Wood Gasifer Kit Now Offered

[SteveU.]

OK boys and girls, here it is: an affordable motor grade wood gasifer kit for engines 5-20 HP.

www.allpowerlabs.org/gasification/gek/index.html

It appears to be using known, workable design features. It has almost all of the features I was going to incorperate in my first prototype unit this winter.
I really like the fact that the designer is NOT trying to offer this as a turn key system, but as a modular basic starting point LEGO kit. Results will vary with the input that you put into it. Now that sounds like a realistic Lister/iod attitude.

Comments???

SteveU. 

[SteveU.]

Thanks Jens. Spelling correction make.

I finally took the time to look over the whole web site myself.
The designers name is Jim Mason. His efforts to make a Lister 6/1 run off of a gasifier was reported  back in June 2008.

Now to see if he has any staying power. Both Doug Williams and DR Thomas Reed have been beating their heads against lack of commercial support for motor gasification for over thirty years now.

JUNE 2009 Edit: Turns out the good results reported at the Californian Makers Faires in both 2008 and now 2009 was on dried walnut shells only. Nut shells are a premium almost prefect biomass to gasifiy. Real world results, reported by real people using their own woods block chunked cut have been poor. This machine has proven in the field to be very fuel moister sensitive, cold weather sensitive, and even sensitive to the species of wood used. You DO have to be a very superior operator with constant hands on turnig, shaking, poking to get any motor grade useable gases outputs. It has now been major redesign for the third time in less than a year to "improve" it.
 It is what it is - a LEGO style  experimenters/teaching toy.
  Not a serious working tool.

SteveU.   

[Tom]

Man there are a lot of Thomas Reeds out there. I'm one too. One time I met another one in my dentists office, we both happened to be there for the same appointment. I'm not a DR though.

[SteveU.]

My state Washington adopted the most strict wood burning regulations of any in 1994. Since then it has been illegal to sell, install or even resell any wood stove that does not have an expensive US EPA metal certification plate attached. Consequences: new stove prices have doubled and tripled. And old burnt out obsolete stoves are being patched up and kept in service far too long to be safe.And NO nasty, smoky outdoor furnaces allowed.
This has taught me that the current nonasbestos funace/stove cement in still good for 600-1200 hours at 1200-1800 F.( 700-1000 C.), the temperatures needed for complete cracking and oxidization of the wood tars for clean burning. At these temperatures the cast iron plates carbonize, hyrogen enbittle, warp, sag and fall apart. The pretty colored porcelain enameled coatings melt ,bubble and turn dull. This is the temperature its proven to take to burn wood clean without creasotes and tar buildups. Surprizing to me the tempered glasses and stainless steel seconary air tube assemlies in the new stoves hold up undamaged.
I will definatly be coating the hearth zone surfaces with furnace cement on any gasifier I'm involed with.

I am currently doing wood fuel production tests. How long does it take to produce 10gallons (40 liters) of wood chunks/blocks that using both Doug Williams' www.Fluidynenz.250x.com and the numbers on the www.allpowerlabs.org/gasifacation/gek site it would take to run my Listeriod for 8-10 hours? Very surprising to me that simply chain sawing up and hatchet chunking scrap wooded pallets is faster and produces better filter quality sawndust than either circular mill cutting strips or even limb chunking with a hand loper.

Thanks
SteveU.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

[MacGyver]

The good news is of course that old pallets are readily available.
One thing that I had been thinking of in the past is to construct a tow-able chipper that is sized to take pallets and reduce it to a more easily transportable chipped pile of wood. That way you can drive all over town and pick up pallets and feed the resulting chips straight into your fireplace or gasifier.

One of the big problems with pallets is...  NAILS!

Once upon a time I had access to an endless supply of pallets, and I built a wood stove (I called it a pallet stove) and heated my house for 2 years with pallets. They burn great but the nails are a PITA.
I dunno how well your chipper will like the nails, or what happens to chopped up nails in the gasifier?  Maybe it's no problem, but every pallet probably has 50 nails in it. I suppose after chipping they could be filtered out of the chips with a big magnet or something, but I'll bet your chipper still hates them.

[SteveU.]

As you wish (almost).
The Doug Williams recommended wood chipper for gasifier feed stock is a Finnish LAIMET. Distributed in North America by Scandia Equipment Fabricating Ltd. Fenwick, Ontario.
Quoted from: www.laimet.com
"The LAIMET produces splinter free and even one-size chips.""The operation is based on a cylindical screw blade, which also functions as a feed unit making a separate manual feed unnecessary. The screw blade is sharpened without removing the blade, using a separate (standard equipment) sharpening unit."
I've seen the chips; no fines at all. Looked like, sized like French cut geen beans. The literature says some models can be adjused to five different chip sizes.
No responsible operator is going to allow you to run pallet nails (half are hardened ring or spiral shanked) through his expensive machine.
I'll have to stick with a 40 dollar chain and a 5 dollar hatchet for a long time. It takes me less than 45 minutes to work up 10gallons (40 liters) of pallet wood chunks this way. I'll get faster!!! Promise!!

SteveU.

[sid]

maybe a hammer mill? they beat the item apart/ used in glass crushing,feed grinding...etc/sid

[SteveU.]

Hey guys, the key phrase here is,"wood chips suitable for use in a gasifer". For now that means properly dried size cut wooden chunks, or size sorted, screened and dried wooden chips.
Just try "shoveling" most any type of machine processed chips or saw dust into a wood stove, fireplace, campfire and what you'll get is lots of smoke and a choked out fire.
In the new mills they use a dribble feed into a very hot forced air combustor to get clean burning just like the current pellet stoves. The other way is like the old smoldering , smoky wigwams that choked every valley in the Pacific Coasts up through the 70's. Wanna go back to the good? 'ol days? Not me.
If you look at the fuel sizing/texturing requirements for gasifiers independently discovered on these sites you will see why I'm starting my project with fuel processing:

http://www.inetlink.ca/a31ford/cgcmb/      The Canadian Gregg Mannings site with reference to his change in fuel feedstock back to his original type.

www.gocpc.com        The Community Power Corp. in Denver USA web site with reference to their "Sucsessful Applications" section. They will not even consider you to buy one of their turn key systems unless you can prove you can make wood chunks/blocks or an approved(theirs) subsitute.

www.gasificationaustralia.com        They show what fueling chunks their turn key system (also a too large for a small CS Lister/iod) is designed to work on. They show a nice picture of why you do NOT want to try and  feed nails through a gasifier. They did try, and failed.  OOps. The pictures are on the next web site within "Tasman Class Gasifier"

www.Fluidynenz.250x.com         New Zealanders Doug Williams site it scattered through out with pictures of proper fuel processing. And he flat out states their designs will ONLY operate properly on correctly sized wooded chunks/blocks. Do note he IS using the bark also.

Honestly guys it ain't that tough sawing and chopping up wooden chunks. Just watch the fingers!!

SteveU.

[jtodd]

Update,
I've Emailed a request for a corrected price quote on a Level III unwelded gasifer kit with the sheet metal to be in a weldable stainless steel.
My state Washington adopted the most strict wood burning regulations of any in 1994. Since then it has been illegal to sell, install or even resell any wood stove that does not have an expensive US EPA metal certification plate attached. Consequences: new stove prices have doubled and tripled. And old burnt out obsolete stoves are being patched up and kept in service far too long to be safe.And NO nasty, smoky outdoor furnaces allowed.
This has taught me that the current nonasbestos funace/stove cement in still good for 600-1200 hours at 1200-1800 F.( 700-1000 C.), the temperatures needed for complete cracking and oxidization of the wood tars for clean burning. At these temperatures the cast iron plates carbonize, hyrogen enbittle, warp, sag and fall apart. The pretty colored porcelain enameled coatings melt ,bubble and turn dull. This is the temperature its proven to take to burn wood clean without creasotes and tar buildups. Surprizing to me the tempered glasses and stainless steel seconary air tube assemlies in the new stoves hold up undamaged.
I will definatly be coating the hearth zone surfaces with furnace cement on any gasifier I'm involed with.

I am currently doing wood fuel production tests. How long does it take to produce 10gallons (40 liters) of wood chunks/blocks that using both Doug Williams' www.Fluidynenz.250x.com and the numbers on the www.allpowerlabs.org/gasifacation/gek site it would take to run my Listeriod for 8-10 hours? Very surprising to me that simply chain sawing up and hatchet chunking scrap wooded pallets is faster and produces better filter quality sawndust than either circular mill cutting strips or even limb chunking with a hand loper.

I an hoping some of you guys will look over and critique this gasifirer design before I start the actual welding in November.

Thanks
SteveU.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Jim Mason is indeed "the real thing" when it comes to putting his money where his mouth is.  He's interested in building a community around the gasifier project, and there are quite a few threads involving his experiments here:

http://listserv.repp.org/pipermail/gasification_listserv.repp.org/

There are some even better comments Jim has put on the list that aren't reflected in the website - he's getting excellent results (or so it seems) from pre-heating the input air with more windings around the chamber - no tar or nasty stuff in the gas.  Very, very interesting work.  I don't know how well a Lister or other diesel would run on wood gas in the long term, meaning hundreds of hours.  I'm very interested in getting one of these kits from Jim, but I've got so little time these days that I can't justify the expense for a bunch of metal that would sit in my garage and rust before I had a chance to assemble it.  Please, please - if you get one, report your experiences (with photos!) back to the forum here.

As far as certifications for wood stoves, here are two links including the actual EPA ruling:

http://chimneysweeponline.com/hoepareg.htm
http://www.epa.gov/Compliance/resources/policies/monitoring/caa/woodstoverule.pdf

It seems after some basic reading that wood gasifiers are in limbo as far as emissions rules go.  They are not "wood heaters", since wood heaters are designed to heat a space.  They're not furnaces, boilers, cookstoves, or fireplaces according to the definitions.  In fact, there's no definition into which wood gasifiers would seem to fit, either in the included or excluded lists of this ruleset.  Don't know where this leaves things.

I came up with some ideas sitting here about a wood pulverizer for pallets and undergrowth.  More projects I'll never get time to do.  ;-)  Maybe contact your local Asplundh divison or municipal arborist and see where they dump their chips?  I'm betting that those chips are in good enough condition for use, and are probably free for the taking without the hassle of nails or pulverizing.

JT

[SteveU.]

Hi All,
Thanks to jtodd for the recommended forum at:
http://listserv.repp.org/pipermail/gasifacation_listserv.repp.org
I did join. And now on the last three issues there has been much discussion of machine prossessing of woody debris for use in a gasifier.
Currently a German? corospondant named Rolf has submmited the simplest DYI made design based on an old German? JENSON machine. See his machine at:
http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/uhlejensenchopper
This could be make by most any 'ol farmer out on old balerflywheel, scrap equipment parts with just a stick welder, a grinder and a drill. The proceesed wood  chunks look real good.
Another corospondent Ronald shows the current JENSON machine site as:
http://www.holzhackmaschinen.com/
Click on the British flag to get text in English.

Later
SteveU.

[mbryner]

I actually bought a GEK from Jim Mason a few months ago in hopes of using it to power my 6/1.   We've had quite strict burn restrictions here in Southern Oregon for the summer, so I didn't dare put it together yet.   Any puff of smoke and I would have had the fire dept on my land quickly.   Burn restrictions just ended, so I'm planning on putting it together in the next few weeks.   The Listeroid doesn't have a radiator on it yet anyway, and I'm just starting to build a generator barn, so the gasifier was/is on the back burner.   I'll post pics when I get it working.   If any of you get a 'oid reliably running on wood gas, please post!!!   

Marcus

[SteveU.]

Hello Marcus,

It will be an interesting comparison  gasifing on your 6/1 versus my 12/1. The engines must suck enough flow thru the gasifier for it to burn hot enough to gasify cleanly.
I think this has been one of the major problems with most do-it-your-self attemts: too large a gasifier for the engine air flow. My research says for an Inbert style it must have no larger than a 1 1/2-2" reduction tube.

June 2009 Edit: results from many people trying to go this small have failed due to fuel/charcoal blockages. S.U.

And it must have a three stage post reactor cleaning/cooling-parcipitation/filtering process.

Whats your fuel source going to be? Pine? Oak? Or fir?  I only have Douglas fir. I'll start out chunking mine and work down in size from there from there.

And forum info before I lose it again. Here are some Listeriod engine Cubic Feet per Minute air intake requirements derived from Omega: 6/1 650rpm 1455cc(87.4cid)= 41CFM   //  8/1 850rpm 1455cc(87.4cid)= 54CFM  //  10/1 1000rpm 1621cc(97.4cid)= 70CFM.
Nothing was listed for the larger engines like my 12/1, but it would make sense for mine to be twice the 6/1 41CFM at full power.

Hope you are going to be posting pictures soon.
SteveU. 

[MeanListerGreen]

I read an article about a guy in California driving around in an old Chevy pick up powered by walnut shells via a gassifier.  I seem to remember reading some where else where they were using corn cobs, but I can't remeber much of the details on that one.

[SteveU.]

Hi MLG,

You would be talking about "Chicken Johns" rig. Yes nut shells are an excellant motor grade gasifier fuel.
 In many parts of the world wood is scarce and other biomass fuel are cheap and availabe. However only a few can currently be gasified into a moter grade fuel. The "Holy Grail" of most todays gasification researchers is into the perfect gasifier that can convert any dried biomass into a motor grade fuel. My hats off, but I'm more of a " . . . good enough Pig" person. What can I do today. I do have wood. I heat with wood. I supply wood to others for heat also. My interest is now how to turn my wood into 3kw of useable electricity. This is actually much harder doing on a small scale than a large. Look at a wildfire or structural fire versus a small campfire. One is self feeding,impossible to control and hard to put out. The other takes constant fiddling to burn well and keep going.    Hey, sounds like some Lister/iods!

The very best web site I've found about current practical vehicle wood gasification is:
http://www.woodgas.net/
Jonathan Spreadbough is a well read, smart, pragmatic man. He the first one I've come across to reprogram a vehicle fuel injection computor to optimize for wood gas fuel. I've done hundreds of vehicle eeprom reprograms. Only lost two. Expensive. He's got (Yiddish word for "balls" I can never remember). He appears to be a good welder and likes stainless steel too!
 His current project is gasifing an old ex-pump 300cid stationary A.C. diesel engine. Now I'm starting to get interested.
His site resource section has free downloadable copies of some hard to get research papers that should be read before you ever touch a welder, a chipper and attempt to make woodgas.

All my own opinions. Later.
SteveU.

[mbryner]

Hi SteveU and all,

I may be ahead of you in getting the parts, but it sounds like you are a little more active w/ the gasifier project than I am currently.   On the other hand, you got the unwelded version of the GEK, right?   Mine's all welded up and I just have to bolt it together.

With the GEK, I should have over 2x what I need in woodgas volume-wise to power the 6/1.   Guess I'll have to burn it off somehow.  Waterheater?   Don't know of any way to store it.   Anyone else see "problems" w/ trying to pump a flammable gas through an air compressor to store it?      And I'll probably have to keep the electric fan on to keep it hot enough for clean gasification, since the 6/1 probably won't have enough vacuum.  The 12/1 should work great w/ the GEK without mods, though.  Jim Mason was running a 6/1 w/ it for the Maker's Faire if memory serves.

The hard part (for me) will be getting the mix right (woodgas and diesel).   Not quite sure how to put that together.   Do you have that worked out yet?  How do you compensate for more/less load?  Constant gas flow in the air-intake and variable flow w/ diesel through the fuel rack?

I'm still working out what to burn in the GEK.   I'm new to the 'roid business (I'm a doctor, not a mechanic), but I was a physics major in college and like working outside and mechanical things.   I've done minor work on my cars and helped w/ an engine rebuilt on a Case 580 backhoe engine rebuild.  But I've taken apart the 'roid a few times so far and it was easy.   I lurk on this forum all the time and appreciate all the help!   We're designing our own off-grid home, gravity feed water, hydro and PV power, etc.  This summer I built a road, house pad, barn pad, water system w/ 10k gal water storage.  (Not all alone! Some contractor work involved.)   Currently building a generator shed/barn.   Then I can work more on the listeroid and GEK.  That said, to answer your question:  we have a tractor w/ 6" PTO chipper.  I was going to chip Doug Fir, Manzanita, and Vine Maple (really whatever we happen to be clearing), and save the big chunks for the GEK.

The photos will be forthcoming, but not until it gets to wet to work outside...

Marcus