Wood Gas Generator

Wait a minute......

Yep, I think I'm onto you... I just put 2 and 2 together. You making a wood powered hybrid aren't you?

Be honest now.

You found me out except your wrong. I'll give some details tomorrow. I've brought my design up once before and was told don't waste my time. On my Touch and pretty hard to type with one finger.

I have some old texts on fuel technology. Apparently they used to use similar gasifiers on lorries during WWII. Couldn't get much power out of them though.

I have wondered if, after carbon credits are created in the US, a profitable buisness model could be developed using a similar technology. Would it be possible to scale up this process so that the energy from burning the gas can drive a turbine as well as dry and gasify the fuel? Could a self-sustaining process be designed that not only produces electricity from carbon-neutral sources, but also produces carbon sequestration ( buried charcoal ), becoming carbon-negative?

Well I don't really know what carbon sequestration means but as for running a turbine. I'm sure you could run a gas turbine. But how would you make this self-sustaining?

I love this generator he has built. If you look at the web site. He has come up with a way to reuse the heat generated in the process to improve the eff. They use the heat to preheat the intake air as well as heat the fuel. They heat the fuel in order to burn off any excess moister. He seems to have the process down to where it is producing almost no tar. The other thing he has done is he has the process down to where he no longer needs a radiator to cool the gas. Most wood gas generators need a radiator in order to increase the density of the gas. Hot gas means low density, low density means low power. As for scaling up the process I'm sure you could just be sure and keep the same eff.

Now I do think that a profitable business could be made. I would love to build these and sell them to the farmers as well as the wealthy acreage owners that are so keen on going green. If you were to couple this up with those Honda generators that produce 2000 watts on 15 hours per gallon. You would have something. Low fuel cost low carbon emissions. VERY GREEN.

"Low fuel cost low carbon emissions. VERY GREEN."

Yes, and if the charcoal by-product is buried, the process (including the biomass production) has a negative carbon footprint. The business could then sell carbon credits, increasing profits. Could this work?

From my understanding, since I haven't got one myself. I think the only thing left after the process is ash, and a very tiny amount of tar. Ash isn't, at least from my understanding charcoal. So I don't see how it could be considered a carbon credit. I do see where you are going with this though. I've seen some talk about capturing carbon in some form, I don't remember much about the article, and then burying it. Kind of like like we do now with coal only in reverse. I really don't think that ash would qualify for that but maybe. Now the tar may qualify but according to the designer there is very little tar left.

Now a little trivia, did you know that at the turn of the 1900's most towns were producing something they called coal gas. Which is wood gas but produced with coal. Now in those days the process was not as well refined and it produced a LOT of tar. They also produced a lot of the gas because it was piped to most house and used for gas lighting. The tar that was produced was mostly buried from what I've read. Now that would produce the carbon you are talking about but with an efficient system most of that tar would get turned into gas so your credits would go away. The coal gas industry was regulated away by congress around the end of WWII. There was a government mandate to switch to natural gas which was lobbied by guess who drum rollllllll please .......... THE GAS COMPANIES. That will be the end of my venture into politics.

But on another note I would love to try this with coal it is abundant cheap and if this process works with coal now Green.

Thanks for the link! I hadn't heard of the GEK. Gasification and external combustion are the way to go. I'm planning to use a gasifier to convert green or air-dried woodchips into steam. The gasifier eliminates the need to have really dry fuel- the net BTUs per ton are just inversely proportional to the moisture content. Tar is a hydrocarbon, also, and should burn if your system is set up right. You only need "clean" syngas for an IC engine. All you should have left from an efficient system is light ash, which can be spread back where the trees came from to re-enrich the soil.

Thanks for the info on the ash, thats good to know. I really think the GEK is well designed. How do you plan on using the steam you are going to generate?

To run biomass-fueled locomotives.