Charcoal Gasifier

Puffergas · February 17, 2015, 01:26:26 AM

Quote from: Paul_H on February 16, 2015, 12:06:20 PM
Jeff D,
do you have a good method to break the charcoal down to size?

I made a version of Bruce Southerland's grinder made out of small circle saw blades. Dust is a problem but some suction/blower might help that. I did cut up an old sawmill band blade into 8 or 10 inch pieces and was going make a grid/screen out of them and hammer or push the charcoal through it. That is when I find the time. I need a rotory screen more. The list never ends......... Maybe this weekend I can come up with a picture.

Paul_H · February 17, 2015, 06:20:20 PM

The first run of the gasifier today would only let the 5 hp Honda engine idle but I had not filled the gasifier up to the top with charcoal so there wasn't enough gas being made.
I got more charcoal and filled it to the top and the engine ran 45 min full throttle but no load although it did rise to the occasion when load was applied. When the engine shutoff I looked in the gasifier and there was still a fair amount of charoal but it was along the sides of the tank so a good kick might have got another 5-10 minutes.

I was surprised how much air it needed at the carb so we removed the valve and pushed a stick in for the short term. ;)
Starting was a matter of starting the engine on gasoline and shutting the fuel valve off then lighting the charcoal and adjusting the air mix till the gasoline was gone.

The orange tractor at the very end of the vid is a old Simplicity 2010 Landlord from the mid 1960's and we are in the process of cleaning it up and painting it and hooking it to charcoal to take along with the woodgas truck to fairs and farm shows. The tractor has an old cast iron 10hp Briggs & Stratton and we plan to pull kids around on wagons.

http://youtu.be/qX5n0w3ybf0

sawguy21 · February 17, 2015, 09:53:34 PM

We talked today about freshening up the old Briggs. I will check some aftermarket sources for the rings which are nla from B&S.

Puffergas · February 18, 2015, 01:08:02 AM

Paul,

Looking good over there. Now you only have a year to get a patent on the air mixer control...

Jeff

mad murdock · February 18, 2015, 02:50:20 AM

Way cool!! That tractor is going to be nice.

Al_Smith · February 19, 2015, 05:06:32 AM

Quote from: sawguy21 on February 17, 2015, 09:53:34 PM
We talked today about freshening up the old Briggs. I will check some aftermarket sources for the rings which are nla from B&S.

You'd be surprised how much stuff like this you can find on E-bay .It's also possible to buy piston rings in generic sizes from several places .Google ;D

DanG · February 19, 2015, 12:25:08 PM

Is there a minimum recommended size for the wood used to make charcoal? It seems like smaller chunks would eliminate the need to break it up. Would I just wind up with ashes if I used 4/4 & 5/4 scrap lumber?

Paul_H · February 19, 2015, 02:25:56 PM

Al,
I had a gander at ebay and saw all kinds of parts for the 23D Briggs,some very reasonable.

DanG,
Gary recommends 3/4 down to 3/8 sizing in the charcoal. Smaller wood might work better but it would still most likely need to be sized and screened to remove dust.
I didn't screen and after the 45 min run had a 1/2 cup of fine charcoal dust in the bottom of the cyclone.

DanG · February 19, 2015, 03:48:58 PM

Mine would just be for cooking, so size wouldn't be much of an issue. I need to use that smaller wood because that's all I have that is dry enough. I'm going to eliminate a bunch of small oaks this spring but it will be a while before I can use them. It's just fortunate that I'm too much of a skinflint to have thrown all of the warped, twisted lumber on the burn pile, so I have a nice little bit of it in the shed.

Paul_H · February 19, 2015, 04:41:27 PM

Charcoal from twisty wood will curl yer steaks ;)

Al_Smith · February 19, 2015, 08:47:53 PM

Quote from: Paul_H on February 19, 2015, 02:25:56 PM
Al,
I had a gander at ebay and saw all kinds of parts for the 23D Briggs,some very reasonable.

.

Not to wander off topic too much ,if you know the Briggs part number a source could be MFG supply in Wisconsin .It addition to tinkering with chainsaws I also do small engines and have bought lots of stuff from this place .You should be able to go to B and S web site and find the part number .The only reference I have would be on IC engines from a factory sanctioned course I took on generators .The prices are less than OEM but then again no matter what it is the prices are always lower than OEM even if it's made by the same company .Just the way it is .

Paul_H · February 19, 2015, 09:56:44 PM

Thanks Al,it's good to have resources.

mad murdock · February 19, 2015, 10:10:03 PM

Information is power-Al is a pretty powerful fella! I have gleaned a lot of good info from him over the time here on the FF

Puffergas · March 14, 2015, 07:36:39 PM

Paul,

This is my charcoal reducer.

Sorry for the delay......

Jeff

Gearbox · March 14, 2015, 07:59:49 PM

I think anyone with an OWB will have a lot of charcoal if you screened the ashes . Most of it in my Crown Royal are smaller than 1 inch . Gearbox

r.man · March 29, 2015, 07:31:19 AM

I have a friend who built a charcoal gas rig for his Ferguson TO20 tractor. He produces small batches of charcoal in metal toolboxes placed in his woodstove but also uses the barrel method and breaks up the bigger pieces with a square mouth shovel. His uses a 12 volt bilge air pump for a boat to draw through the charcoal to light the gasifier. In about 3 minutes he has enough wood gas to start the motor. His rig could be easily modified so that it only connected to the tractor through a clamp on pipe at the tractors intake. That combined with the relative lightness of the setup would allow it to be moved from tractor to tractor or for stationary use by driving the tractor to the other motor and then swinging the intake hose over.

Joe Hillmann · April 05, 2015, 10:21:36 PM

It looks as though I won't be building a gasifier after all. I had planed to mount it on my two wheel tractor that I have as a toy but now it looks as though I will be putting it to work on a nearly daily biases throughout the summer and I would prefer the convince of gas over the novelty of wood.

Quote from: Paul_H on February 13, 2015, 06:28:25 PM
Joe,

what type of gasifier did you build for the small engines? They can be trickier that the ones for larger engines and apparently "pulse" with the one cylinder engines.
The charcoal gasifiers make sense for the smaller engines but I know that heat recycling on the wood gasifiers has made a difference.
Please post pics of your progress when you build,I'd love to see it come together.

Paul_H · August 01, 2015, 11:43:59 PM

Magicmikey came over to a antique tractor and engine show in our small town last weekend and brought some goodies. A truckload of cookies to feed my woodgas truck and if you look closely toward the front of the box,you might spy a nifty little charcoal grinder. 8)

Run by an electric motor ,it crushes the charcoal fed through the hopper,slides past a magnet that catches any nails(I charcoaled pallets so there are too many) then runs through a trommel and drops a finished product between 3/4 and 3/8 of an inch. The fines are deposited into a bucket right under the hopper.

A view down the hopper and into the maw

Mikey doing some tweaking on the hopper

It works well except the nails causing a jam up below the hopper,acting as riffles that hold back the charcoal.I'll sift most through with a magnet befor loading the hopper but this produced 10 gallons of product in a short time.

Thanks Mike.

r.man · August 09, 2015, 11:08:16 PM

I spent Saturday at the local fair showing off my friends charcoal gasifier tractor. His next project is going to be a charcoal production system to cut down on labour and mess.

Paul_H · August 10, 2015, 10:00:00 AM

We'd appreciate any pics of the tractor and event you might have. What kind of tractor does he have?

r.man · August 11, 2015, 07:46:44 PM

The tractor is a 50s Ferguson TO, very similar to a Ford 8N. Not much of a looker, because of mounting location limitations he built a subframe where the hood and grill would normally be, put the hood on top of that and mounted his main hopper in front of where the grill would normally be on a vertical frame. Very simple unit, old water tank for a hopper, cyclone to remove heavy particles and an air filter for fines. Three valves, some piping and an inboard motor boat bilge air pump. I don't do uploading of pictures but Dave has a video on youtube of a walkaround while the tractor is running on the gasifier last year at our very small local fair.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQHN7lGI6ok

Paul_H · August 12, 2015, 11:05:40 AM

Looks good to me,thanks for posting the vid. 8)

r.man · August 21, 2015, 07:17:38 AM

It would be interesting to see a video of the charcoal sizing as well. What size raw material goes in?

Paul_H · August 21, 2015, 10:23:23 AM

Around 2" plus or minus as long as there are no brands. I'll get a video next batch we run.

r.man · August 21, 2015, 06:43:11 PM

For about 20 dollars a ton green I can get sawmill chips loaded on my trailer. No size processing required before the retort but they need to be dried. This might be a way to drastically cut down on the labour of making charcoal but I do prefer the idea of using free wood to begin with. As to utilizing the heat maybe an add on to the outdoor stove to harvest the heat into the storage water. For this year I am hoping to experiment with my oversized OWB and the metal container method. With my memory and poor time sense what I really need is a semi automatic set up that makes charcoal if you walk away from it after loading.