuring to race, 2" by 2" by 2" cherry pieces are the catās meow. Even Wayne has racing fuel ā¦ The stuff from Ron Lās pallet factory is pretty dang good as well ā¦ ML