Wood Burning El Camino

[Hughlysses]

Just found this vid on the "That'll Buff Out Blog" (http://cars.failblog.org/)



Apparently it's a wood gasifier supplying combustion gas for a blown 350 small block Chevy. Pretty impressive engineering.

[FXRocket]

Yeah, the instructions to build one used to be in the FEMA manual...

Here are some others
I like this vintage unit..

[madeouttaglass]

That's some cool shit. I wonder if it could be set up to power my RV?

[TopDeadCenter]

Post war europe had wood burning tractoors along the same lines. rationed petrol and all. Neat idea. wonder if the gassifying unit could be made smaller. Looks as if you are running a mobile still.

TDC

[FXRocket]

You can build a unit to run a common generator!

[crazydrummerdude]

Didn't click the vids, but gasification systems are more common than ya think. One guy in Missouri claimed to be able to get 5000 miles/cord of wood in his truck. Pretty interesting/cool.

..and here's a BMW sidecar rig.

Originally Posted by FXRocket

You can build a unit to run a common generator!

Yeah, they did that on that crappy Discovery channel show about post-apocalyptic survival.

[crazydrummerdude]

On the subject of gasification, it's actually possible to do it to more than just wood. One guy in the midwest (forgot where exactly, Iowa?) gasifies old tires. He's able to extract a gas and a liquid. Both of which are a combustible fuel.

Many of these operations are much like distilling moon-shine and the equipment is similarly simple; a burner and some pipes. For me, it's just another project to get around to.

[bk brkr baker]

googled gasification of tires. There's plenty of stuff , I watched a couple of u-tubes .
They turn old tires into carbon black and a oil that can run diesel engines.
Why isn't this more widespread?
I didn't see how eficent the process was, but in one film they claimed the process to be non-polluting.

[P B G]

Originally Posted by bk brkr baker

I didn't see how eficent the process was, but in one film they claimed the process to be non-polluting.

Hmm....

Well I think overall if you are burning rubber and ending up with carbon and fuel... and no byproducts... That's one thing.

But we all know rubber has lots of sulphur in it. That's part of vulcanizing rubber. So in one of those products, there is sulphur, and I would imagine in the combustion of it you get all those wonderful dioxides and such.

[crazydrummerdude]

Originally Posted by bk brkr baker

Why isn't this more widespread?

Think of the petrol lobbyists.. now, where are the gasification lobbyists?

There's an entire infrastructure established on every city block for the former, none for the latter.

I don't know what else to say without getting this tossed to CSM..

[Hughlysses]

Anyone else remember seeing a movie from the ~1960's with a school bus fueled by a coal gasifier? IIRC, it was set on an island in the Pacific during WWII. A bunch of orphans were trying to evade the invading Japanese and this bus was their means of transport. One kid sat on the roof of the bus near the back and fed coal to the gasifier to keep the bus running. I also remember the bus didn't run too well (very erratic engine speed, lots of misses and backfires) but that may have been Hollywood over-dramatization.

[Orange Toaster]

Originally Posted by TopDeadCenter

Post war europe had wood burning tractoors along the same lines. rationed petrol and all. Neat idea. wonder if the gassifying unit could be made smaller. Looks as if you are running a mobile still.

TDC

All of Europe used this technology for cars and trucks, etc. during WW2 and for a while after. Fuel was primarily for the warfare. Doctors and other important civil services could get fuel as well, but for the commoners it was gas.

/OT

[The Cyclops]

Thats really cool. I am going to have to do a little more reading on the subject, wondering what the makeup is of the gas and why it couldn't be compressed and kept in a smaller tank on a car. If the oil companies have me killed, somebody expose the truth....

[Icewalker]

Been a year ... could do with a bump.

http://gasifier.wpengine.com/personal-energy-grid

$34k for a generator

[Lesharoturbo]

Wood gas was a primary source of gas for the old "gas light" days with gas plants in every neighborhood in some areas. This was before the discovery of natural gas and propane. I actually visited a brownfield site in NJ that was an old wood gas generation site.

The gas can be cleaned and compressed from what I understand. There is not a lot of information on this branch of the wood gas community though.

Another neat idea is waste gas from a partially closed compost pile. I was involved in a project that turned a landfill into a gas generation site (and a solar farm). The gas was piped to a Coca-Cola facility where they burned it for electricity and hot water. The site was guaranteed to produce enough gas to feed 2 3MW generators for 20 years!.