Wood burning truck!

[ellmoe]

    During the day I listen to talk radio. My ear protectors have an AM/FM radio and listening helps keep my mine occupied! This afternoon the local station (Orlando) was discussing gas prices and they  had a gentleman from Ala. on. He was talking about his truck that he had modified to run on wood. Turns out that he has a home made sawmill and he burns his scrap wood in a burner that is in his truck bed. He said that the oven heats to about 2000 degrees and the smoke is consumed/ converted in the process so that no smoke is exhausted. When the show host asked him if anyone could do this the fella said, "Nope!". He elaberated that you have to "be the kind of person that never goes to an auto mechanic, has experience with wood stoves,..., and it helps if you know something about making corn whiskey! " I wish that I could remember his name, he'd be a natural for the forum. How 'bout you Bama boys, anyone know him?
 
   By the way, he says he can run 80 miles an hour and gets 3,000miles/cord!

Mark

[Fla._Deadheader]

  That technology has been around for decades. 

  I have a brother that doesn't talk to me, that was playing with wood-gassification. Too much work.  Hydrogen is mucho mucho easier. 

  I heard some over educated guy 2 days ago, say that Hydrogen fuel for vehicles, is years away. 

  Funny, it's been used in the UK for years. Hitler nearly won the war with Hydrogen.

  I got a magazine from the 80's that tells of an old farmer in Iowa that was gettin 50 miles to a gallon of water. He was trying for 100 MPG.    Very simple process. That was my goal in life, then gas prices went down. 

[Dan_Shade]

they're back up now!

i take all of that info with a grain of salt....  sorta like Tesla's car that ran on a box with two posts out of it.  Legend has it he made a box that got its energy from natural electric fields.  The press said he made a pact with the devil to get the car to run, so he got mad, boxed up his invention and died with the secret.  I think it's all a bunch of bunk (though legand also holds that the US Gov't confiscated 43 trunks of his study documents and classified them after he died).... good for the conspiricy thinkers.

[Buzz-sawyer]

Conspirary or not I am not the first guy to use wood to run internal combustion engines........during WW2 thats all that power common european cars...many Aussies run em down under.............whats so hard to believe

[Dan_Shade]

how fast would they go?  were they steam powered, or those externally fueled engines (sterling, I think???)

[Jason_WI]

Most people think it is Edison that brought electricity to the masses. If that were true then we would have DC powered appliences and a DC generator plant every 10 or so square miles. Tesla worked for Edison for a while until Edison bunked on his promises to Tesla and on his ideas about AC power. Good thing Wenstinghouse believed in Tesla and AC power and provided him with a lab to crank out his inventions.

Jason

[Don P]

Have you ever read any of Tesla's writings? Now there was a man that was mighty impressed with himself 
The wood gassification is just capturing the byproducts of heating wood in an enclosed container and running those gasses thru a filter to a carb, mostly you're burning carbon monoxide, along with some stuff that isn't too good for the engine. If I remember right some of the gassifiers got hot enough that water injected into the unit was broken down into hydrogen and oxygen and was burned. Another way to bust a molecule. Mother Earth News built a Chevy 1/2 ton version and also ran a generator on wood gas in the '70's

If you pass that cellulose through a ruminant and then ferment it in an enclosed container you get another gas that will run engines, methane...natural gas. While some folks in WWII were making wood gas others were strapping huge bladders full of methane to the roof and going to town.

[Fla._Deadheader]

  Nothing against Dan_Shade. Ya just gotta change yer brand of reading books. 

  Ford has been marketing Hydrogen powered cars in the UK for over 25 years.

  Most of this kind of information is de-bunked by the govt. and big business.

  I had some neighbors in Arkansas, that were retired oil field workers. They told me many times of the amounts of Natural Gas and Crude that was down the capped wells that they had drilled. 

  There is NO shortage of Crude OR natural Gas. Just a shortage of folks with common sense.

  I don`t HAVE to make believers out of anyone. I know how to do this stuff.  Me and ole Buzz got it covered. 

[Rockn H]

Hydrogen, now that's easy.  Just run a current through dirty water ie. not distilled.  It needs something to conduct the current.  The minerals in tap water will do.  Drop a positive and a negative electode in a tank of water and you get hydrogen gas and oxygen.
Tesla had some good experiments he was working on for distributing electricity without the wires, something like an electric ray.  It was really interesting.
I got a kick a while back when I heard on the radio that Gov. Arnold (I'm not looking up how to spell last name) was sending his Hummer back to GM to have them convert it over to their experimental hydrogen engine.  It would make it more PC.
You used to be able to find hydrogen fuel cells or generators on the net for powering propane gensets. 

[GF]

Here were some links I found that were interesting.

http://www.gengas.nu/byggbes/contents.shtml
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/bingofuel/html/bfr10.htm
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/bingofuel/html/bfr5hpgen.htm

The technology has been there for awhile, there are patents for carburators that got 200MPG back in the early 1900's.  My opinion is this, car manufacturers support the oil companies, you can pretty much tell which ones do this by looking at how many MPG they get on a gallon of fuel.  The more fuel we burn the more we have to purchase, in turn means for tax revenue for the US (what a concept) .  Imagine all of sudden do to better fuel milage the US now only cosumes half of it current daily amount, what would this do to the economy, and the taxes the fed and states are collecting.

There definitly is other better and more cost effective alternatives, problem is they have not figured how to tax it yet, one option being discussed is to tax you by your milage.  My guess is that once they start taxing us this way all kinds of new alternative will be hitting the market.  It all comes down to the tax dollar.  Just my opinion.

[slowzuki]

There may be patents for 200 mpg carbs but your idea doesn't have to work to get a patent.  Some of the inventions break thermodynamic laws in making claims.  I don't know of anyone yet who can actually break the laws of physics.


If I recall right gas engines are about 15% efficient at converting fuel to motion.  So the most possible would be roughly a 6.66 times increase in fuel mileage.  But that is impossible at this time as we have no invention to turn chemical energy directly to motion without friction.

Fuel cells are about the best chance we have of that, they operate while wasting only the minimal amount of heat to generate electricity which can spin a relatively efficient electric motor.

[Dan_Shade]

are you guys talking fuel cell stuff with hydrogen, or internal combustion.

I quit reading those books a long time ago, Fla._Deadheader

I'm just sorta skeptical about magical devices to get such huge increases in fuel economy and such.  I certainly don't trust the gov't and such,  , but i don't buy into the mass conspiracies to make us use more oil.  Especially since a president that doubled or trippled fuel ecomony would be a really popular guy.

what are the byproducts of burning the wood gases, a lot of the nasties from IC are NOX emissions and such.

I think a lot of the most feasable "renewable" fuel sources are alcohols.

the problem with hydrogen stuff is it takes a lot of energy to get the hydrogen, either by electricity through the water (where does the electricity come from), or by dumping acids on metals to release the hydrogen. 

cool stuff to talk and think about none the less. 

[Fla._Deadheader]

  Buzz and I have exchanged info several times. He fully understands where the electricity comes from. Simple source.     I am still wanting to develop the idea, maybe in Costa Rica.

  The Ticos are very enterprising people. 

[OneWithWood]

So what is the scoop with bio-diesel?  Do we get a net energy gain?  It sounds like an alternative that would help the economy and preserve the gov's tax base.

[Fla._Deadheader]

  OWW, I believe Buzz makes Bio-Diesel fuel. Not big technology, just use renewable resources. There are those that collect the cooking oil from fast food chains and burn it in their vehicles. Smells like Chicken and fries. 

[Doc]

  OWW, I believe Buzz makes Bio-Diesel fuel. Not big technology, just use renewable resources. There are those that collect the cooking oil from fast food chains and burn it in their vehicles. Smells like Chicken and fries. 

I have used waste oil to fire my foundry furnace, adn it works really well if you filter out all the crumbs first so they don't clog the line. I understand in some places waste oil is being used for a heat source for commercial businesses the same way (furnace burner). I don't see why a car could not be designed to use it. You are simply atomizing a flammable fuel source that will make the BTUs that gasoline will (or very close).

Bio deisel is a very viable fuel, and is being used by many already.

I had considered using slabs (in the future) to run a generator to power my homestead the same way that truck is running. The fumes off the cooking wood are mostly alchohol, and tar with some other chemicals I know not the name of mixed in, but rather toxic. I understand they don't make it out hte tail pipe for the most part.

Doc

[Ron Wenrich]

Here's the Mother Earth News article from 1981: 

MEN Link

I remember my dad telling me about the Germans using wood to run trucks during WWII.  Pendu was working on a wood cooker back in the 80s.  The company fell on hard times and was sold and no further methane development came from the new owners.

[sawdust]

The Biomass Energy Foundation Press is a not for profit group that is keeping books aobut Biomass and Gassification in print.

1810 Smith Rd Golden Colorado 80401

They have excellent books about converting internal combustion engines to burn wood gas.
www.woodgas.com

sawdust

[Buzz-sawyer]

it is not even necissary to refine used vegitable oil to the point it becomes bio diesel.......it is very easy to filter down to 2 microns and use the oil directly in diesel engines of certain types .after all that is what Rudolph Diesel designed his engines to run on

[wiam]

These guys sell kits to run on veg oil.  I keep thinking about it on a tractor.

http://www.greasel.com/index.html 


Will