Wood Gas

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by RobWindt, Mar 19, 2007.

  1. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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    Many folks have touted electric vehicles and bio-diesel as clean alternatives to fossil fuel based transportation and I have more than a passing interest in the subject, yet there was always a niggling doubt about their eco credentials.
    Let me state up front that I'm a big fan of backyard bio-diesel as using a waste resource appeals to the scavenger in me, but there are only so many fish and chip shops around and true waste oil is a limited resource
    Commercial bio-diesel was comprehensively debunked by George Monbiot last year and the Toyota Prius outdoes the Hummer in environmental damage, neither is morally or environmentally acceptable in the long term or as a transitional technology

    I understand and accept that the personal car has a limited use-by date but what of those areas with no public transport, how do small towns and remote communities cope with an oil embargo or similar shock? My guess would be localised adaptations using local resources and the one resource that most areas can count on is woody bio-mass.

    Wood gas powered over a million cars, trucks, buses and trains during and immediately after world war two when fuel was severely rationed and can do so again. I'm not advocating it for "business as usual" but I do see it as a useful and doable response to a petroleum shortage as it
    A- uses biomass from marginal landscapes and so does not compete with food for our arable land
    B- can be built by any competent workshop using scrap gas cylinders
    C- can be adapted to any motorised transport so that it
    D- uses existing rolling stock instead of using more resources

    I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and will post more on this in the near future

    Commercial Bio Diesel
    https://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12 ... ssil-fuel/
    Prius
    https://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editoria ... NewsID=188
    Wood Gas
    https://renascent.ratbag.googlepages.com ... sproducers

    Rob
     
  2. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Well stated Rob.

    Thanks for the info and I'll definitely be looking forward to your future thoughts on the subject.
     
  3. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    I spent alot of time think about this same topic and I agree with you it has serious merit. In fact I was thinking the new pellet stove idea might work great for a wood gas car, you could pour and fill and there is good control on burn rates, the fuel is already available and will most likely increase over time! There's my 2 cent how about you make it and I'll by one from you!

    Digging
     
  4. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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    G'day Digging, I looked into the pellet fuel on another list < https://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WoodGas/ > but the general consensus was that it smothers the fire in a downdraught burner, coarse chips around 2" / 50mm square are preferable.
    My unfinished set-up won third prize in a local sustainable technology fair last weekend to the amusement of my friends, as the primered and battered old ute looks like a hybrid from "Mad Max meets the Beverly Hillbillies" :D
    Cheers
    Rob
     
  5. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    I wonder if just the feed mecanism could be used with wood chips then??

    Digging
     
  6. Baisteach

    Baisteach Junior Member

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    How about this one? and you can have a choice of 'engines' all are fuel efficient and the residual exhaust is not only bio-degradeable but is useful in the garden. :D
    The time might come....

    [​IMG]
     
  7. heuristics

    heuristics Junior Member

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    Henry Ford imagined a vehicle using bio fuel - the grass growing along the highways could be used to fuel vehciles.
    I was looking thrs ome old newpapers from the 1920s when motoring as a recreational activity was in its infancy. Big Oil used to have to take out BIG advertisements to convince people of the merits of diesel and benzine.
    It was not at all certain back then that ""we"" would all chose the petro path - bit like the fork of the Beta/VHS divide or PC/MAC --- history has shown Big Oil won. After all, petrol was 10cents a gallon.

    Also - linking in to another thread running on this board, Henry Ford also imagined car body panels could be constructed from hemp.

    WE COULD have had a bio-degradable personal transport system!

    Myself - I still see a big future in electrics. In an utopia we could have a range of energy choices. Solar, incorporating batteries and hardcasing using hemp instead of oil-based materials.



    we ar locked into such cul-de-sac technologies when we should be find paths between all.
    Not having a go at anyone here, but generally as a paradigm we are locked into a competitive linear binary mindset - why does it have to be solar AGAINST bio AGAINST wind AGAINST wave or thermo?
    why not ALL integrated in a way that is most suitable ???
     
  8. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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    "The time might come.... "

    I'm sure that it will, but do we have the infrastructure to handle a petroleum emergency in the near future? So many of life's staples depend on a complex transportation system that is geared to centralised production systems, vast distances are involved and relocalisation won't happen overnight.

    Horses need to be trained, equipped with appropriate harnesses, cared for, kept in fenced paddocks and fed through winter, the scale of the problem is beyond hobby farmers and horse breeders who, like everyone else, will be battling to keep going in the ensuing economic fallout.

    Most communities have a mechanical tinkerer that could build a few gas producers, if they converted a flatbed truck and a bus you could at least transport goods and medical personnel etc while we transition to a saner lifestyle.

    Localised production for local needs (within local limits) is the obvious long term answer to our current problems and horse drawn transport makes perfect sense in those circumstances, but in the meantime...

    Er, I'll get off my soapbox now :oops:
     
  9. energies

    energies New Member

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  10. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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  11. SueinWA

    SueinWA Junior Member

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    Re: Wood Gas

    No one mentioned alcohol in any of the preceding posts. But Henry Ford's first cars (Model As and Ts) came from the factory as dual-fuel vehicles. Thousands of farmers in that time were producing their own alcohol for use in their vehicles and farm machinery. Good ole meglomaniac John D. Rockefeller (owner of Standard Oil) put millions of dollars into backing Prohibition here in the U.S. He wasn't against drinking alcohol, he was against it being used as a fuel when he owned an oil company. By the time Prohibition was repealed (13 yrs later), gasoline was firmly entrenched as automotive fuel.

    Yes, I've heard all the arguments the oil companies have put forth. And if anyone here wants to mention using CORN as a source of ethanol, and that growing CORN will cause mass starvation all around the world, please don't. Eighty-seven percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is used as livestock feed (domestic and exported). Not GOOD livestock feed, but adequate. But since cattle can't digest the starch in corn, it causes dietary upsets and intestinal problems. Fermented to make alcohol, the starch is removed, and the 'waste' makes a superior, higher-protein cattle food. All that was removed was the starch, the part that cattle can't digest.

    There is no food shortage on this planet. There is only a lack of money to buy it. My government buys grains for a pittance from American farmers and sells it cheap to other countries, countries that can feed themselves. But the local farmers in those countries can't compete with the ultra-cheap grains from the U.S., and they go out of business. THEN the country can't feed itself. THEN that country is owned and controlled by the U.S. When you can get someone else to depend on you for food, you OWN that person, or country. Starvation is orchestrated, not accidental.

    More alcohol can be fermented from buffalo gourds, cassava, castor beans, cattails (aka bulrush, reedmace ), leftover cellulose waste, low-quality oranges and fruit waste, comfrey, fodder beets, forage plants, hemp, Jerusalem artichokes, marine algae, mesquite pods (U.S.), molasses, palms, wild watermelon, sugar beets, sweet potatoes, sweet sorghum, tropical fruits, oastry droppings, candy waste, milk whey, etc. Some of this stuff is waste that is currently not being used, just dumped. A city's sewage could be processed through bulrushes, and those same bulrushes could be processed into alcohol.

    Expensive? It is quite possible to do anything inefficiently and at greater expense than necessary – our government is an excellent example.

    Suppose a million-gallon (4 million litre) alcohol still could be made that would take almost any food waste and turn it into alcohol... an orange farmer has a bad crop, instead of dumping it, he can have it turned into alcohol. A dairyman has contaminated milk, turn it into alcohol. Factories that have food waste, fruit waste, leftover pulp, etc, could have it made into alcohol.

    Before you write off ethanol, stop and think who doesn't want it to exist.

    "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." ---Thomas Pynchon

    "This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." --- Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, 1887-1881.

    Sue
     
  12. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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    Re: Wood Gas

    Thanks for the input Sue, but i'll take a raincheck on yet more centralised infrastructure.

    It takes energy and inputs to grow the crops (on land that could be used to grow food), harvest and transport them to the mill, ferment /distill and process, transport the fuel out to fuel stations, etc - you get the picture. Harvesting and transporting waste to centralised plants is almost as energy intensive, I doubt that we would get more energy back than we put in, all things considered.

    I like the idea of using woody biomass from marginal land and am building this gas producer to run on a variety of fuels, the holy grail for me is a unit that can run on the trimmings from bushfire reduction waste, regardless of moisture content

    Cheers
    Rob
     
  13. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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    Re: Wood Gas

    Extremely well researched and compiled post, Sue.

    I have to agree with every word you said. The only question that springs to mind is if using such a wide variety of waste resources to produce alcohol, can a standard Quality Assured product be produced ?

    Like all things in life, the majority keep asking WHY? While those actually doing something about it reply... WHY NOT!

    Rob,

    What about the energy currently used to eradicate the unwanted waste ? At least transporting it to a facility to create alcohol would produce a product, unlike sending it to land fill which costs probably as much as fermenting it.
     
  14. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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    Re: Wood Gas

    "What about the energy currently used to eradicate the unwanted waste ? At least transporting it to a facility to create alcohol would produce a product, unlike sending it to land fill which costs probably as much as fermenting it."

    That is a possibility, as is composting the waste locally and rebuilding soils depleted by over production in the first place :?
    The energy returned must exceed the energy invested, or we compound our problems.

    Cheers
    Rob
     
  15. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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  16. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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    Re: Wood Gas

    So you would prefer Methane [referencing compost]? A reasonable alternative as a fuel source, not terribly ozone friendly in its raw state.

    There is also the option of composting the byproduct from the fermentation process.
     
  17. RobWindt

    RobWindt Junior Member

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