I am getting the supplies needed and I am going to start building my wood gas
generator and I already have a few ideas to try and make it more effecient!!
I am ging to start on a small scale just for my generator and work out the
kinks and then try to up size it and maybe just use the wood gas to supplement my regular gasoline that way I can run on either.
If you search around the internet and use that babelfish translator there are
a bunch of guys in europe that are using these on their cars. Some are putting the unit on a trailer and towing it around, I don't like that idea!! This is really old technology and we here just never got around to messing with it since fuel has been pretty cheap and it seems like a lot of work, since you have togo out and "Fire up" your car way before you plan on leaving. But fuel is going up and up and it is looking attractive to a lot more people. Everyone I tell about it wants one right now!! I think of all the trees that were removed and burnt or buried for all the houses that were built in the boom and think man all that fuel that was wasted!! Many different items
can be used for fuel and scrap wood from construction, all that crappy
particle board furniture that is always at the curb, charcoal, that wood
pellet fuel, coal, lignite, cow manure just about anything that has any chance
of catching fire can be used for fuel. The process isn't burning the fuel with
a fire it basiclly just heats the constituents out of the fuel and you burn the
gas(kind of like propane more than gasoline)
http://www.gengas.nu/byggbes/index.shtml

 

I considered building a gasifier. Sweden has done a lot of work on them. They import all of their fuel. You pointed out the biggest drawback to gasification. The time required to fire up and go. In searching around the Internet I came across a website about a guy that ran hydroplane boats on 100% Brown's Gas (a mixture of Hydrogen and Oxygen created by the electrolsis of water) or HHO. He has free plans to build a system that uses an 800 watt inverter coupled to a couple of circuits he gives on the site. There are demos on Youtube if you're curious. http--pesn.com-2007-09-29-9500450_BobBoyce_Electrolizer_Plans-d9.pdf is the website.

The HHO system is almost instantaneuos. You can use a small version to increase the efficiency of the existing fuel for a lot less investment. The best thing I can say is read the article at the website, it's very informative.

 

http://pesn.com/2007/09/29/9500450_B...r_Plans/d9.pdf is the correct address.

 

The title "Practical Guide to 'Free Energy' Devices" should be a big clue that by and large, it's BS and/or scam, even if the particulars may be correct in many cases.

The only 'Free Energy' comes from the Sun (or to a much lesser extent, the internal heat of the Earth and radioactive decay) and not from mucking around with a non-existent "hydroxi gas" or "HHO".

 

There is no such thing as "free" energy, according to the 1st law of thermodynamics.

 

Here are the basic equations, where CH represents a generic hydrocarbon fuel, such as coal or wood. There are other constituents, such as nitrogen and sulfur, but they are not part of the reaction.

CH + 5/4 O2 --> CO2 + 1/2 H2O normal combustion, exothermic (produces heat)
CH + H2O --> CO + 3/2 H2 endothermic reaction (requires heat)
CH + 1/2 O2 --> CO + 1/2 H2O incomplete combustion, slightly exothermic

The resulting gas mixture of CO, H2, and N2 (inert) is very low in energy content, about 200btu/cuft compared to natural gas CH4 at 1000btu/cuft. My question is; how do you burn this gas in a spark iginiton internal combustion engine that requires a near perfect air/fuel ratio? Do they run it in diesels? If so, how does the fuel injection system work?

Jim

 

You could fumigate your diesel with The gases from a gasifier. It would simply supplement the fuel your IP puts out. The gases will not self ignite and therefore they wait for fuel to light them off. You may get a catalytic effect in that the gaseous products will cause the diesel fuel to burn more completely. All of this to say that you will get better fuel economy as long as you don't go overboard with the producers' gas.

 

Wood gas generators go back many years, and some US farmers and other folks with access to wood waste use them. Farm Show magazine had a recent article on a fellow who used his tubular pickup bed rack to cool the gas prior to burning. it works in spark ignition engines, but is really only useful for folks with great fab skills and lots of free wood.

Cool pic of an old tractor conversion:
Image:Wood gasifier on epa tractor.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Browns gas scam is famous, but do spend your money on a system and then hook up to an independent third party dyno under repeatable lab conditions and prove the naysayers wrong. I've decided to encourage everyone who believes in this stuff to put their money into it for the entertainment of the rest of us.

 

Just put a steam engine in box LOL. Actually they used to build steam powered cars back in the day. Apparently they had a lot of power.

 

"Actually they used to build steam powered cars back in the day. Apparently they had a lot of power."

Full torque at zero rpm, according to the old Stanley enthusiast I knew in my youth.

 

It takes too long to "start" a steam powered car. The time necessary to boil the water was excessive, especially compared to a spark-ignition ICE. There was also danger of explosion.

That link to a picture doesnt even show it moving. Again, how is wood gas actually inducted and burned in an engine?

Jim

 

I like the "free" HHO systems ... They usually forget to tell you where to get the initial electricity to split the water molecules ... Now if you used solar to do the splitting at home and had your own storage tanks then it would be "less expensive" ... But can ya pull a loaded 40 foot 5th uphill at even 35 mph?

 

"There was also danger of explosion."

That's easy to avert with modern materials, and water-tube boilers.

"That link to a picture doesnt even show it moving. Again, how is wood gas actually inducted and burned in an engine?"

The pic wasn't intended as a construction tutorial. Expect to spend many hours of internet searching to learn about systems, including finding appropriate newsgroups if they exist for your specific interest. It will be a massive amount of study and effort, and involve money, fabrication, and trial-and-error. There are plenty of good reasons that alt energy is a niche hobby.
I got the link below from Google Image Searching (a good trick to sort useful links) "wood gas Imbert system".

3.1 Overview of development work and testing carried out at the national machinery testing institute

 

If it could be compressed into a tank as is done with propane and CNG, it seems to me it would make sense to have a stationary woodgas generator to fire up from time to time and store the gas in cylinders. The time needed to fire up for each trip and then hauling around bulky generating equipment, filters, etc. is a drag. Besides, the woodgas generator is always making either too much or too little gas unless you drive at a steady speed and can control the amount of gas generated.
Granted, the energy content of woodgas is low, but it might simplify things if it could be stored and used as needed.
Ray Mac

 

If you want to go the extra mile about compressing and all that, you'd probably be better off with either CNG or H2. Wood gas is simply not practical in most cases. The only situation I could think of if a vehicle is used in a place where there's no gasoline, but there are wood, like remote places in Siberia or Alaska. But then wouldn't be many roads there either.