Ha bee smoker! Its like you know I'm watching! I glad you are working on this, I tried and failed this about 8 years ago and never got around to trying again, I'd love to run something off sage brush one day.
I think you should it be great to see you try. I was thinking about making a slightly larger one and using a water filtration system. I figured I could probably use mason jars and still keep it about the size of a paint can. I'd also use a one way air valve so smoke wouldn't come out. BTW I'm a big fan of your channel. I've been watching for years.
#1 .- replace the garden hose valves with a propane carburetor kit for generator from ebay. #2.- make a gas (smok) container that can pressurise the gas just 10 psi or so with directional valves , you know, inlet, outlet . #3.- install an air pump (electric or manual) to force air flow in the gas combustion chamber (reactor), making smok (gas) go to the inlet directional valve to the gas container to the outlet directional valve to the propane carburetor conversion kit in to the engine . Note: (As a pressurized gas container you can use a balloon or bicycle rubber inner tube tire .)
My Dad (now 101!) used to run his car on a system like this back in the 1940s. He had a water filtration system that would filter the smoke from the wood gas.
Its occurred to me, that in the long term, wood pellets, for wood pellet stoves, would be a more convenient fuel. It would be consistent, and ensure maximum filling of the container.
*I was thinking the SAME thing* / & how to make something like that (pellets/alt-wood) on your own in a SHTF situation where you must produce all your own fuel. / This type of project would also be in an Alcohol/Fuel series.... same reasoning.
@@JesusSaves86AB The depends entirely on where you live. Even if you have the wood, a pelletiser would make the wood more convenient and effective. I live in an area where a lot of the people use wood for heating, but many have changed to pellet stoves for convenience, and cleanliness. Carting logs about is inconvenient and messy, and often need cutting to size. Also storing them is much the same. Pellets come in nice clean bags, ready for immediate use. Also, if you were to use them for a vehicle, they could be stacked in the vehicle ready, just like carrying a spare can of liquid fuel.
During world war II in Norway, we (not me, I wasn't born yet) had buses that ran on wood gas. It worked, but had some difficulty driving uphill. Passengers frequently had to get out and push the bus.
We know that this is possible because at the end of WW2, the Germans were facing a fuel shortage, and all fuel was being used for the military effort, so people turned to converting their cars to run on wood gas using conversion kits. Eventually the military even produced some Holzbrenner “Wood burning” Volkswagen cars. There's probably more information on how this was pulled off if you dig around. One thing that came to mind a while ago in this project is why don't you come up with a way to compress the wood gas as it is made using a decent compressor and use it to fill a small tank at reasonably high pressure. I suspect that the solids would condense our settle out of the gas if you left it sitting in the take for a while, then use that to run the engine. That would eliminate the drag on the intake stroke which your system suffers from. Very cool project. Your videos are always a treat.
There are several gasifier designs available for vehicles including an official set of plans distributed by FEMA, but they are complicated and do not have ease of manufacture in mind. I hope to come up with a simpler design, or at least one that can be pieced together from common items without excessive cutting and welding. You're right that particulate settles out of the gas if stored, but the energy density of woodgas is quite low, and so you won't get much run time out of a storage tank of a size that fits on a vehicle. Much better on a mobile setup if you're able to burn the gas immediately as it's produced. There is also apparently some issue with compressing woodgas where it becomes unstable at high pressures. Possibly because of the oxygen content that remains. I have not tested this, but there seems to be a consensus about it in my research.
That makes perfect sense. Don't compress it then. Maybe work on a better way to extract the gas from the wood. The original design you had made could perhaps be scaled up?
I think the filtration of the gasifier is a key factor. I also think that you should incorporate a manual air pump that runs off the pedals to pump air into the gasifier (instead of the bellows). Love the video . Thank you for these brain exercising videos. Keep the creative juices flowing ...
the gasifier i built years ago used activated charcoal and water in an old paint can that the wood gas bubbled through. the end result was pretty pure wood gas. you're probably also better off ditching the stock carburetor and building your own to replace it.
Here's a helpful idea, disassemble the pull start and use either a battery powered drill or setup an electric starter. It will save a lot of wear and tear on your elbow and shoulder. For the filter, try using coffee filters and layer cedar, filter, cedar, filter, etc, etc. You will still get smoke, but less of it. For the gasifier, you need at least 2 of those smokers and probably 3 to keep that engine going. For the air intake, it needs to be at least 2 inch pipe, probably 3 inch would be better, and needs a filter to help keep dust, dirt, water, etc out of the intake.
Food for thought: Install a second gas line water hose value on the gas line before the one on the engine. That way after you can turn up the one on the engine you can leave it turned tuned to run the engine and use the extra valve on the gas line just to open can close to release gas so you don't have to re fine turn your engine gas/oxygen valve every start also release gas also open it to start the gasifier. Wishing you had a electric starter yet? :P
I think the filter that you need for the wood gas is activated carbon. It filters tar and other stuff really good out of smoke. That's the reason they put it in smoking pipes as a filter. Just fill a big tank with it and let the smoke pass through it.
A one-way valve on the intake could make a difference. It looks like the engine is leaking gas on some parts of the engine cycle. This is bad, because the engine then sucks that air-gas mixture back in instead of just the air. It could also help the gasifier for the same reason. A filter stage using just water could help clean the gas (but might need to much pressure to pull).
I am sure you recieve a million compliments on your videos. I just want to let you know how much they are enjoyed and how much I learn from you. Thank you very much.
My wife just came in and asked why Wesley from Star Trek next generation, was working on wood fuel driven bicycle when he can just beam himself wherever he needs to go. Really though, great vid. You are such a refreshing thinker/inventor/problem solver.
Edit: My new videos have been performing pretty poorly these days. You can help by sharing this video to relevant pages on facebook, reddit, etc.. Please don't spam on my behalf, but if you know of groups that would appreciate this video please do share it. Thanks! A few things I did not mention in the video: There is a small hole drilled into the elbow that connects the gas line to the lower valve on the intake. This allows any condensation that makes it past the filter to drain out. I also realized that the engine's upstroke is blowing a lot of my fuel right out of the intake as evidenced by the smoke pulsing out when the engine is running. I probably need to figure out a one way valve setup so the engine can blow off that backpressure through a different outlet than where the fuel/air comes in.
NighHawkinLight, perhaps a modified EGR valve would withstand the temperatures required? If you used the housing at least, it might be servicable. Or maybe you could make something using a small housing with a spring and ball bearing sitting over an outlet that is tuned to open up with backpressure, then quickly shut.
I like Your channel and I love Your English. :) For a person for whom English is not a native language, it is very important that the presenter speak slowly and clearly. Edit: My suggestions 1. Separate combustion chamber from gasified materials, so heating flame will be always the same and much bigger. 2. Introduce separated tank, only for produced gases. 3. Add one way valve to an air inlet. Edit2: 4. Use charcoal for filter and clean gases. 5. Use part of created gases to heat gasification tank (positive loop).
make a schematic where would he put all this stuff on a bike like that. If he could, he would add a lot of things, but the space and weight is restricted.
Efff, mounting any part of this stuff, including initial, is ridiculous. We are not thinking about, is this vehicle is reasonable (because it is not), but is post apocalyptic cyclist is faster than Lance Armstrong on all of their stuff ;)
Hammer of the Witches. Your username is not one I expected to see in the RUclips comment section. If I may ask, why did you choose that for a username?
It would be additional weight, and it woukd have to go through a lot of it because gas absorption in liquids is very slow if it comes to extracting at least 10% of the gas.
How about a cannister of lithium hydroxide as in a diving rebreather? Of course, it is additional weight again. You're also perhaps getting away from the intention of running an engine entirely on natural fuel if you need LiOH to run it!
Nice demonstration of 100 plus years of gasifier tech. The problem is not a question of generating hydrogen and methane from wood fuel but rather how to handle the long chain hydrocarbons which form tars and eventually gum up the intake and carbonize in the combustion chamber, end of working engine. These tars require higher temperatures and longer resident times to convert further into Carbon Monoxide or other volatile byproducts. This in turn delays the length of time the gasifier must function to accomplish a task without actually burning up the constituents before sending them off to be used. Ultimately it is the tars that are the enemy and higher temperatures eventually tend to accumulate a final carbon layer accumulation so it's always an issue of accumulated fouling at one or more points in the system. That said, many methods have been attempted to filter out long chains but this is a toxic nightmare and secondary handling issue unless the handling of those tars can be re-routed back to the combustion process at some point. Inclusion of water vapor at combustion in the engine can help discharge the carbon formation but it's still abrasive and using water kills the ability to apply it in cold temperatures at risk of freezing. Next, one must understand that utilizing atmospheric air brings in some 80% plus nitrogen into the combustion process resulting in at least 3 species of No(x) emissions which combine with moisture in the atmosphere to form acidic byproducts affecting ocean and rain water side effects, highly destructive over time. The problem worsens in longer residence times to fight tar, generating higher volumes of NoX pollutants in solving for tar. The two problems lie at the opposing ends of a gradient of cause/effect inviting loss of simplicity if to make the process viable for mass production / application and support. Sealed gasifiers in batch mode generate a more viable manner of lower tars but then you have a potentially pressurized vessel filled with combustible gases. A single backfire invites catastrophe or at the least destabilizing a running processes if it could reach oxygen during a backfire. Batch processes of loading and unloading leave behind char residuals to handle (secondary carbon char gasifier), or waste accumulation. Assuming you solve these issues by some degree of simplicity, what do you do with the unused bio-gas when the fire continues to burn but the gas is not consumed? Since the gas produced is not pure methane or hydrogen or carbon monoxide, you cannot safely store it in containers unless those containers have an active mixing process inside them. Otherwise these gasses separate into their own respective layers and you get huge swings in volatility tapping from the top versus bottom etc. Nice demonstration as always, but unfortunately it needs to have an explanation of the downside complications so others are not inclined to waste time, money and injury without understanding the risks and complications. Thanks for the efforts. Nice demonstration as always.
So you could run a water filtration system with just enough alcohol in it the stop freezing. If not for flammability you almost could just run alcohol. I'm not a chemist but it might also help capture or break down tars. the problem is think is most things you would introduce should be pretty dangerous. Like acetone to the mix for a cleaner burn. Maybe you could snatch up a bunch of cigarettes littering our planet and make a large filter, as they are designed to handle high heat and capture tar ....
Love it!!! So two thing's that may help, 1) elm wood provides a higher methane gas than most woods. 2) When lighting the tinder....the tinder should burn from the top down as in the direction of your draft. When lit from the bottom burn rate is diminished by draft
The beesmoker is a neat idea, but to minimise smoke what you really want is a downdraft-gasifier design. Ive never tried this myself so this is book-knowledge, but it supposedly makes an enormous order-of-magnitude difference in terms of the amount of partial combustion products, as compared to the updraft system which your beesmoker seems to be. It makes sense too, since if the air moves in the same direction as the combustion front, the combustion products will pass over the hot coals last, allowing them to be maximally reduced.
Would coal gasify as readily as wood though? I have not seen it been done in such small setups with more crude process control. Not sure what the immediate impact of tar on the engine is (I imagine most of it would burn quite ok once in the cylinder?), but even without any tar I fear the setup is underpowered. Thermal processes don't scale down nice and proportionally; you need some minimal volume to sustain and isolate a nice and high temp burn front; so taking a car-sized gasifier and scaling it down proportional to the required wattage might not be a great idea. You need an insulated space to get a nice and white hot region to gasify optimally, and intuitively I don't see such a white heat being very confinable in such a small volume. With a loosely packed fuel in a small volume like this, the dynamic is more likely such that youd be driving off water at low temp (and thus tar) throughout the container initially, rather than achieving a more continuous burning front with a more or less constant gas composition. Coal would help with those concerns I suppose; given that it does not have such a complex burning process it should be simpler to contain; coals are either hot enough to form CO or they are not.
Because cognitive dissonance and apathy is a worldwide phenomena friend. Society has reached the stage where most are conditioned to find thinking for themselves is a bothersome "chore." Much easier for most to be cynical and bitch. Sad, but true.
A conveniently located choke control would be helpful here. That way you don't have to rush around and adjust the intake. Another point is that many of these new small engines are designed to self choke with gas and won't open up until they're running past a certain point. That could be another issue you're running into. A 4 stroke gas weed eater might be worth looking into. Most of those still have separate manual choke assemblies.
You need to treat these start issues as if you are using propane gas! Wood-Gas, you need a flare pipe pre carby and light that first! You need to light it and allow it to burn bright, and this will eliminate the smoke issue you have! Also, that system is only really suited to a fixed engine speed unless you have E = mc2 , thus a clutch will be required for the operation of the vehicle unless you can regulate the air fuel mixture correctly for muli purpose throttle operations. Especially generators as they are governed! They work for most purposes just fine at fixed speeds other than welding or other intermediate sudden high-demand situations! Well done all the same! I'm very impressed.
It looks to me like Wood gas is being lost out of the air inlet. If you added a one-way valve to the inlet it would prevent this. Although it wouldn't help the already low air flow.
Use a venturi to draw air into the engine- consider a carb design that can meter it a bit better? make the float raised by gas buildup instead of liquid fuel. Also, different spark plugs may perform better. Then just need a clutch/belt to the bellows for pedal start!
I'm digging what you're doing, I think it's great! 1) try smaller chunks of wood, roughly the size of a dice. 2) try drying the wood out a bit more. 3) the wood needs to be much hotter before you try to use the wood gas, give it a minute. 4) Even with dry wood, there will be moisture, try teeing off the fuel line, such that the water runs down into a small reservoir. 5) your stove (reactor) is probably a bit undersized, but trying the above may get you closer to having the capacity.
You are guaranteed to succeed with this, with a wee bit of fine tuning - but you are also guaranteed to gum up the engine with tar in just a couple of hours :( . Been there, done that - got the tee shirt. Sadly, there is really NO way to filter the tar out, but it IS possible to produce woodgas that is clean enough to be as invisible as air. A deep charcoal bed, and HIGH combustion temperatures are elemental to success in this regard. Once you get those aspects under control, you will be amazed at how clean, and smokeless, your fuel gas will become. By the way, I totally love this video, and I really wish more people wood give this a go :) .
We do this to a large industrial scale 24/7 in South Africa to make our final petrol and diesel fuels which will rival even the cleanest fuel in the world... so it is possible. The benefit of this type of fuel production is low sulphur, we even have to add sulphur components just to ensure proper hydrotreating catalyst function downstream of the fisher trops process (gas shift) after this gasification step! Getting tar and pitch out is easy, let it cool down and filter and drain it. But yes you do need a lot of steps of filter and distillations to get good clean fuel for engine grade. Still, this is super interesting experiments!! Btw all information in this comment is public knowledge. I'm not representing my company with this statement.
@@ZuluLifesaBeech- not sure, but I definately have heard the same story before. but commercialising it to scale is rare and as far as i know only in Sout Africa
In my polymer chemistry researches I've stumbelled upon gasification as a means of "recycling"/reuse old plastic. You might give it a try in the same system. Apparently one can expect the output gas to be around 25-35% CO and 55-65% H2 while also producing small amounts of CH4 and C2H6. I wonder how it would run the bike? Might not be as "green" as woodgas tho.
Hi, Excellent video! I believe that the main reason that the engine did not continue running is that you close the cap/top of the “smoker” unit while running the engine and therefore the engine was not able to draw/pull enough air through the smoker when engine running, i.e. probably more openings should be made for air to get into the smoker unit (especially if the hole at the very top of the cap is closed or partially closed, but even if not closed, may be still not enough hole area) so as to allow enough air through the smoker while the cap is closed.
Dry wood still contains about 6-7% water by weight, you could dry your wood at about 150°C for some time to remove that, it would definetely improve your wood gas in terms of flameability. Also you can make some aluminium or copper (good heat conductors) air condensers between engine and wood gas generator to remove tar and water (if the outlet temperature is below reasonable temperature). Maybe adding CO2 scrubber would help?
When going anywhere in a wood-fueled car, remember to keep a cordless circular saw and a hatchet in the trunk. Tree branches, pallets, scrap lumber, demolition debris, you name it.
Would love to see the update to this with the larger setup, if you can get this bike running at full throttle with no issues I feel like it would be awesome because then you could take the ratios of size of gasification chamber to size CC engine and really take any 4stroke and run it this was especially since these wood gas systems are carbon neutral, you could run a sawmill, vehicle, generator, you could combine this with a flywheel power generation setup and basically run your house with almost no environmental impact
It might not be too practical to have the wood-burning stove on the bike itself, but I do see storing up woodgas from your wood-burning stove during winter into a container that you can put onto a motorized vehicle. This is cool!
I'm a shade tree engineer. My thoughts would be to produce a highly filtered wood gas into a bladder. Put the bladder into a tube. With weight you would create pressurized fuel. Add pressure regulator. Because the fuel would be "cold" you now have a "richer" more dense gas. Your results would be higher RPM's/ power with less exhaust emissions. You also wouldn't be carrying hot coals on your rear fender.
This is really creative and clever. I'm glad I watched it. I wonder if some kind of tank/regulator between the gasification tank and the engine would keep a "buffer" of wood gas so the engine got consistent stream. In any case, thanks, and keep making clever things (and showing us how to also)!
As for ideas I recommend trying a double din system in an upside down "U" riding on top of the back seat area. Have one side of the U manage the woodgas and the other side manage the filter/other components. I figure this would be a nice balance for your design.
Your videos are always interesting ... I remember that in the mines there were carbon monoxide filters that contained caustic soda in flakes and that was the one that retained the carbon monoxide, maybe eliminate the carbon monoxide from the wood gas help this wood gas is more flammable and so the engine is sustained running ... but you are the expert and the one who knows more. SALUDOS !!! Tus videos son siempre interesantes ... Recuerdo que en las minas existían filtros de monoxido de carbono que contenían sosa cáustica en escamas y que era la que retenía el monóxido de carbono , quiza eliminar el monóxico de carbono del gas de madera ayude a que este gas de madera sea mas inflamable y así se sostenga el motor funcionando ....pero Tu eres el experto y el que sabe mas . Saludos !!!
I am not sure how far you have come with this. I work in anaesthetics. One method of filtration on our machines is a CO2 absorber with ceramic filters at the near and far ends. Thus seams to work well.
I think you just need an air pump, the fire container is big enough it's just like a smaller tank. The pump could risen the woodgas process and also you are producing some compression.
Your still injecting oil into the cylinder. Might as well just set the engine to run on kerosene or other oil based fuel at that point. The main purpose as I see it is to use as little oil as possible for a survival / shortage scenario. Using any form of 2 cycle engine would defeat that purpose.
A Venturi on the air intake would definitely help pull that oxygen into the chamber. Possibly even forced induction?? Like a supercharger... You could even hook the peddle up to a pump. Haha although I would imagine not peddling is sort of the whole point. :)
now i dont really know much about anything but i think stuff like this is so cool. i like diy things and its always good to learn. the idea of having a larger gasifyer(sp??) i think could work but my idea would be to try and filter the smoke more. i feel like its taking up space and not letting the amount of air in it needs. if there was a way to filter the wood gas to a more pure state before it reaches the engine it may just work.
I guess if you install the beef smoker close enough to the intake air of the engine, it will help to maintain the gas temperature on high. Thus it will make the engine to be easier to start up. And then what about to add more oxygen on the intake air, experimentally if we could find the best ratio of the smoke/gas and air/oxygen then we could maintain the engine on run. But, anyway you have invented the solution of our crisis of energy source. By the way, i'm sory that my english is not very good...I'm from Indonesia. I love this channel and your invention👍👍👍
Hello my dear friend!!! I was impressed with your idea. That's cool. Here are my first thoughts on how to improve the design. I am sure that you yourself have reached them. 1) Use the best weatherization of the gas chamber. 2) be sure to warm the filtration chamber. 3) use wood chips from oak or birch, and not from resinous wood. 4) It may be better to dry the wood before using it, or to take the chamber drying chips. 5) position the filtration chamber around the tank with chips. this way it will warm up faster and will itself serve as a thermal insulating layer for the combustion chamber. You can make it from an iron can of larger diameter and place the combustion chamber inside. I hope I understandably translated my thoughts from Russian to English. I can send a drawing if something is not clear)) With interest I will follow the project.
You make really good videos, after watching any of them I always feel like I learned something. Your presentation style makes it easy to follow along. Thanks for continuing to make fun educational videos, it is appreciated. Also, keep doing the video endings with the bird :-)
StarLite: awesome job tying this together! It is in fact, almost the same formulation as some "Slime" mixtures. :-). I added a contact lens solution to reduce stickiness and it work just as well I think many of us should start working to finding applications to help place this material into fire fighter suits. This might help fire up the industry? Too bad the original inventor got too greedy. :-(
The kids have the formula and are refusing to share. They are STILL "working" on bringing to market. In the meantime, thousands have unnecessarily died because a technology was available to save their lives.
Try using charcoal and if you get it going then wrap a copper coil around the fire box to make steam and let steam go into the intake of the gasifier, but not directly in. If your charcoal is hot enough you will then make hydrogen. Charcoal gas blue orange flame, hydrogen the flame becomes whiter. Just have to balance things and it will work. Charcoal is cleaner than wood chips and will not gum up the motor as bad and as quick especially with a good filter, try charcoal as a filter also but use a foam oil filter, (like in a lawn mower) last so char dust does not go trough the intake. I once made a geet lawn mower, could only get it to idol but when i mixed water with the gas it ran a little better and had to shut the air valve down to a crack the thickness of my thumbnail, very small opening. It was producing hydrogen! Great video, keep on going you will get it.
For the filter, you might be able to run it through water with some baffles to prevent sloshing. The tar will remain in the water and the water vapor will cool off and condense. The smoke will also condense out too
Another video I wasn't notified about. Excellent! The smoke can reminds me of the "Tin Man" from the Wizard of Oz. LOL Not a good project for people with respiratory problems. :-)
I think it would be too complicated and heavy to make one work, at least for a bike, that is used to run the engine directly. Seems it would be better to size the gas producer to produce gas at say 70 percent of full RPM but have it flow into a tank and then run the engine from the now cleaned and constantly pressurized gas from the tank. Start the burner and once the tank is full enough, you go. Running full out you would be depleting the tank but every time you slowed down or stopped the tank is filling. Had a big Dodge truck that ran on propane. Only had a tank, but if I had something to produce propane I could have used it in a similar manner. The propane pressure was always enough to keep the engine running until the propane got low. A gas carburetor and maybe a pedal assist pump to pressurize the tank until it was self sufficient might work. The truck had a 440 in it and a forty gallon tank, so scaling that down to bike size then a 3 to 5 gallon tank could give plenty of endurance, Just an idea.
Well done friend. I have always admired folks with inquiring minds. I am South African and in the process of building my own house on a small farm outside our city. Have come to the conclusion that I am beyond being tired of the tyranny imposed on humanity by cartels and big corporates, even by Governments. I will never forget ( I think it was J.P. Morgan ) that had access to the work done by Nicolas Tesla and the technology just vanished. One bit of advice and no, I am not a pro on these matters but folks with more knowledge may suggest this also. As is the case with appliances running on LPG gas ( stoves / refrigerators etc.) will it not be more safer to add a small flashback arrestor in the gas feed line between the gas tank and the engine? For safety? Keep up the good work. This sorry planet needs more humans like you.
If you're still at this project at some point I would try damp gravel for a filter. Also leave the lid off till it idles, yes that means less fuel but it also means keeping the system going until it's ready to handle a higher load. Hopefully that would work. Best of luck and I definitely like your work.
I remember seeing pictures of German military running a truck on wood gas. The gasification system was huge. Like the size of 30 gallon water heater. If you put like a saddle bag platform over the back wheel, you could have the fire box on one side and the filter on the other side. Also, if you return to the separate double burner style you’ll be able to feed sawdust to heat the closed compartment of 2x4 and have less issue with the smoke. My 2 cents
A Very small heat exchanger could help with filtration by lowering the temperature of the gas and causing the heavier oils etc. to condense and fall out of the stream, or at least be easier to filter out. And it would warm up air going into the gasifier to get hotter temperatures there too. For the heat exchanger, take a tower CPU cooler like CoolerMaster 212 evo, and use the top half of the fins for the cool incoming air, and the bottom half for the hot output air. That way the heatpipes can work at maximum efficiency without relying on capillary action. I would avoid jbweld or glues for the ducting on it, and instead use pop rivets so it could just be soaked in acetone to clean it when its all gunked up.
This was the first video of you I saw and I was immediately really impressed, but now that I know how brilliant you are, from watching your other videos, I'm convinced you can do better than this and get it to work. Would be awesome to see. :)
This is a cool little experiment. I'm a little partial to using charcoal gasifiers for small engines. They are much more simple and require a lot less space to accomplish similar fuel production output compared to wood gasifiers.
We ran a 5hp Briggs on woodgas, it was unfiltered and run directly into the carburetor. It was stationary equipment but it ran pretty well and the exhaust smelled like campfire lol
I wish you'd have been my science teacher, or at least in my class (you look forever youthful, hard to tell lol). I'd have learned way more. Thanks for making science fun and interesting again!
Hello NightHawkInLight. I have an idea for this setup that I'm convinced would work and I'd love for you to try it. There are two major hurdles that you need to overcome in order for this process to hopefully be successful. First you need enough wood gas to achieve a substantial combustion level in the engine so that it won't die when you throttle it , secondly you need a proper air-fuel ratio. To achieve this you need to double your wood burning production either by getting a larger bee smoker or combining two of them into one pipe section. Make sure to cool the gas substantially before letting it enter the engine. Having a water tank hanging from the side of the bike with some coiled metal or high temp silicone tubing would likely do the job. So in essence: more pyrolysis, more heat radiation, more cooling. We need a denser gas.
Someone below mentioned a water based filter - and right away my mind went to a Rainbow Vacuum cleaner where they filter dirt our of the air by pulling it through a water tank on the bottom. I initially laughed at the Rainbow design until I tested how clean the air was coming out, and it was AMAZINGLY clean (the smallest particulates end up in the water tank)! Yes, my wife had the last laugh. And the Rainbow is 25 years old and still going strong (and replacement parts are cheap, too). I'll bet a simple one stage water filter would do it. That is what I will use on my Wood Gasifier for my generator. Good video!
I believe if you have a dual pass filter it might be easier to remove contaminants from the system. I'd do this by making a center piece for the paint can. This could be a piece of pipe. Draw into the exterior as you were doing, the "torturous" path would filter out more contaminants. If also look into a bubbler system to purify the gas prior to ignition sure source. Hope this project works because I will be making something similar soon.
I'm only vaguely familiar with this system of using the gas from wood to operate an internal combustion engine. This was used early in the 20th century in times of gasoline rationing due to the great world war. The Germans were probably one of the first to use and develop this system, but I am speculating and not stating a researched fact. I was informed that this was one of the methods the civilian population utilized during rationing and short supplies. The idea was to use "charcoal" to start with and add wood chips that would turn to charcoal in the process. As the gas from the charcoal was expended, the now cooked wood chips will have become charcoal and were fed into the burn chamber and fresh wood chips added to continue the process. This was explained to me some 50+ years ago and I never attempted to create one nor have I ever seen one in action. I like your idea here and I think perhaps charcoal might be more efficient and uniform in releasing the gas and possibly less smoke.
Gasifiers are much better for something with a constant load. Charging batteries for example, with the batteries powering your equipment. Using it for mobility creates a spectrum of demands depending on the terrain and speed. It's a neat tech, perfect "End of the World" tool.
Gasification is intricate. I have heated my home with European and Canadian models. From a single air blower to supply both primary and secondary combustion chambers. To greatest efficiency only about 25% or less of the air is directed to primary combustion, (best secondary combustion yields a primarily blue flame), otherwise over-carburetion is the result (the same as flooding a gas engine but then I think you know the term). Dense hard woods of a preferred 20% moisture give the best regulated burn for standard wood supplies however dense hardwood charcoal briquets work extremely well. Your wood even if dry might be too dry or wet and from what I could see looks like pine of some sort and pine/spruce have knots with varying degrees of tars so I would suggest you eliminate them from your tests. They supply too much variability. For regulated bio gas production you should think of incorporating a refractory nozzle which is a very good heat sink but also a primary combustion core temperature stabilizer which allows for a more complete burn of your fuel source. In my boiler true gasification with dense hard woods (oaks, hickory locusts for example) nozzle temps can approximate 220f frequently. So, in a mobile format, for strength and durability's sake, you may want to incorporate/mix in stainless steel needles like those used to construct refractory molds in high heatapplications. Casual observance would suggest your ash collector/moisture condenser is about 4/+ times too small and for most automotive applications should not be the same as your primary wood gas cooler but part of a two phase cooler. I guess it depends how far you want to go in your experiment. I like this research. Thanks!
A fundamental *success* Great Work. You've proven your design. You can easily see it choke out with less air vs leaning-out on the less fuel/ balancing issue complicated by burn rate. Obviously, you can eventually get this to a manually controllable process with levers/valves. ... I saved this video under survival / FUEL & Alcohol.... even *your followers here are SO SMART I saved some of the notes from them* ...... you gotta GREAT channel here. Practical Tech Applications / super cool to watch. *A mobile gassifier COULD even be used on an electric car/truck to charge it while traveling* So this is a GREAT ( *mobile power generation* ) project. Right now ... without experiencing any actual long term survival or off-grid living... I think MY primary interest in a wood gassifier system would be to run generators to charge batteries or special power needs / off grid. Easier to engineer a stationary system, BUT... I must admit, I think the *MOBILE GASSIFIER* Project will be a PUSH to create a more efficient controlled gassifer, b/c if you can get it to work for a bike for a few miles........... you have REALLY accomplished an impressive engineering challenge. (even if unpractical) Dont set yourself on fire.... when you try to ride it (LoL) --- AND... you will have to consider *Crash & Emergency Conditions* (A rainy day could really suck) .... awesome video. In a WORST CASE.... if it IS too dynamic/unstable to master it manually (for long runtime), you COULD maybe control the process with a microprocessor and basic controls.... (low power requirements) small electric fan/dampers controlling burn~ But, what I am saying is... if you keep hammering at this project, from a manual perspective... you COULD eventually design a truly smooth Bike or Car on this.... the bike? COULD actually be made to look very smooth and professional with composite materials / and housings / plumbing to handle all basic problems. And I suppose smoke/tar/water can be handled too.... but you're going to run into all this for long term running conditions.... that's why attempting a fully MANUAL system is actually quite HUGE and impressive. b/c if it even *sort of works* ......... it's a HUGE accomplishment. I have NEVER really studied wood gassification before this.... but this is just too cool.
Very cool project. I have never seen a wood powered bicycle on the road! They used to run cars during WW2. I wouldn't mind running a generator this way. Good back up for solar and wind. Keep it up friend.
Hey Hawkin, I think that if you had some sort of air pump hooked up to the pedals, that would allow you to increase air flow to the engine. This requires less effort to get the bike in motion, and you could also have a gear set up from the back hooked up to an air pump. Or perhaps you could make use of that last bit of space to have a manual gear handle that you have to turn to get it started, but then once you get in motion the back tire air pump would take care of that. The pedal gets you into initial motion, and the air pump attached to the pedals also force air into the engine. Then the back tire air pump will take care of the air. One last thing is that you could have a sort of battery pack with a solar panel on top charging the batteries, then once you hit a switch it turns on a blower forcing air into a tube connected to your air inlet. Please forgive my lengthy explanation, im not that great at explaining things
Ha bee smoker! Its like you know I'm watching! I glad you are working on this, I tried and failed this about 8 years ago and never got around to trying again, I'd love to run something off sage brush one day.
I think you should it be great to see you try. I was thinking about making a slightly larger one and using a water filtration system. I figured I could probably use mason jars and still keep it about the size of a paint can. I'd also use a one way air valve so smoke wouldn't come out. BTW I'm a big fan of your channel. I've been watching for years.
#1 .- replace the garden hose valves with a propane carburetor kit for generator from ebay.
#2.- make a gas (smok) container that can pressurise the gas just 10 psi or so with directional valves , you know, inlet, outlet .
#3.- install an air pump (electric or manual) to force air flow in the gas combustion chamber (reactor), making smok (gas) go to the inlet directional valve to the gas container to the outlet directional valve to the propane carburetor conversion kit in to the engine .
Note: (As a pressurized gas container you can use a balloon or bicycle rubber inner tube tire .)
I run my generator on wood gas codys'Lab but I don't make a video because I don't want to be another disappear person.
Hi Cody, can you make the wood gas and store it in a a gas bottle then pressurise it with oxygen so you don't need to have a fire on your bike.
I would be interested to see your take on this too Cody. Might I ask the engine type/size you tried to use those years back?
id like to have a crack at this, looks fun
Don,t burn your self
I bet you could run a jet off of wood smoke.
Kinda a waste of time to be honest..just not practical.
Recover the exaust temp
You won’t
My Dad (now 101!) used to run his car on a system like this back in the 1940s. He had a water filtration system that would filter the smoke from the wood gas.
I was actually thinking a water filtration system would actually be great maybe using mason jars as a container
All the best and heartfelt greetings for your Dad. :)
This is a walking history card, so listen, listen, listen... and take notes!
bicycle bong. makes sense.
They also used to have a big balloon on the top of the cars to store the gas I think.
It would also help cool the gas
Its occurred to me, that in the long term, wood pellets, for wood pellet stoves, would be a more convenient fuel. It would be consistent, and ensure maximum filling of the container.
*I was thinking the SAME thing* / & how to make something like that (pellets/alt-wood) on your own in a SHTF situation where you must produce all your own fuel. / This type of project would also be in an Alcohol/Fuel series.... same reasoning.
Using smoker pellets would be great! The filter chamber could also serve the secondary function of smoking a nice brisket!
yeah, awesome idea! 1kg of wood pellet is cca 5kwh of energy :)
You don't have to buy sticks and twigs though.
@@JesusSaves86AB
The depends entirely on where you live.
Even if you have the wood, a pelletiser would make the wood more convenient and effective. I live in an area where a lot of the people use wood for heating, but many have changed to pellet stoves for convenience, and cleanliness. Carting logs about is
inconvenient and messy, and often need cutting to size. Also storing them is much the same.
Pellets come in nice clean bags, ready for immediate use.
Also, if you were to use them for a vehicle, they could be stacked in the vehicle ready, just like carrying a spare can of liquid fuel.
During world war II in Norway, we (not me, I wasn't born yet) had buses that ran on wood gas. It worked, but had some difficulty driving uphill. Passengers frequently had to get out and push the bus.
Near where i now live, in Italy, during world war II, a wood seller had the last woodgas fueled truck in the valley, that blew up in a german bombing!
Same in Sweden, although a lot of bus drivers died from Carbon Monoxide poisoning as they started the bus in the garage
that rrminds me, i've seen on wikipedia that, ammonia was once used as fuel
These are they types of videos on RUclips where I feel like I'm not just wasting my time
knowledge is power, whether its from a book or a video
sarcasm
I would love to know which country he is based in?
Simply find another video to watch.
i agree this is fascinating!!!!!
We know that this is possible because at the end of WW2, the Germans were facing a fuel shortage, and all fuel was being used for the military effort, so people turned to converting their cars to run on wood gas using conversion kits. Eventually the military even produced some Holzbrenner “Wood burning” Volkswagen cars. There's probably more information on how this was pulled off if you dig around. One thing that came to mind a while ago in this project is why don't you come up with a way to compress the wood gas as it is made using a decent compressor and use it to fill a small tank at reasonably high pressure. I suspect that the solids would condense our settle out of the gas if you left it sitting in the take for a while, then use that to run the engine. That would eliminate the drag on the intake stroke which your system suffers from. Very cool project. Your videos are always a treat.
There are several gasifier designs available for vehicles including an official set of plans distributed by FEMA, but they are complicated and do not have ease of manufacture in mind. I hope to come up with a simpler design, or at least one that can be pieced together from common items without excessive cutting and welding. You're right that particulate settles out of the gas if stored, but the energy density of woodgas is quite low, and so you won't get much run time out of a storage tank of a size that fits on a vehicle. Much better on a mobile setup if you're able to burn the gas immediately as it's produced. There is also apparently some issue with compressing woodgas where it becomes unstable at high pressures. Possibly because of the oxygen content that remains. I have not tested this, but there seems to be a consensus about it in my research.
That makes perfect sense. Don't compress it then. Maybe work on a better way to extract the gas from the wood. The original design you had made could perhaps be scaled up?
The Germans also converted tiger 1 tanks to run on woodgas
They also made an experimental wood gas burning Tiger tank just without the turret.
The North Koreans still do.
Using the bee smoker was a neat idea, good job on your first attempt! 👍
With Germany not having it's own source of oil, they ran a lot of their military vehicles on wood gas during the war.
Running a Panzer 38t on Firewood. I'd love to see that
@@hwachahistorychannel1617 They had some Tiger 1 chassis that used large wood gasifiers to save fuel and they were used for driver training.
True. often the best technological innovations comes from need not greed.
And HHO oxyhydrogen from water would be a good addition to make the most of whatever other combustible fuel!
@@seamusgray7609 depends on how the HHO is produced.
I think the filtration of the gasifier is a key factor. I also think that you should incorporate a manual air pump that runs off the pedals to pump air into the gasifier (instead of the bellows). Love the video . Thank you for these brain exercising videos. Keep the creative juices flowing ...
the gasifier i built years ago used activated charcoal and water in an old paint can that the wood gas bubbled through. the end result was pretty pure wood gas.
you're probably also better off ditching the stock carburetor and building your own to replace it.
"My new car has a 3 bee smoker engine" Life in either 2154 or 1876
Lmao! My car runs 7 miles to the sycamore
I have a "V8 smoker" :-P
2 bee smoker...
This will decimate all!
*Reference to original Fast and Furious*
Mine is running a three litre Bee-6 engine
Haha haha a Bee-6 that’s too funny .....mines humm-bee. And it’s a large block honeycomb bee-8
Here's a helpful idea, disassemble the pull start and use either a battery powered drill or setup an electric starter. It will save a lot of wear and tear on your elbow and shoulder.
For the filter, try using coffee filters and layer cedar, filter, cedar, filter, etc, etc. You will still get smoke, but less of it.
For the gasifier, you need at least 2 of those smokers and probably 3 to keep that engine going.
For the air intake, it needs to be at least 2 inch pipe, probably 3 inch would be better, and needs a filter to help keep dust, dirt, water, etc out of the intake.
Food for thought:
Install a second gas line water hose value on the gas line before the one on the engine. That way after you can turn up the one on the engine you can leave it turned tuned to run the engine and use the extra valve on the gas line just to open can close to release gas so you don't have to re fine turn your engine gas/oxygen valve every start also release gas also open it to start the gasifier.
Wishing you had a electric starter yet? :P
I think the filter that you need for the wood gas is activated carbon. It filters tar and other stuff really good out of smoke. That's the reason they put it in smoking pipes as a filter. Just fill a big tank with it and let the smoke pass through it.
smart. you know where i've found something of sorts? when i've brought a filter for a kitchen extractor.
I love everything about this. Awesome engineering! You could make a wood gas generator to charge batteries.
This is a damn fantastic idea.
A one-way valve on the intake could make a difference. It looks like the engine is leaking gas on some parts of the engine cycle. This is bad, because the engine then sucks that air-gas mixture back in instead of just the air. It could also help the gasifier for the same reason.
A filter stage using just water could help clean the gas (but might need to much pressure to pull).
I am sure you recieve a million compliments on your videos. I just want to let you know how much they are enjoyed and how much I learn from you. Thank you very much.
My wife just came in and asked why Wesley from Star Trek next generation, was working on wood fuel driven bicycle when he can just beam himself wherever he needs to go.
Really though, great vid. You are such a refreshing thinker/inventor/problem solver.
😂😂😂😂
He got tired of working on warp drives
Looks like you could use a one way valve on the intake
This is the best idea so far
Edit: My new videos have been performing pretty poorly these days. You can help by sharing this video to relevant pages on facebook, reddit, etc.. Please don't spam on my behalf, but if you know of groups that would appreciate this video please do share it. Thanks!
A few things I did not mention in the video: There is a small hole drilled into the elbow that connects the gas line to the lower valve on the intake. This allows any condensation that makes it past the filter to drain out. I also realized that the engine's upstroke is blowing a lot of my fuel right out of the intake as evidenced by the smoke pulsing out when the engine is running. I probably need to figure out a one way valve setup so the engine can blow off that backpressure through a different outlet than where the fuel/air comes in.
2 stroke scooters use reed valves to eliminate blow back into the carb. Not sure if that system is used on 4 strokes but could be useful in my opinion
Could you put Air compressed ? For help the combustion
The gas is quite cool by the time it passes through the filter, so this may work.
NighHawkinLight, perhaps a modified EGR valve would withstand the temperatures required? If you used the housing at least, it might be servicable. Or maybe you could make something using a small housing with a spring and ball bearing sitting over an outlet that is tuned to open up with backpressure, then quickly shut.
Why would an upstroke blow gas out of the intake? That does not make any sense. On the upstroke the intake valve is always closed.
I like Your channel and I love Your English. :)
For a person for whom English is not a native language, it is very important that the presenter speak slowly and clearly.
Edit: My suggestions
1. Separate combustion chamber from gasified materials, so heating flame will be always the same and much bigger.
2. Introduce separated tank, only for produced gases.
3. Add one way valve to an air inlet.
Edit2:
4. Use charcoal for filter and clean gases.
5. Use part of created gases to heat gasification tank (positive loop).
For the charcoal filter it's best to use activated charcoal, since it absorbs better than normal charcoal.
Pretty cool ideas though.
make a schematic where would he put all this stuff on a bike like that. If he could, he would add a lot of things, but the space and weight is restricted.
Efff, mounting any part of this stuff, including initial, is ridiculous.
We are not thinking about, is this vehicle is reasonable (because it is not), but is post apocalyptic cyclist is faster than Lance Armstrong on all of their stuff ;)
What if you compressed the air and wood gas entering the engine using some kind of a engine powerd turbine.
Hammer of the Witches. Your username is not one I expected to see in the RUclips comment section. If I may ask, why did you choose that for a username?
You can make it pass through lime water to absorb CO2
This might also remove more of the water vapor (as long as the lime water is cold enough).
It would be additional weight, and it woukd have to go through a lot of it because gas absorption in liquids is very slow if it comes to extracting at least 10% of the gas.
How about a cannister of lithium hydroxide as in a diving rebreather? Of course, it is additional weight again. You're also perhaps getting away from the intention of running an engine entirely on natural fuel if you need LiOH to run it!
Nice demonstration of 100 plus years of gasifier tech.
The problem is not a question of generating hydrogen and methane from wood fuel but rather how to handle the long chain hydrocarbons which form tars and eventually gum up the intake and carbonize in the combustion chamber, end of working engine. These tars require higher temperatures and longer resident times to convert further into Carbon Monoxide or other volatile byproducts. This in turn delays the length of time the gasifier must function to accomplish a task without actually burning up the constituents before sending them off to be used. Ultimately it is the tars that are the enemy and higher temperatures eventually tend to accumulate a final carbon layer accumulation so it's always an issue of accumulated fouling at one or more points in the system.
That said, many methods have been attempted to filter out long chains but this is a toxic nightmare and secondary handling issue unless the handling of those tars can be re-routed back to the combustion process at some point.
Inclusion of water vapor at combustion in the engine can help discharge the carbon formation but it's still abrasive and using water kills the ability to apply it in cold temperatures at risk of freezing.
Next, one must understand that utilizing atmospheric air brings in some 80% plus nitrogen into the combustion process resulting in at least 3 species of No(x) emissions which combine with moisture in the atmosphere to form acidic byproducts affecting ocean and rain water side effects, highly destructive over time. The problem worsens in longer residence times to fight tar, generating higher volumes of NoX pollutants in solving for tar. The two problems lie at the opposing ends of a gradient of cause/effect inviting loss of simplicity if to make the process viable for mass production / application and support.
Sealed gasifiers in batch mode generate a more viable manner of lower tars but then you have a potentially pressurized vessel filled with combustible gases. A single backfire invites catastrophe or at the least destabilizing a running processes if it could reach oxygen during a backfire. Batch processes of loading and unloading leave behind char residuals to handle (secondary carbon char gasifier), or waste accumulation.
Assuming you solve these issues by some degree of simplicity, what do you do with the unused bio-gas when the fire continues to burn but the gas is not consumed? Since the gas produced is not pure methane or hydrogen or carbon monoxide, you cannot safely store it in containers unless those containers have an active mixing process inside them. Otherwise these gasses separate into their own respective layers and you get huge swings in volatility tapping from the top versus bottom etc.
Nice demonstration as always, but unfortunately it needs to have an explanation of the downside complications so others are not inclined to waste time, money and injury without understanding the risks and complications.
Thanks for the efforts. Nice demonstration as always.
So you could run a water filtration system with just enough alcohol in it the stop freezing. If not for flammability you almost could just run alcohol. I'm not a chemist but it might also help capture or break down tars. the problem is think is most things you would introduce should be pretty dangerous. Like acetone to the mix for a cleaner burn. Maybe you could snatch up a bunch of cigarettes littering our planet and make a large filter, as they are designed to handle high heat and capture tar ....
urban you must be fun at party’s
Thanks poindexter
@@travischooter very
collect it then send it to a cracking tower lol
Love it!!!
So two thing's that may help,
1) elm wood provides a higher methane gas than most woods.
2) When lighting the tinder....the tinder should burn from the top down as in the direction of your draft. When lit from the bottom burn rate is diminished by draft
I had some afterthoughts as seen above.
The beesmoker is a neat idea, but to minimise smoke what you really want is a downdraft-gasifier design. Ive never tried this myself so this is book-knowledge, but it supposedly makes an enormous order-of-magnitude difference in terms of the amount of partial combustion products, as compared to the updraft system which your beesmoker seems to be. It makes sense too, since if the air moves in the same direction as the combustion front, the combustion products will pass over the hot coals last, allowing them to be maximally reduced.
Exactly right.
It also produces less tar to use charcoal fuel. He's got way too much tar and it will clog the engine valves in short order.
Would coal gasify as readily as wood though? I have not seen it been done in such small setups with more crude process control. Not sure what the immediate impact of tar on the engine is (I imagine most of it would burn quite ok once in the cylinder?), but even without any tar I fear the setup is underpowered. Thermal processes don't scale down nice and proportionally; you need some minimal volume to sustain and isolate a nice and high temp burn front; so taking a car-sized gasifier and scaling it down proportional to the required wattage might not be a great idea. You need an insulated space to get a nice and white hot region to gasify optimally, and intuitively I don't see such a white heat being very confinable in such a small volume. With a loosely packed fuel in a small volume like this, the dynamic is more likely such that youd be driving off water at low temp (and thus tar) throughout the container initially, rather than achieving a more continuous burning front with a more or less constant gas composition. Coal would help with those concerns I suppose; given that it does not have such a complex burning process it should be simpler to contain; coals are either hot enough to form CO or they are not.
Why are so few people watching your videos? You are freaking awesome!!
Freaking awesome? I'd say more like absolutely and completely spectacularly awesome...
Why not Dean a little of both...
Because cognitive dissonance and apathy is a worldwide phenomena friend. Society has reached the stage where most are conditioned to find thinking for themselves is a bothersome "chore." Much easier for most to be cynical and bitch. Sad, but true.
A conveniently located choke control would be helpful here. That way you don't have to rush around and adjust the intake. Another point is that many of these new small engines are designed to self choke with gas and won't open up until they're running past a certain point. That could be another issue you're running into. A 4 stroke gas weed eater might be worth looking into. Most of those still have separate manual choke assemblies.
Did you ever finish this project? I'm very much in love with the idea of non-traditional fuel ran engines.
Look up Wayne Keith and his trucks friend
@@zach3096 Will do. Thanks 👍 Any idea for key search words? Or just Wayne Keith and his trucks?😅
You need to treat these start issues as if you are using propane gas! Wood-Gas, you need a flare pipe pre carby and light that first! You need to light it and allow it to burn bright, and this will eliminate the smoke issue you have! Also, that system is only really suited to a fixed engine speed unless you have E = mc2 , thus a clutch will be required for the operation of the vehicle unless you can regulate the air fuel mixture correctly for muli purpose throttle operations. Especially generators as they are governed! They work for most purposes just fine at fixed speeds other than welding or other intermediate sudden high-demand situations! Well done all the same! I'm very impressed.
It looks to me like Wood gas is being lost out of the air inlet. If you added a one-way valve to the inlet it would prevent this. Although it wouldn't help the already low air flow.
I understand from RUclips that cooling the gas (smoke) makes it more combustible. Improve filtering to prevent engine gumming up.
Use a venturi to draw air into the engine- consider a carb design that can meter it a bit better? make the float raised by gas buildup instead of liquid fuel. Also, different spark plugs may perform better. Then just need a clutch/belt to the bellows for pedal start!
Que bueno que haya gente todavía que nos traiga éstos inventos tan maravillosos. Abrazo desde Argentina.
Holy crud. Seeing a lot of possibilities involving an orchard, routine pruning and a greenhouse. Thanks much!
Bubble the wood gas threw water and an airstone, make the water ice water to pull the tar and smoke out fast
Ty
It really sucks RUclips's algorithm is screwing over good RUclipsrs like you.
You look like Will Wheaton if he did actual science experiments. You're way cooler than him.
TheDandyMan Will Wheaton is a soyboy nowadays. “Shut up Wesley.”
I think he looks more like Liam Neeson
You're both wrong. It's Justin Trudeau.
Elijah Wood?? Must be a cousin.
I was thinking he looks like Ted Cruz.
I'm digging what you're doing, I think it's great!
1) try smaller chunks of wood, roughly the size of a dice. 2) try drying the wood out a bit more. 3) the wood needs to be much hotter before you try to use the wood gas, give it a minute. 4) Even with dry wood, there will be moisture, try teeing off the fuel line, such that the water runs down into a small reservoir. 5) your stove (reactor) is probably a bit undersized, but trying the above may get you closer to having the capacity.
i was smiling the whole video. Its just so awesome how far you got with this wood gas project
You are guaranteed to succeed with this, with a wee bit of fine tuning - but you are also guaranteed to gum up the engine with tar in just a couple of hours :( .
Been there, done that - got the tee shirt.
Sadly, there is really NO way to filter the tar out, but it IS possible to produce woodgas that is clean enough to be as invisible as air.
A deep charcoal bed, and HIGH combustion temperatures are elemental to success in this regard.
Once you get those aspects under control, you will be amazed at how clean, and smokeless, your fuel gas will become.
By the way, I totally love this video, and I really wish more people wood give this a go :) .
We do this to a large industrial scale 24/7 in South Africa to make our final petrol and diesel fuels which will rival even the cleanest fuel in the world... so it is possible. The benefit of this type of fuel production is low sulphur, we even have to add sulphur components just to ensure proper hydrotreating catalyst function downstream of the fisher trops process (gas shift) after this gasification step! Getting tar and pitch out is easy, let it cool down and filter and drain it. But yes you do need a lot of steps of filter and distillations to get good clean fuel for engine grade. Still, this is super interesting experiments!! Btw all information in this comment is public knowledge. I'm not representing my company with this statement.
CNCmachiningisfun by
@@MorneBooysen Fisher Trops Process was something the Germans were doing to keep their aircraft and vehicles going during WW 2, right?
@@ZuluLifesaBeech- not sure, but I definately have heard the same story before. but commercialising it to scale is rare and as far as i know only in Sout Africa
@@ZuluLifesaBeech- it was used for some civilian and training vehicles by Germany
Up next on NightHawkinLight: "Woodgas 3 stage rocket to the Moon and Back."
In my polymer chemistry researches I've stumbelled upon gasification as a means of "recycling"/reuse old plastic. You might give it a try in the same system. Apparently one can expect the output gas to be around 25-35% CO and 55-65% H2 while also producing small amounts of CH4 and C2H6. I wonder how it would run the bike? Might not be as "green" as woodgas tho.
Hi,
Excellent video!
I believe that the main reason that the engine did not continue running is that you close the cap/top of the “smoker” unit while running the engine and therefore the engine was not able to draw/pull enough air through the smoker when engine running, i.e. probably more openings should be made for air to get into the smoker unit (especially if the hole at the very top of the cap is closed or partially closed, but even if not closed, may be still not enough hole area) so as to allow enough air through the smoker while the cap is closed.
Dry wood still contains about 6-7% water by weight, you could dry your wood at about 150°C for some time to remove that, it would definetely improve your wood gas in terms of flameability.
Also you can make some aluminium or copper (good heat conductors) air condensers between engine and wood gas generator to remove tar and water (if the outlet temperature is below reasonable temperature). Maybe adding CO2 scrubber would help?
When going anywhere in a wood-fueled car, remember to keep a cordless circular saw and a hatchet in the trunk.
Tree branches, pallets, scrap lumber, demolition debris, you name it.
Like the "Mr. Fusion" on the future Delorean... ;?)
@@DoulosDS yea you can literally toss trash into it or even feces
Important thingis to have wood dry as possible
Would love to see the update to this with the larger setup, if you can get this bike running at full throttle with no issues I feel like it would be awesome because then you could take the ratios of size of gasification chamber to size CC engine and really take any 4stroke and run it this was especially since these wood gas systems are carbon neutral, you could run a sawmill, vehicle, generator, you could combine this with a flywheel power generation setup and basically run your house with almost no environmental impact
Saw it done to a small puck up truck
It might not be too practical to have the wood-burning stove on the bike itself, but I do see storing up woodgas from your wood-burning stove during winter into a container that you can put onto a motorized vehicle.
This is cool!
I'm a shade tree engineer. My thoughts would be to produce a highly filtered wood gas into a bladder. Put the bladder into a tube. With weight you would create pressurized fuel. Add pressure regulator. Because the fuel would be "cold" you now have a "richer" more dense gas. Your results would be higher RPM's/ power with less exhaust emissions.
You also wouldn't be carrying hot coals on your rear fender.
FINALLY! The wait was soooooooooo long!
This is really creative and clever. I'm glad I watched it. I wonder if some kind of tank/regulator between the gasification tank and the engine would keep a "buffer" of wood gas so the engine got consistent stream. In any case, thanks, and keep making clever things (and showing us how to also)!
PTSD flashbacks to that outboard I had as a kid. Seriously though, another awesome video. The bee smoker it genius.
Imagine smelling like a campfire after driving to work everyday. Worth it.
As for ideas I recommend trying a double din system in an upside down "U" riding on top of the back seat area. Have one side of the U manage the woodgas and the other side manage the filter/other components. I figure this would be a nice balance for your design.
Your videos are always interesting ... I remember that in the mines there were carbon monoxide filters that contained caustic soda in flakes and that was the one that retained the carbon monoxide, maybe eliminate the carbon monoxide from the wood gas help this wood gas is more flammable and so the engine is sustained running ... but you are the expert and the one who knows more.
SALUDOS !!!
Tus videos son siempre interesantes ... Recuerdo que en las minas existían filtros de monoxido de carbono que contenían sosa cáustica en escamas y que era la que retenía el monóxido de carbono , quiza eliminar el monóxico de carbono del gas de madera ayude a que este gas de madera sea mas inflamable y así se sostenga el motor funcionando ....pero Tu eres el experto y el que sabe mas .
Saludos !!!
Dude carbon monoxide is flammable
^^
You want to filter out water vapor, tar, and particulate and keep the carbon monoxide. CO is the fuel.
great now all you need to do is add a cam to the wheel so that ever time it gots around it squeeses the bellows lol
I'm still waiting for the follow up on this! I'd love to see the bike drive a bit!
this is exactly what I need in my village which is 40 km away from nearest city...
I am not sure how far you have come with this. I work in anaesthetics. One method of filtration on our machines is a CO2 absorber with ceramic filters at the near and far ends. Thus seams to work well.
Love your stuff, wood fuel requirements are storage, delivery, and adjustment. Just my take.
I think you just need an air pump, the fire container is big enough it's just like a smaller tank. The pump could risen the woodgas process and also you are producing some compression.
yes, you need an air pump... Turbo charge it!
Good 2 stroke engines have Autolube, so no need to mix oil with the fuel!
Forgot about that option
Oil injectors not autolube. I.e., jet ski 2 cycle engines
@@jkgkjgkijk Not sure what your point is?
Your still injecting oil into the cylinder. Might as well just set the engine to run on kerosene or other oil based fuel at that point.
The main purpose as I see it is to use as little oil as possible for a survival / shortage scenario. Using any form of 2 cycle engine would defeat that purpose.
@@timothyhaug2060 You are, but a 4 stroke still uses oil for lubrication even if it's running on wood gas!
A Venturi on the air intake would definitely help pull that oxygen into the chamber. Possibly even forced induction?? Like a supercharger... You could even hook the peddle up to a pump. Haha although I would imagine not peddling is sort of the whole point. :)
Anchor Bait forced induction*?
@@superstarr310 compressing the air coming into the engine. It's what turbochargers and superchargers do.
You wrote "forced education" bud.
Anchor Bait oh I know what forces induction is ahaha
@@TheOwenMajor oh gotcha. Ha it all makes sense now. Cheers
now i dont really know much about anything but i think stuff like this is so cool. i like diy things and its always good to learn. the idea of having a larger gasifyer(sp??) i think could work but my idea would be to try and filter the smoke more. i feel like its taking up space and not letting the amount of air in it needs. if there was a way to filter the wood gas to a more pure state before it reaches the engine it may just work.
I guess if you install the beef smoker close enough to the intake air of the engine, it will help to maintain the gas temperature on high. Thus it will make the engine to be easier to start up. And then what about to add more oxygen on the intake air, experimentally if we could find the best ratio of the smoke/gas and air/oxygen then we could maintain the engine on run. But, anyway you have invented the solution of our crisis of energy source. By the way, i'm sory that my english is not very good...I'm from Indonesia. I love this channel and your invention👍👍👍
Hello my dear friend!!! I was impressed with your idea. That's cool.
Here are my first thoughts on how to improve the design. I am sure that you yourself have reached them.
1) Use the best weatherization of the gas chamber.
2) be sure to warm the filtration chamber.
3) use wood chips from oak or birch, and not from resinous wood.
4) It may be better to dry the wood before using it, or to take the chamber drying chips.
5) position the filtration chamber around the tank with chips. this way it will warm up faster and will itself serve as a thermal insulating layer for the combustion chamber.
You can make it from an iron can of larger diameter and place the combustion chamber inside. I hope I understandably translated my thoughts from Russian to English.
I can send a drawing if something is not clear))
With interest I will follow the project.
You make really good videos, after watching any of them I always feel like I learned something. Your presentation style makes it easy to follow along. Thanks for continuing to make fun educational videos, it is appreciated. Also, keep doing the video endings with the bird :-)
StarLite: awesome job tying this together! It is in fact, almost the same formulation as some "Slime" mixtures. :-). I added a contact lens solution to reduce stickiness and it work just as well
I think many of us should start working to finding applications to help place this material into fire fighter suits. This might help fire up the industry?
Too bad the original inventor got too greedy. :-(
The kids have the formula and are refusing to share. They are STILL "working" on bringing to market. In the meantime, thousands have unnecessarily died because a technology was available to save their lives.
Try using charcoal and if you get it going then wrap a copper coil around the fire box to make steam and let steam go into the intake of the gasifier, but not directly in. If your charcoal is hot enough you will then make hydrogen. Charcoal gas blue orange flame, hydrogen the flame becomes whiter. Just have to balance things and it will work. Charcoal is cleaner than wood chips and will not gum up the motor as bad and as quick especially with a good filter, try charcoal as a filter also but use a foam oil filter, (like in a lawn mower) last so char dust does not go trough the intake. I once made a geet lawn mower, could only get it to idol but when i mixed water with the gas it ran a little better and had to shut the air valve down to a crack the thickness of my thumbnail, very small opening. It was producing hydrogen! Great video, keep on going you will get it.
For the filter, you might be able to run it through water with some baffles to prevent sloshing. The tar will remain in the water and the water vapor will cool off and condense. The smoke will also condense out too
Another video I wasn't notified about. Excellent! The smoke can reminds me of the "Tin Man" from the Wizard of Oz. LOL Not a good project for people with respiratory problems. :-)
I think it would be too complicated and heavy to make one work, at least for a bike, that is used to run the engine directly. Seems it would be better to size the gas producer to produce gas at say 70 percent of full RPM but have it flow into a tank and then run the engine from the now cleaned and constantly pressurized gas from the tank. Start the burner and once the tank is full enough, you go. Running full out you would be depleting the tank but every time you slowed down or stopped the tank is filling. Had a big Dodge truck that ran on propane. Only had a tank, but if I had something to produce propane I could have used it in a similar manner. The propane pressure was always enough to keep the engine running until the propane got low. A gas carburetor and maybe a pedal assist pump to pressurize the tank until it was self sufficient might work. The truck had a 440 in it and a forty gallon tank, so scaling that down to bike size then a 3 to 5 gallon tank could give plenty of endurance, Just an idea.
I would recommend compressing the wood for a few thousand years untill it becomes gas
I wonder if a compressed briquette made in a hydraulic press would work well
I understand that's what Venezuela's trying with their oil economy.
😄
XD
Well done friend. I have always admired folks with inquiring minds. I am South African and in the process of building my own house on a small farm outside our city. Have come to the conclusion that I am beyond being tired of the tyranny imposed on humanity by cartels and big corporates, even by Governments.
I will never forget ( I think it was J.P. Morgan ) that had access to the work done by Nicolas Tesla and the technology just vanished.
One bit of advice and no, I am not a pro on these matters but folks with more knowledge may suggest this also. As is the case with appliances running on LPG gas ( stoves / refrigerators etc.) will it not be more safer to add a small flashback arrestor in the gas feed line between the gas tank and the engine? For safety?
Keep up the good work. This sorry planet needs more humans like you.
Also I love the simplicity of the design keep up the good work!
mrtestlonian i so forgot about him ..he was way out in left feild with that robo suit he was making i couldn't watch it any more
John Connor his channel is still one of my favorites. Very clever dude.
Was your objections to the robo suit tied to your name...
hahahahaha
If you're still at this project at some point I would try damp gravel for a filter. Also leave the lid off till it idles, yes that means less fuel but it also means keeping the system going until it's ready to handle a higher load. Hopefully that would work. Best of luck and I definitely like your work.
I remember seeing pictures of German military running a truck on wood gas. The gasification system was huge. Like the size of 30 gallon water heater. If you put like a saddle bag platform over the back wheel, you could have the fire box on one side and the filter on the other side. Also, if you return to the separate double burner style you’ll be able to feed sawdust to heat the closed compartment of 2x4 and have less issue with the smoke. My 2 cents
A Very small heat exchanger could help with filtration by lowering the temperature of the gas and causing the heavier oils etc. to condense and fall out of the stream, or at least be easier to filter out.
And it would warm up air going into the gasifier to get hotter temperatures there too.
For the heat exchanger, take a tower CPU cooler like CoolerMaster 212 evo, and use the top half of the fins for the cool incoming air, and the bottom half for the hot output air. That way the heatpipes can work at maximum efficiency without relying on capillary action.
I would avoid jbweld or glues for the ducting on it, and instead use pop rivets so it could just be soaked in acetone to clean it when its all gunked up.
This was the first video of you I saw and I was immediately really impressed, but now that I know how brilliant you are, from watching your other videos, I'm convinced you can do better than this and get it to work. Would be awesome to see. :)
This is a cool little experiment. I'm a little partial to using charcoal gasifiers for small engines. They are much more simple and require a lot less space to accomplish similar fuel production output compared to wood gasifiers.
Man, I love your style of doing stuff and documenting it, narration, script, ideas, all that stuff! Kudos, friend 🤝 Best wishes from Ukraine =)
We ran a 5hp Briggs on woodgas, it was unfiltered and run directly into the carburetor. It was stationary equipment but it ran pretty well and the exhaust smelled like campfire lol
NightHawnInLight, Cody'sLab, and colinfurze have always been some of my favorite channels! Thank you all for doing what you do and inspiring me too!
Tits thank you
I wish you'd have been my science teacher, or at least in my class (you look forever youthful, hard to tell lol). I'd have learned way more. Thanks for making science fun and interesting again!
Hello NightHawkInLight. I have an idea for this setup that I'm convinced would work and I'd love for you to try it. There are two major hurdles that you need to overcome in order for this process to hopefully be successful. First you need enough wood gas to achieve a substantial combustion level in the engine so that it won't die when you throttle it , secondly you need a proper air-fuel ratio.
To achieve this you need to double your wood burning production either by getting a larger bee smoker or combining two of them into one pipe section. Make sure to cool the gas substantially before letting it enter the engine. Having a water tank hanging from the side of the bike with some coiled metal or high temp silicone tubing would likely do the job.
So in essence: more pyrolysis, more heat radiation, more cooling. We need a denser gas.
I hope you keep refining your ideas.
Someone below mentioned a water based filter - and right away my mind went to a Rainbow Vacuum cleaner where they filter dirt our of the air by pulling it through a water tank on the bottom. I initially laughed at the Rainbow design until I tested how clean the air was coming out, and it was AMAZINGLY clean (the smallest particulates end up in the water tank)! Yes, my wife had the last laugh. And the Rainbow is 25 years old and still going strong (and replacement parts are cheap, too). I'll bet a simple one stage water filter would do it. That is what I will use on my Wood Gasifier for my generator. Good video!
I believe if you have a dual pass filter it might be easier to remove contaminants from the system. I'd do this by making a center piece for the paint can. This could be a piece of pipe. Draw into the exterior as you were doing, the "torturous" path would filter out more contaminants. If also look into a bubbler system to purify the gas prior to ignition sure source. Hope this project works because I will be making something similar soon.
I'm only vaguely familiar with this system of using the gas from wood to operate an internal combustion engine. This was used early in the 20th century in times of gasoline rationing due to the great world war. The Germans were probably one of the first to use and develop this system, but I am speculating and not stating a researched fact. I was informed that this was one of the methods the civilian population utilized during rationing and short supplies. The idea was to use "charcoal" to start with and add wood chips that would turn to charcoal in the process. As the gas from the charcoal was expended, the now cooked wood chips will have become charcoal and were fed into the burn chamber and fresh wood chips added to continue the process. This was explained to me some 50+ years ago and I never attempted to create one nor have I ever seen one in action. I like your idea here and I think perhaps charcoal might be more efficient and uniform in releasing the gas and possibly less smoke.
Gasifiers are much better for something with a constant load. Charging batteries for example, with the batteries powering your equipment. Using it for mobility creates a spectrum of demands depending on the terrain and speed. It's a neat tech, perfect "End of the World" tool.
I could probably never build it let alone assemble a kit but the video was awesome to watch
Gasification is intricate. I have heated my home with European and Canadian models. From a single air blower to supply both primary and secondary combustion chambers. To greatest efficiency only about 25% or less of the air is directed to primary combustion, (best secondary combustion yields a primarily blue flame), otherwise over-carburetion is the result (the same as flooding a gas engine but then I think you know the term). Dense hard woods of a preferred 20% moisture give the best regulated burn for standard wood supplies however dense hardwood charcoal briquets work extremely well. Your wood even if dry might be too dry or wet and from what I could see looks like pine of some sort and pine/spruce have knots with varying degrees of tars so I would suggest you eliminate them from your tests. They supply too much variability. For regulated bio gas production you should think of incorporating a refractory nozzle which is a very good heat sink but also a primary combustion core temperature stabilizer which allows for a more complete burn of your fuel source. In my boiler true gasification with dense hard woods (oaks, hickory locusts for example) nozzle temps can approximate 220f frequently. So, in a mobile format, for strength and durability's sake, you may want to incorporate/mix in stainless steel needles like those used to construct refractory molds in high heatapplications. Casual observance would suggest your ash collector/moisture condenser is about 4/+ times too small and for most automotive applications should not be the same as your primary wood gas cooler but part of a two phase cooler. I guess it depends how far you want to go in your experiment. I like this research. Thanks!
A fundamental *success* Great Work. You've proven your design. You can easily see it choke out with less air vs leaning-out on the less fuel/ balancing issue complicated by burn rate. Obviously, you can eventually get this to a manually controllable process with levers/valves. ... I saved this video under survival / FUEL & Alcohol.... even *your followers here are SO SMART I saved some of the notes from them* ...... you gotta GREAT channel here. Practical Tech Applications / super cool to watch.
*A mobile gassifier COULD even be used on an electric car/truck to charge it while traveling*
So this is a GREAT ( *mobile power generation* ) project.
Right now ... without experiencing any actual long term survival or off-grid living... I think MY primary interest in a wood gassifier system would be to run generators to charge batteries or special power needs / off grid. Easier to engineer a stationary system, BUT... I must admit, I think the *MOBILE GASSIFIER* Project will be a PUSH to create a more efficient controlled gassifer, b/c if you can get it to work for a bike for a few miles........... you have REALLY accomplished an impressive engineering challenge. (even if unpractical)
Dont set yourself on fire.... when you try to ride it (LoL) --- AND... you will have to consider *Crash & Emergency Conditions* (A rainy day could really suck) .... awesome video.
In a WORST CASE.... if it IS too dynamic/unstable to master it manually (for long runtime), you COULD maybe control the process with a microprocessor and basic controls.... (low power requirements) small electric fan/dampers controlling burn~ But, what I am saying is... if you keep hammering at this project, from a manual perspective... you COULD eventually design a truly smooth Bike or Car on this.... the bike? COULD actually be made to look very smooth and professional with composite materials / and housings / plumbing to handle all basic problems. And I suppose smoke/tar/water can be handled too.... but you're going to run into all this for long term running conditions.... that's why attempting a fully MANUAL system is actually quite HUGE and impressive. b/c if it even *sort of works* ......... it's a HUGE accomplishment. I have NEVER really studied wood gassification before this.... but this is just too cool.
Very cool project. I have never seen a wood powered bicycle on the road!
They used to run cars during WW2. I wouldn't mind running a generator this way. Good back up for solar and wind.
Keep it up friend.
I have been binging your videos now for a few weeks you are such a great creator and teacher! Thank you!
i never knew this was a thing. and now I do. and it could save my life in the event that SHTF
Hey Hawkin, I think that if you had some sort of air pump hooked up to the pedals, that would allow you to increase air flow to the engine. This requires less effort to get the bike in motion, and you could also have a gear set up from the back hooked up to an air pump. Or perhaps you could make use of that last bit of space to have a manual gear handle that you have to turn to get it started, but then once you get in motion the back tire air pump would take care of that.
The pedal gets you into initial motion, and the air pump attached to the pedals also force air into the engine. Then the back tire air pump will take care of the air.
One last thing is that you could have a sort of battery pack with a solar panel on top charging the batteries, then once you hit a switch it turns on a blower forcing air into a tube connected to your air inlet.
Please forgive my lengthy explanation, im not that great at explaining things
Gonna have to play with this experiment one day. Simply awesome.
Proof of concept completed, top job, love your work mate