Hello Mr. Rose,
I couldn’t agree with you more.
When John mention he was in the logging business and had a saw mill I assumed he had a lot of gasifier size material already. Those trades I have personal experience with and in his case pellets might not be beneficial.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Wayne
That’s ok …I’m a small guy; when they teamed me up with a
football player sized guy, and it took both of us to lift a load;
the big guy would hoist it to his shoulder. That put 75% of
the weight on to me. He had fun doing his job;
but it put the majority of the load on to me.
The “big guys” cannot understand what a small man must
endure… They laugh and say wimmpy…
That’s the reason a small man often gets angry and hostile.
We have to fight harder than normal; We have to face GOLIETH
But along with that limitation. comes the self relience that makes
us determined to suvive.
With Matt Ryders little M-1 and the experience I got from that;
I am ready to power my dreams
Daucie
with the mill and dry kiln going plus the way that we log ( we take it all the way down to the twig waste little) there are a lot of various sized stock plus there are other mills around that make trusses furniture etc. who are watching this very closely and that I build a demonstrator before the Logging Congress happens in Escanaba MI or get a magic wand out and get one of the Keith truck to magically show up there is going to be a lot of interest in this technology
at zero and a few degrees above its too cold to do much around here but sharpen saws and read
We had about a week of rain here in Alabama and the out side wood pile is soaking wet.
We loaded up a trailer and put it in the shed for drying this morning.
we are trying to get a few projects done in the sawmill, get the boiler finished to dry wood and remembered that I had been in White Horse Machine near Lancaster Pa in Amish Country and they have two fixed plant engines that compress air generate electricity and they even take the water from the cooling system and run it through a radiant heat system for the office in the winter time. Now question is how well would the wood gas system work stationary?? I understand that the movement of the vehicle would be an asset to wood not bridging but wonder If what I saw could be done in the stationary configuration. This would make us the most unique sawmill in the country that I know of as it would run on its own waste and not on steam.
Good Morning Mr. Boyd,
I think a stationary gasification system would be easier to build than a mobile unit. With the stationary unit there are plenty of room to locate all the components . On a mobile system there are very limited space . I wouldn’t worry about the lack of road vibration. With the dakota trucks on good highway there are very little vibration and I have had no problem with bridging.
Some differences in mobile and stationary will be the length of time it can be run unattended . If it is expected to run long periods of time unattended it would need automation.
Keeping the motor rpms just where they should be is not as critical running a sawmill vs a AC generator where the rpms must stay at a given rpm.
I lack the computer and automation skills necessary to automate the gasifers and try to concentrate my work on the mobile system where the operator is required to be present while the vehicle is going down the road.
If one is working around a gasified sawmill where he can monitor gauges and make adjustments occasionally I think building stationary would be easier than a mobile unit.
Great post Mr Wayne
I have been calling your WK evoled system now in phone and e-mail exchanges as a “Long Path System”. Well it is! You have twice the gasses flow lengths built into you vehicle conversion system as even the installed factory licensed Imberts had. And they were the longest flow path systems of thier day. Even shows this on the very few transportable trailer mounted Imberts “stationery’s” pictured. Smart. Very smart.
This style of designing/building is the very best for a DYI’er to do, use, and understand. Can see this in Phil Coveys, David Blooms?, Jim Masons pre-GEK work and Ben Petersons earlier works.
Tendency of the stationary guys however is to go intergrated, stacked and more compact. I am not criticizing this eveolution you can now see taking place with Matt Ryders and even Arvid Olsens works. These guys all coping with materials costs, fabrication costs, and especially system shipping costs. Smallest footprint possible systems also what thier buyers are demanding. The more sqeezed small compacted you go you really better have paid your many systems built, ran and learned from development dues!
DYI for sure use a long gasses path with many clean out ports to make your life easier. PalF and Chris Seymores works show this. Yours, Mike LaRosa’s always have these features.
To Grate or not grate; inactive or active grate and the motion of it; and bridging issues seem to be very fuel(s) type used related in stationary use.
Bridging issues also IMHO have often gone back to large oversized “long run” hopper capacities built into stationaries that then overload the available rising internal hearth core heats abilty to vaporize off and keep these condensables moving and vaporized, AND then in hopper system condensed out and remove these now free liquid moistures quickly without resteaming and recirculating them.
Wayne, you do this better now than anyone else in the world that I am aware of.
Oversizing long run hopper building always seems to internally condense and form tars causing fuel particle gluing, sticky wall rings forming and fuel bridged caps. Yep. Long constant speed engine runs really promotes this tendency too.
Smallish hopper capacities are in my opinion one of the many keys to your improved system performance. Not a limitation. But a solution to a real problems.
AGAIN. Many of the stationary guy are NOT intending to use a pure chunked wood fuel - but high ash “diffcult” clinker prone making fuels.
Even a simple small engine mechanical coupled vibration can Down a system under some batch cycle conditions by contiously shaking too much good char below the grate killing the process. Electric demand shaking would “seem” to be the answer but then adds cost, complexity, and gonna have sooner versus later more failure points. Seen it. Cracked mounts. Motor bearing failures. Burnt up switches/relays. Controller wig-outs.
So . . . I have to respecfully disagree in that I think good stationary deveopement overall is more difficult to pull off susessfully for long term use.
I DO absolutly agree the solution always is an active involed, expereinced operator.
Google up and download a readable copy of the Internet put up book about “A Whole Town Powered by Woodgas”. No majic gasifier, cooling filtering systems. No super specially ground up formed uniform fuel stocks. Ha! Ha! BIG, they were using pretty big whole tree chunks from an elevated purpose built fuelwood cutting supply mill. Key was apprenticed learned, experienced operators 24/7 knowing where to thump, whap, and air/fuel adjust, grate shake and ash remove and engine repair to keep em up running and electrically generating for thier township and local hospital.
Good read with pictures.
Any way you cut it (pun) woodfuel energy genrating ain’t easy. What I like about it. Takes an active working thinking human to make it work. Push button, turn key energies are for people willing to allow themselves to be turned into specialized $$$$ harnessed 'till they drop worker insect Consumers versus Producers.
Resectfully
Steve Unruh
perfect now in respect to the technology and the automation that isn’t what we are striving for in fact exactly the opposite as things that are sustainable have fewer inputs than those that aren’t sustainable
I got a load of “mill ends”. It was an ad on craigslist. He says it’s 2+ cord, I believe him. The price was $175 however when he came to deliver he told me it would be $100 because it was not a great quality load. Too many small pieces. He was right, I have a lot of fuel ready to go now for a bargain. I told him I wanted small pieces, and he mentioned that next time I could come to the barn were he stockpiles it. People come to buy wood and take all the larger pieces leaving the small ones.
Hey Derek ,
Good catch, lot of miles in that pile.
Did he know he was delivering motor fuel?
He didn’t, and of course I’m sure he would be quite surprised or unbelieving if I told him.
I got some free super sacks previously used for grain. I filled two of them in the same time it took me to cut up all the pallets I’ve used thus far. While I was doing it, I felt like a squirrel that found a huge pile of nuts trying to store them away for the winter.
Hi Derek, that is some nice looking gasifier fuel.
Ron,
Burned some today, seems to work alright. I’m guessing it’s Hemlock or Fir. Found out it came from a truss company.
Hello All,
I have been busy the last three days getting some logs to the sawmill. While cutting the trees I also bring in the branches for gasifier fuel. I don’t really have time to do the chunking right now but the slabs and the limbs chunk so much faster while they are green that I made time .
The chucker was cutting the big limbs and slabs with no problem but the very small limbs were leaving a stringer. See picture 1
The truck rim that does the cutting had beveled just enough so that the scissor action wasn’t happening.
Picture 2 ( old rim )
I made a quick trip out in the junk yard and got another rim and cut the spiral in it. Notice I sharpen the inside but not the outside so the force will be toward the anvil to cause the scissor action.
The last picture shows the clean cut after the repair even with the small limbs.
I figured it was a shear rather then a wedge shape. We were just hanging out and wondering how long a wheel rim would last before sharpening or discarding. How many years or tons has it been?
Morning Carl,
I think I have used the rim about 4 1/2 years. I don’t know how many tons or cords .
Ker Chunk Ker Chunk Ker Chunk … I need to burn up some of this wood I have stockpiled here to make room for other stuff. The onion sacks I have some of it stored in are bio degrading and fall apart when I pick them up or go to dump them in the hopper. Too bad they make them that way. I’m just a buzz saw guy here. Spring thaw ran a small creek through my shed this year and I had to use some of my precious cherry chunks to walk on. The boxes they were in fell off the shelves when the shelves sunk in the mud and tipped over … ML
I have been running as hard as I can go but just can’t get as much done as several years back. (Birthdays).
I have a few more days of fence building but too muddy right now to get to some of the area. Two miles of fence around the place plus cross fencing.
I have been sawing timber to put the top back on my barn that was destroyed a month ago and will need to get back in the woods for timber. I did get some sawing done today, picture below.
I have plenty of wood chunked right now but the slabs chunk so much better while green that I chunk them each time I get a load on the tractor forks. Just three or four days with the slabs laying out can make them a lot harder to chunk.
This video shows knocking the slabs down so they will go through the chunker.
About how long does it take for the green chucked wood to dry before you can use it in the gasifier?
