Before I got into gasification I was saw milling and would have a lot of scrap and slaps to dispose of . In a day of sawing it is very easy to accumulate 2-3 tons of slabs . I would use the slabs to heat my house but would have tons still left over . I ran an advertisement in a local traders paper offering free fire wood but had no takers . ( I guess folks thought it was a joke ) Later I ran an advertisement selling the slabs at $5 a load and had several takers but usually I would end up having to do the loading with my tractor because some folks couldn’t lift the slabs but most was just lazy . In the end it was costing me too much to try to sell the slabs .
I resorted to piling them in the pasture and having some piles as big as a small house and I would set them a fire on a rainy day.
Fast forward 10 years it is a very different story . Folks wonder how I am able to saw timber and charge much less that other millers . I think the DOW group understands very well .
It is very easy for the waste from one log to produce $30-50 worth of motor fuel !! I almost feel shame to charge for the sawing .
I while ago i promised i’d upload some videos showing some of the stuff i work on, on a daily basis. Here is our Hemco edger. Missed a sequencing input flag but running pretty well. Rapid Fire edging strips! should feed all our trucks in a days work
Pellet Mill
We utilize as much Byproduct as possible. Out Technology Mill (R & D) mill directly feeds bark via a overpass belt way, chips via a high pressure system to our silos, and dust via loader operators or from our other mills local to the site with a tractor trailer dump. Lifts the entire trailer to dump it to our reserve. Very cool to watch. Ill try to get a video of it soon.
Visited one of our KD sites for some work and as usual asked the mill manager if they had any unprocessed I could grab and low and behold the chipper was down and will be down for 5 weeks. They are in red oak and white oak for the duration and he begged me to take as much as I can. I gladly abliged. Full load of 8/4 red/white oak getting another load Monday.
I got my truck back together and burned up the last of the wood I chunked last fall. I went to the woods to pick up some dead stuff but the mosquitoes were terrible. I had this old hay wagon with wood from last year that was too big and dry to chunk with my rim chunker; so this is what I came up with; https://plus.google.com/u/0/105962245827532388718/posts
Looking good with the wood ! Thanks for the video.
My chunker will eat green wood like a hog eating slop but it don’t like dry wood. Any dead or dry wood I run up on will go in my home heating pile or I will also use some means of sawing to get it gasifier size .
I see a lot of people are finding planks / slabs blocks there killing me I am amazed how many ways it will self stack to avoid the burn tube.so just wondering if you all have a modified funnel or have trained the wood better or something .ideas please
Lots of cutting required on those big pieces, typically nothing over 3" in any direction, a round shape here and there helps out, and gentle bumping down the road usually does the trick. Exceptions to these rules abound though. And yes, there is a good funnel inside too.
thanks carl but my blocks are 2’’ and my funnel looks spot on to all pics found .maybe the roads around here are better than I thought. instead of a grate shaker I will half to come up with a hopper shaker.
Potholes are your friend. Ride the rumble strips on the side or center of the road when safe. Shoot for 2.5" as a max dimension on any side. Sometimes its just gonna bridge. You also have to allow it to run up the temps a bit and learn to wait for the bridge to collapse, often it will settle before hitting the max, but will frequently gets close.
Once you learn the temp your unit runs when really empty (typically 100C/212F on a wk unit) you’ll be better able to make a decision to ride it out or stop and give her a poke. Also knowing the quality of wood in the hopper and how far your truck will go per lb will help you in deciding if the temp rise is low fuel or a bridge forming.
Is dry fuel, nothing over 3" and dry dry dry, the more moister content the more goo comes out of it and then if you have flat spots when the two flat spot get together now your fuel is twice the size, not good!
Small and dry and an occasional speed bump or pothole is the key to making good gas!
Hey Paul McC
Hopper shakers work. I’ve used them on small systems. DannyCox uses a mondo hopper system shaker on his SS made up gen-set unit.
But . . . .
These are all very stout, relatively heavy made up hand TIG welded thick stainless steel systems.
Mine, the thinnest metal is 10 ga SS. And goes up to 5/6" SS.
To get enough motorized shaking on one of these big barrels based units to be effective I would be afraid of the thin barrels welds edge cracking.
Adding to the advices you were given above these paraphrased off Mr Waynes previous posts, “I think having the lower cone edge left loose as fingers keeps the blocks from sticking, forming a bridge.” “These fingers can then wiggle/flex and let chunks road shake down past.”
I picture see a lot WK builders welding these solid now. Spot welding the finger tips together. Resting the shaping funnel fingers hard onto the hearth tube edge. BillS . . . . .
“The devil is in the details”
S.U.
My buddy Steve Cross from South west Georgia sent me this video . After viewing my videos of riding the dakota around on the trailer pulled by the tractor also the wood powered wood chunker .
I ran back through my ancestry to see if I had any Cross blood . Could find any but if Steve went through his he might come up with some Keith.
Steve wants to come by and take a look at my gasifiers and build one . Is there anyone that doubts he has the means and ability to build , operate and fuel a wood burner ?.
I was setting my chunker in a new location and while I had it lifted I set it near the welder and resurfaced some wear areas between the wheel rim and the anvil.
With Mike LaRosa coming by this weekend I need to have all in order so I can put him to work
getting another load Monday.
