Wood burning truck!

[arojay]

About 20 years ago when I was in the drilling business, I was hanging around the docks in Prince Rupert, waiting for a barge load of equipment to arrive from a job, when I ran into a guy who was building a wood gasifier power plant.  I believe this fellow was chief mechanic for Trans Provincial Airways.  He had a shop rented on the docks and was building the unit right there.  He gave me a tour and showed me scads of information that he had on gasifiers going back to WW II in Finland, when gasifiers were used to power cars, trucks and other applications(like the motorcycle).  Well, I have to say that I found it interesting, but I was a little sceptical.  If you remember, that was around the time of the cold fusion hoax and alternative energy was pretty controversial.  Anyway, years later I saw other references to gasifiers and got interested again.  Your project is great, and may be an example of one of the renewable energy devices that could power us through the future, if environmentalists will let us log to save the planet!  Burn wood... save a caribou.

[Paul_H]

Arojay,

I remember the cold fusion hoax but it's hard to believe that it is already 20 years ago

I got a call the other day from Werner in Sweden.He builds and drives woodgas vehicles,his Chevy van is woodgas only.He's quite knowledgeable and encouraging to others that are tinkering.He was excited when he called because a couple of people in Vernon BC had contacted him and offered him a job,flight and accomodations included,to build a couple of woodgas vehicles for them in Vernon.
One of the fellows is originally from Sweden too so Werner will be at home.It's about a 5 hour trip from here so I'll plan on heading over to visit and see what he's up too and hopefully they will let him come over to my place for a few days.

I have been driving quite a bit on woodgas but started to notice the condensation was moving up the system and was showing up more in the filter housing and towards the engine instead of at the cooler and finally the engine was struggling for power.It turns out that because I don't have a cyclone between the gasifier and the cooler,and because I neglected to clean out the ash and char every once in awhile,the "pea" sized char starter to build up in the cooler tubes until the 23 tubes were pretty well plugged solid.The engine was struggling to draw gas and the cooler wasn't cooling
I rodded out the tubes with a brass rod and cleaned the ash and char out and cleaned the rockwool filter out in the top of the cooler and will make a habit out of cleaning every 100 miles or so(a 10 minute job)

I also added a secondary filter inline,just before the engine to keep the gas even cleaner.I got a GM air cleaner housing from the wrecker and did a little redneck modifying to make sure it didn't suck air.I'm still getting a bit too much moisture for the paper element so I use a fibreglass filter in there now.

 

 

[jpgreen]

Paul- we need an FF logo on that air cleaner.. 

Far as gasifier powered stationary engines for generators and bridging, I think it would be easy to solve
that problem as skid mounting the units could be done in such a way to give you the right
amount of vibration to keep the bridging from happening I would imagine.

[Paul_H]

Pat,

I don't see why that wouldn't work,or even a shaker arm to give it a whack every once in awhile.I know that if I let the truck idle for awhile then jump on the bumper to shake things up,it changes the gas quality and will run a little faster.

Here is a pic I took a month ago of a gas flare directly off of the blower and it's unfiltered and isn't cooled.The Pinkish Purpleish gas and the hint of Blue is a good thing but the Orange is tars and other impurities.The flame would be invisible in daylight.

 


I've been having a little fun gathering fuel too.We have been doing the Spring pruning on the fruit trees and usually would have a big fire and burn everything but this year I saved the bigger pieces to chop up for the truck.
 




The wood shown here on the chopping block and in the garbage can is a bit of Pear(white wood),a bit of Apple,and a lot of Cherry and Plum.I'm going to call it my "fruit medly blend"
It's all still pretty wet and when I weighed a sack of Plum last week,it was 75 lbs
Normally a sack that size of Birch or Douglas Fir would weigh between 40-50 lbs.
 



 

I've got a good line on some really dry fir slabs over at the pole yard that have been piled up since last Summer.They are the small edgings but have no bark and are all around 2x2 size which should work out great if I can run them through the chopsaw a few at a time.

[Paul_H]

Here is the link I was looking for to the Mother Earth News article from 1981 where they built a power generation(combined heat & power) plant with woodgasgenerators.
It is four short pages in length and has a image gallery as well.

Link

[Paul_H]

Last night Carla cooked up a 14 lb Turkey dinner and invited friends over and we had a good visit.The leftovers were shared and will make sandwiches for a few days.She also boiled up the carcass for soup and saved me the bones, gristle and fat from the roasting pan and I fed it to the woodgas truck this evening.
Me and my son Tom were going for a ride up the meadows road through the farms and we thought it would be good to "put a little Turkey in the tank"


 

 

 

We put on a little over 60 kilometres(40 miles) there and back with no problems and you couldn't smell the Turkey or anything but it was a good way to get rid of the carcass.I was told by other woodgassers that they have poured used motor oil on the wood in the gasifier and it runs good and clean so the fat and bones is not a real stretch.
The Turkey seems to effect the truck somewhat like it does humans because I noticed that after we got home and shut it down,the truck had a quick after dinner smoke and has just sat there and hasn't moved since.

[SwampDonkey]

Rough'n it in the back 40.

[Chet]

Some day I gotta find enough spare time and build me one of dem. 

[jpgreen]

The Turkey seems to effect the truck somewhat like it does humans because I noticed that after we got home and shut it down,the truck had a quick after dinner smoke and has just sat there and hasn't moved since.

... 

Paul, I just noticed you have a little Kubota just like mine.  I call mine "Sea Biscuit" or "The Biscuit" for short.. 

[Norm]

I'll bet the neighbors dogs and cats are just a little nervous after seeing that.

[Paul_H]

We bought that for the tree nursery to move through the rows because it's only 33" wide.Now it's just a little yard horse that we drag the trailer with and it has a small roto tiller too.The kids pick up prunings and other debris and then they get a ride over to the fire to dump it off and every few trips we take the loooong way around.

We got it cheap because the engine was worn out so I split the tractor in the shop and went to town on rebuilding the little engine.
What do you use yours for?

Norm,

my neighbours already were nervous before that!My dog is oblivious.he overheard me talking to the vet yesterday and thinks I'm taking him in Thursday to be tutored

[jpgreen]

I have a kubota backhoe attachment that came with it and even though it's small, it beats a shovel. It's used pretty much the same as yours now, a yard cleanup vehicle. I've got my ASV track loader to take over all the heavy work.

I wish I had a loader for the Kubota though. I bought it at an estate auction for $1600 bucks. It had been sitting for years, and people thought it was junk.  Brought it home, fueled it up and blead the system and it fired right up.  Been using it  ever since... 

[jpgreen]

[Paul_H]

Cool!
do you have any pics of the backhoe attachment?
I rented this little machine for $15 an hour a couple years ago and dug my utilities trench over to the cabin and did a few other jobs.I thought it worked well.

[Paul_H]

I was asked awhile back by a friend of ours to come to the high school and show the truck to her Geography class and give a little talk on the history of woodgas vehicles etc.Nicole is enthusiastic about alternate energy so it would be hard to ever say no.

I started to put together a bit of text to give a little background information on woodgas and an explaination on how it's produced in the gasifier.I wanted some good diagrams too so I talked to Jeff and he was up to the challenge.
I sent him some drawings and pics and quicker than a Cat,he had the first drafts right back at me.I'm wanting these diagrams to keep with me in the truck too because it's so hard to explain to people what is happening inside those tanks in the back and when the gasifier is working,there is no safe way to look down the lid.

Here is the finished diagram of the gasifier that Jeff drew up using real photos of the wood chunks and Charcoal inside the gasifier.

 

Here is condensor/cooler.


 

 Any comments on what should be added or changed?

[ronwood]

Paul,

Could you use your system to power a gas motor on a generator?

I thing the drawings look great.

Ron

[Paul_H]

I think so Ron but it would need to have a method of shaking the grate to keep the fuel from bridging.

[jpgreen]

Paul, I'll have to take a pic of the backhoe sometime.

How well does your truck work on mountain inclines? I'm going to have to build one soon.
Just going to town is a 35 mile round trip, over a mountain pass.

[Paul_H]

How well does your truck work on mountain inclines?

Think Volkswagen van full of people

[jpgreen]

That's a scary thought Paul...