i know i saw it somewhere....call me crazy but i could have sworn i saw a post about somone who ran an engine off of smoke....i cant find it...anyone know where this post is or anything about this? i wanna look into this just out of pure curiosity.
chris

 

yes... i think it was in popular mechanics or something. it was a truck that ran off a wood burner in the bed. it had 3 pedals, one to open the dampner, one for something else, and the brake.

 

Anyone have any idea how it worked?

Wood-fired steam boiler wouldn't really be running the car off smoke... But that's the only wood-powered car my tired brain can conceive at the moment.

 

if anyone knows what to do to make this work...i want one
chris

 

Smoke contains unburned fuel so in thoery you could reburn it but the engine content would be low and it takes energy in the form of heat/BTU's to drive a engine. Back in 70's GM had a V8 the burned fresh mixture in 4 cyl's and reburned it in the other 4 cyls. It worked and was economical but the power output was not what they had hoped for so they scrapped it. Ford had a gasoline diesel prototype engine in late 70's that had a lot of promise but they abandoned it too because of injection reliablity problem that could destroy engine. I would like to see Ford revisit this concept.

 

yes i would also....i agree with ya on the taking energy...by the time you burned all that wood or what not, i bet a lot of the energy would just go, shall i say, up in smoke.
chris

 

Go to the next page of this forum and see the thread "smoke technology???". There's some good websites in there. It's actually not smoke as much as what comes off of a controlled burn of biomass. The trick is to burn wood in a low oxygen atmosphere. This releases hydrogen and methanol that, if you get it right, can plumb right up to a gasoline engine and run it. One day I want to try to build one to hook up to a generator.

 

If I remember right I heard storiesthat the Germans had military vehicles which ran on smoke at the end of the war,their oil supply had been cut off. I seem to remember something about some runing on coal dust. That must have been great for the cylinder walls. Later, Emmett

 

found it...thats the one i found a while ago but for some reason could not locate the other day...thanks all
chris

 

It is also my understanding that for years some native peoples in the South Pacific islands captured methane gas from rotting pig manure and burnt it to cook.

 

When Otto created the first CI enginel, it ran on coal dust but it proved troublesome and oil was used instead and the diesel was born.

 

I was expirementing around a while back and got a 2.5 hp briggs to run off of smoke. The way it is possible is using green wood to create as much smoke as possible you need to use a damper and a valve to controle the arflow into the fire and into the engine. the engines do not put out very much power at all but it is possible end of wwII the germans were running a few of their engines off of smoke when they were on flat ground and would convert back over whent they were fighting or pulling hills they pretty much had a manual valve on teh fuel line to shut he fuel flow off.

 

Yep, I saw that documentary too.

 

http://www.inetlink.ca/a31ford/cgcmb/

Here's a book on the subject:
http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks/producer/index.html

It seems they were popular anywhere that had gas rationing during WW2.

 

Lol, A man from our church just got back form india (medical/mission trip) and said they still do that, they get the fecees, mixit with straw/hay while its still "fresh" and line the streets with it so it can dry. and use it for heat, or what ever.