Welcome Craig,
Don’t forget the DOW library section. Lot’s of reading.
Thank you Jan-Ola, Pepe, and Wayne. I am looking forward to getting started!
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Welcome Craig…
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Hi All,
I’ve just been made aware that Ben Peterson did update and release a 3rd version of his book.
Specifically aimed at, “Off Grid Fuel for the Prepared Homestead: Wood Gas in Minutes”
Has 500+ pictures now with engines adaptations informations. Claimes to have combined and expanded on what was previously two separate books.
Amazon ASIN of B086PRJNHG
And now Steven H. of http://OffGrid48.com is offering up precut parts, partial builds, and even a completely built unit.
His vidio does show generator running. And flare operating while burner heating. Looks to have an added in forced air in blower to do this.
His site is worth looking over as he combines PV solar and wood-for-power in his Northern Idaho location.
For fine detailed pictures to the guts of the Ben Peterson book unit being built look up Steves OffGrid48 YouTube channel. He is now up to 19 build-it workshop videos.
Starts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-L_ZGT4mk
(you may have to open up his youtube channel to view these) Can be accessed through his sites home page video. Switching to YouTube view.
Ha! Another book to buy. My birthday is coming up.
Regards
Steve unruh
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Steve I are also working together and am developing a special controller for his systems.
The controller features the touch screen interface I offer on my systems, Auto ignition and flaring, grate and hopper management, generator controls override and the electronic auto mixer system. I can also build this for anyone now that this developed for universal applications.
We are currently set up one for his demo and I am currently building four more for clients.
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Hey ALL,
The “Steve” MattR is referring to is Steven Honkers (sp?) of Idaho.
He runs an off-grid solar energy business at:
https://offgrid48.com
On his home is a video link. Use this viewed opened up to youtube and you can get his youtube originators page.
He has been detail videoing a B.P. book bases system in a detailed series of 10 minute videos. The newest as of today, number 30, does shows the three levels of hardware engine adaptations in the second half of BenP’s newest 3rd version book. AND a glimps at the one-button Auto-controller system Matt is referring to.
Sigh. As I have said many times I do not support one-button’ering in critical DIY efforts.
I spent too much of my life fighting past vehicles add-on systems weirding out and handicapping what could/should have been easy 3-5 million cycles proven factory systems.
This began in the 1970’s with ignition points to Motorola, Purlux, Guaranteed, Standard and others brands of electronics ignition systems. Only MSD has stood the test of time.
Then in the very early add-in windshield wiper delay systems. 100% failure in a couple of years.
Then in the mid-1980’s with add in vehicle information systems for measured fuel flow, ect, ect. No matter how well installed . . . processor and sensors failures.
Then uninstalling a hundred or so add-on vehicle disable alarm/RKE systems in the 90’s-thru 2005.
I do not wish to be the bad-mouth about this concerning woodgasification.
This is my opinions. Based on my real experiences.
But . . . .when the char does not fall exactly right next to the hearth liting glow plug . . .
When the flare flame sensor goes wonky. You have a flare but the system’s not seeing it…
When some one dumps in wet charcoal; wet wood chips, too large of wood chunks, ect, ect . . . Leaves a fuel hopper open to the weather . . .
The Manual system user will have experienced and know just what when wrong.
Takes years to code-in a troubleshooter hand-hold to point an inexperienced to correct an issue.
Just happened Friday with our satellite internet installer . . . . interment wonkeyness.
No codes. Good values. Even his manual cable signal checker said all O.K…
I said please make up one by one, for the four deferent run, bypass cables. Ha! He lucked out at the first cable run bypassed.
I’m still reading my new copy of Ben’s 3rd version book.
Once i digest I really rater talk about that.
Steve Unruh
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In my defence, there are only two sensors. The Bosch wide band O2 sensor and the flare cup temp probe. Both are proven. Other than that is a very refined controls unit. Ive come a very long ways with this controller and making it as bullet proof as possible has been the main criteria and focus.
Everything I use are automotive parts as they are designed for harsh conditions with the automobile. But also are easily bought at autozone, other parts stores, amazon, ebay etc. The relays I use are automotive 40 amp cube relays that can be bought anywhere. I use 30 amp mosfets to fire these relays to interface with the 5 volt logic. They are waaaay over rated to do this.
The ignition glow plug is a 12 volt late model Ford plug. Again heavy duty and easy to source and get. Generally you buy them in a pack for like 20 bucks. This will last you a long time if not the life of the machine. Easy to get.
Flare cup uses a GM LS igntion pack and let me tell ya those modules are very powerful and again proven and bullet proof, easy to get, heck just go to the junk yard thousands of them out there.
Hopper vibrator again automotive but realy no limits to what you can use here as long as it matches the system voltage. In Steves case he is using Ben’s grate set up all we are doing is controlling it.
For electronic valves we are using electronic ball valves that have been on market for a long long time. So again proven parts use in a wide range of applications.
Servo valve for electronic mixing just a 5 dollar hobby servo coupled to a McMaster Carr 1 inch NPT butterfly valve. The servo may fail but the valve isnt going to and servo can be replaced easily and at very low cost.
Engine controls we are firing the starter and engine coil with the automotive relays.
They micro controllers are also now well proven and been on market for a long time and again low cost. The Arduino Nano is an excellent little board and the RPi 4 we are using now is more powerful than most high end cell phones.
As for the controls basic wiring and layout. Steve I cant even begin to tell you how carefully this was all thought out. Everything by design was carefully mapped to follow the pins of the controller. The output pins start with pin #2 so everything starts with 2. Pin = mosfet #2 = Relay #2 = terminal Block #2 etc. So chasing wires if ever needed is simple and by design so we walk people thru issues even with language barriers.
Those logic controllers are switching via those automotive relays and this common even using push button switches. The controller is also very advanced programming.
Now for the DIY guys yeah this may not be desirable. But the market looking for pre built systems are the reason all this exist in the first place. This didint get developed because this is how I wanted it. It was developed as this has been the deal breaker for a lot of clients. They dont want to operate the machines nor baby sit them. They want to turn them on and thats it.
Yeah learning to program was the last thing I ever wanted to do. But now I would not have a system with out it ever. There is nothing that cant be easily override in case of any failure either.
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I’m in Steve’s camp here. I guess mostly because I’m in my seventies and Matt was talking a language I don’t understand. Still, I realize that people who have to buy ready made equipment expect it to run itself. The kinds of performace you get from a new GM LS is a light year beyond what tweek tuners ever got out of a small block chevy but when one broke I could tear it down to the mains and get it put back together in a long day. I couldn’t even get one pulled out of the engine bay in that amount of time now and I have rebuilt old Harleys with the tools you could pack into your back pockets. I guess you can’t teach a dinosaur new tricks.
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So if modern cars had a hand crank like a model A I guess some would be fine with that. yeah My C8 Vette just showed up, check out this handy starter crank!! You know people would not except the automobile when it first came out ad some even speculated it would never make it. Horse and buggy was working just fine for most.
This system is like a lot of stuff like adding an electric starter or light bulbs to replace the lantern. Yes indeed early devices were prone to failture bet eventually they figured it out. This is no different and we are using those parts that have been perfected.
This controller actually makes it more simpler. You push a button, this controller tells you what to do. If you can push buttons on a smart phone or even create a post on this forum you can certainly operate this controller. Dont be too quick to judge without any understanding of it. ““it sounds complicated, so I dont want it”” Give it chance first its really not all that complicated and I guarantee if you did have the opportunity to use one you will better understand it and come to realize this is an important part of the system. You guys that understand the operation are taking for granted that manual operation is too complicated for some that are new coming into this market that just want to buy a machine. They dont get it but they get pushing a start button and touch screen like on their cell phone.
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If your automated system goes down for some reason is the unit still able to operate manually? Anything that requires a source of electric power is subject to spikes and usually if the controller or ECM in a vehicle, goes down you are dead in the water. You can typically limp around with a bad MAF or Cam position sensor but if the brain dies so does the body. I’m not a luddite. If you have ever rebuilt a carb you know that it is way more complex than an injector that just needs a pressurized source of fuel and a timer to tell it when to open and close, but if the fuel pump goes down or the relays crap out you are going nowhere. If your low pressure fuel pump on your old truck goes out you could gravity feed the carb with a pop bottle and a piece of tubing. Not that you would but I like to have those options.
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This why we use NPT fittings. Nothing is stopping you from replacing those electronic valves with ball valves. There is zero stopping you from overriding any part of this system. Nothing. If something goes wrong you are going to know its not like a car.
This was all thought. Do you any idea how many emails I get with clients asking. Well what if an EMP hit us??? Yeah Ive designed this system for just that!!
In the instance like Steve was saying if the flare failed detect lighting. The controller will only make so many attempts and if it dont see a flare lit it will fault out and stop the ignition process. However the controller does not inhibit you from running the engine. And so what you just back to more of a manual operated system until you get a knew probe.
Electrical systems are no more crippling than any mechanical system in your vehicle. You drive around with failing tie rod end too. eventually it will come apart. Why are mechanical failures any different? Your starter can go bad you aint going no where until its fixed.
On my system its not like diagnosing a car, your going to know whats not working and anyone can fix the issues.
This is the difference of walking from these machines and being able to forget they are even running. Can you do that with a manual operating machine I bet you cant. Constantly monitory and worrying about your machine while its running gets old after a while.
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Right now in 2020 everything around you has a chip in it. Everything, go and try to find a flashlight with an actual bulb in it, can you find one?? These controls we have today are reliable and are more so than any mechanical system. You are way more likely to have a mechanical failure than you will an electrical failure.
In the 80’s when computers and mass adoption of automated controls took off, yes there were all kinds of problems. Like Steve I was also an ASE tech and dealt with all that. But an ECM today is very unlikely to fail. In the modern car these systems are why you get fuel mileage you get today but on top of that gobs of horse power. We have V6 engines that are standard engines that output more than the big blocks of the best muscle cars of 1970 and get 10 times the fuel mileage and are pushing well over 300,000 miles.
The challenge ans issues here are not the controls themselves its the intimidation factor of them. They are not complicated nor crippling not on my system anyways.
This guy here is in his 70’s and he built my system with me just coaching him through it. That controller there is the foundation of current controls. The touch is just a nice interface that makes it easier to use and also reduces cost and build complexity of multiple buttons that cost 13 bucks a pop.
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Well i have read and re-read enough of BenP’s third version “Wood Gasifier Builders Bible” to now have opinions.
For those who wanted his earlier “Electronic Carburetor” book and missed out . . . .buy this third version builders book to get all that was in there and even more. DO NOT buy an 2nd hand jacked up price Electronic Carburetor book. Spend Amazon $54.USD for this new printed 3rd Builders.
On the actual gasifer system building many of the same pictures and steps as in book version #1 (welderman cover) and #2 (Mustang car cover).
Don’t feel you are missing too much just having previously bought #1 or #2.
In #3 all of the fuel prep info for blocks and chips classing has been edited out to make space for the 100 page Engines Adaptations section. Manual controlled. Timer controlling servo motor. The programable Arduino system. Then a dual fuel propane/woodgas version.
Also edited out was his three steps to bootstrap financing/or having made a Ben’sBook gasifer system and maybe turning it into a personal business. How StevenH. did this approved; and above board.
Added into this 3rd addition book is a $30. USD book buyers coupon for purchase toward any of his other offered products.
And a PayPal link to donate to him $10. USD for one written, asked/answered question.
Actually his revised book Q&A section has been refined and expanded and imho answers pretty much anything DIY relevant.
Like why not cyclones anymore, etc.
Wood chips, yes. Garbage fuels, NOT!
Yes: to up to 20-25% moisture wood fuel. Even up to 35% moisture wood chunks IF you hearth load down the system enough.
Ha! And a whole lot of cheeky BenP. quotes and wisdoms. New quotes from men he learns from; and admires.
The biggest overall change I see in this book is total change over to personal DIY off-grid making and doing for Rural have-trees, users.
It’s on the front cover,
“Off Grid Fuel for the Prepared Homestead: Wood Gas in Minutes”
In my opinion it has taken BenP to go back to actual Rural living off-grid these past five years to get his balance and objectivity back.
Years 16-18 of hours a day day hustling to serve up demanded ice-water to those in their own expectations made Hells; traps you down there, with them.
You can never be personally free to pursue your own interests.
Me. In the 70’s with my electrical S.U.E.M. business. Remember the the Mexi street hopping cars? The truckers light glorifying their big Rigs? The Portland OR Christmas Lights boats?
Me. In the 80’s with my Lighting Start ,starter and alternator business. Hot-rodded ignition systems and hot-rodded starters and alternators. The street boomity-boomity sound machine wars. Blood bank refrigerated vans. Electric oven Pizza delivery Geo Metro’s.
My early 90’s Tractor Electric Co was tame, and dirt practical. But it changed here. Houses. And hobbyhorse ranches No longer enough real AG activity to support it.
Steve Unruh
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Yeah big difference wanting and visualizing going off grid then actually doing it. 
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Hey MattR,
Of all of the folks I’ve ran into since the summer of 2008 wanting to automate woodgas;
you are the ONLY one willing to do the actual grunt building and hundreds of hours operational steps need to actually succeed.
I actually have tremendous respect for all of your works. Virtual live developing takes guts and a thick skin.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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Rite on, thank you Steve. Very few really can understand outside of the bizz at least to the full extent. We are just broke entrepreneur’s doing things that the other big guys are doing on change, limited resources and exceeding them in many ways. Yeah its been a rough ride but we are getting there. Im now really starting to think outside the box now more to come for sure
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Yeah I applied for a grant. They came back to me are like pffffft yeah you probably should not proceed further it is highly unlikely you will not be awarded.
Really!!!
Well at least they will admit to it. Yeah seems you have to be a big company or organization to get anything to be taken seriously.
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Morning ALL,
I am linking up to a 5:45 long video MattR. put up.
Go back up and watch/listen to that to understand what I say next.
Along about the Spring of 201i Ben and I split diverted in our Make Electricity with Woodgas ways.
I’d worked with him first in his Rural Lewis county home shop. Then in his Vancouver commercial shop. Three years of me working to make fellows 3600 RPM screaming electrical generators work, be stable RPM from the non-damaging rpm locked frequency variations and loads on/off voltage sags and surges.
This frenzy noisy video puts me right back into my manic state of mind by the Spring of 2011.
Because I knew well from decades of doing that AC power could be had quietly from varying input power sources with Rediline DC to AC motor-generators battery bank supplied. With battery banks and solid state DC to AC inverters.
Theses had all been motorhome, and live-on-boats used since the 1970’s. And to current use done in Emergency service vehicles.
Off-Grid used and proven since the 1980’s, and 1990’s.
Generate your DC charging from any varying power and RPM input source - DC will not care.
The AC makers will make the on-demand AC frequency and voltage stabilized even with declining DC battery bank voltage.
Not a hardware set up “cheap” way to do it. Ha! Unless you used obsoleted out Truck equipment’s available free, to cheap! Got old class A motor homes for scrap and boned them out for the equipment’s.
So BenP., MattR. and others still pursued a 3600/1800 RPM-locked solutions. Yep. You do need high speed computing electronics solutions to do this with woodgas. Electro-Vacuum-mechanical controls will just not cut it.
And I evolved separately to the thorally modern commercial engine driven Inverter-Generators as the personal use woodgas-to-AC electricity solution.
Sold off and set aside all of my Nazi lock-step 3600 RPM generators. My 1800 rpm 10kW power head.
Bought Honda and Yamaha turn key Inverter-Generators instead.
These do have a butt load of electronics inside. All worldwide hard use proven. Repairable just by taking that unit back to a Honda Outdoor power equipment; or a Yamaha motorcycle Shop. With world wide parts distribution. With in-by-god real paper service manuals and troubleshooting guides.
And now not having to support a big battery bank. Too few of productive solar days so I/we do not PV solar. WE grow trees and brush instead. Our carbon&hyrogen power cell storage. Store in the live trees. Or, store in a woodshed.
I am not discounting the other approach. Bought a fuel injected 11 kW Kohler V-twin/Miller welder-generator new pursuing it. Sold off that too.
Regards
Steve unruh
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Hello Matt.
My wife and I took a grant writing class back in about 2009 with an eye toward woodgas/grid tie development. What we learned is that the VAST majority of grants go to non-profit organizations anyway.
If you want to pursue a grant any farther, get a copy of:
The Only Grant-Writing Book You’ll Ever Need
—if you don’t already have it.
Pete Stanaitis
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So some Ben-ism’s out of his new book:
from the 3rd page of his My Story: How Ben found his way back tot the land, and so can you! section:
“My Advise. Wood gasification is both very simple in nature, yet extremely difficult if you aren’t accurate in your thinking. Magical (post modern) thinking and intellectual sounding bullshit won’t make you gasifier work. Facts, observation and reason will. This is old school technology that requires an old school work ethic.”
“Gasifiers can be touchy like women. Treat them nice and remember, just like women, it’s all about the CHEMISTERY.”
In the KEY CONSEPTS chapter past Turn Down Ratio; Hearth Load; Tars; Temperature/Time/Turbulence; is his:
“Surface Chemistry. The way to think about gasification relies heavily on surface chemistry, matching the oxygen molecules (air flow) to charcoal surface area. . . . . This is why sizing wood and charcoal is important.”
Then after Pressure Drop; he has his unique to him, “8 Stages of Heat Management”
There you find his reasoning to his systems heat-in pyrolysis accelerator section.
More later. Kids daily on-line schooling starting now. My actual daily headache maker.
S.U.
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