Breeder reactors, where the fissile content of the fuel actually increases over time, has the potential to extract essentially all the power of the uranium, or thorium ore. Basically gives you 100x more power from the same amount of uranium, and opens up other, even more abundant elements to serve as reactor fuel. 5 billion years of nuclear power? I think I will pass. Proliferation concerns aside, creating that much toxic waste with our current level of social development is asking for trouble. I can just picture the children of the poor scampering over the piles of spent fuel rods.
But, once again I have veered pretty far from the topic of a woodgas powered electric car - which sounds like a fun project, by the way!
…which would solve, not only the ev range problem, but also the cab heating issue discussed earlier.
I’m off for a nightshift in an hour and I was out a minute ago to plug in the electric coolant heater in my wood burning truck. I have to admit it feels a little backwards using electric for heat when I already have bags of wood stacked in the backseat.
You will have to make a coolant heater loop in the wood burner so you can pre heat the motor… maybe that block heater is alot cheaper and easier to use.
Haha, I guess you’re right. Complexity.
Another problem is I would have to run the blower to make the gasifier deliver the heat. With an ev I could heat the cab “for free” while charging the batteries.
Exactly OrCarl,
Folks: folks here; pretty much classify themselves out by their approaches of What-can-I-personally-do-right-now to responsibly live/make a better more sensible world.
Versus: What-can-I-advocate/promote-for-Others. The for-Others, varying from for-profit to, social-justice, to gotta’ convince all others fervent-believer-like, that my way is the only right way. For All of you, too.
You, I, living in western Oregon/sw Washington the Prius capital of the US can anytime just go out and easily buy a used Toyota Prius, or Nissan Leaf. THEN develop that base with wood-power to recharge it. Stationary. Or a little back bumper mounted unit tagged onto these.
Ha! Entirely, too direct. Too practical. And not solving the much greater urban/suburban energy problems.
NOT MY problem, that I refuse to feel responsible for.
You, I, made the choice already to live rural, and work to be as self-sufficient as is reasonably practical.
Wifie still deciding if our adjacent acreage footprint-shoe will remain 8, or become as small as 4 acres to work with. Annual property taxes, you know.
Regards
Steve Unruh
The simplest engine warming system I can think of (apart from plugging in), would be to use a charcoal burner under a vehicle. Either with natural draft or a small computer fan type blower. My guess is with a proper diffuser it would be fairly safe and reliable.
A burner modeled on an inline propane coolant heater would be quite a bit better yet.
Hi Dan, most of the spent fuel from other sources are sent to Hanford nuclear site in Washington Stste. All the reactor there. I think are shut down now, some were never finished. Hanford has become the dump for nuclear waste. Big under ground vaults have been build there. The USA spent nuclear reactors from the naval submarine, and aircraft carrier fleet end up there. Waste from the old Trojan nuclear plant on the lower Columbia river ended up at Hanford nuclear site. It is next to the Columbia river, and it can be serviced by barge to the site. No roads needed for shipping. It is probably the biggest nuclear dump site west of the Rocky Mountains.
When I worked a Priest Rapids Dam just up stream of Hanford we had to increase flow down down stream to Hanford so the barge would have plenty of river water to come into that part of the Columbia river to dock. That would be very bad to have a barge go a ground with that kind of cargo. We were notified when these barges were coming in to hold the flow going down stream. We were never aloud to go below 36,000 cubic feet per second outflow from the dam, because the nuclear reactors needed cooling water from the river also.
Bob
Bob very interesting. I remember reading that was a big site. But I am pretty sure that CT, Maine and VT Yankee plants all have 100% of the spend fuel rods still on site in the waste pool even though the CT and Maine plants are completely decommissioned with the reactor buildings completely removed.
Thank you Jeff for posting this video. I really enjoyed the amount of thought and engineering that went into that design. It was interesting when he likened this design to the small blockof chevy V8 which served the IC world for so many years. Sure puts my junk pile mechanics to shame!
The main problem with those advertisments is the output:
No way that a 212 engine can produce 5000 watts electric output.
The basic idea is perfect, as per original topic start, defenitivly a way to go.
To keep it simple and easy to duplicate:
Put a rectifier on the output of your generator, then feed that DC voltage into a solar inverter and use the output voltage for your appliances.
Strip the carburator of and use a gasifier at any possible rpm. ( low rpm if low power needed, higher if more power needed )
As said, any tinkering, in the same line as those range extenders, will work best with gasification.
Thats why i have this new topic, 13 Hp block/genset, to do some excercising and trial error with gasifier /mix fuels
How much power i can get out and how much different the emissions get with different fuels/mods
