Right outta WWII--woood gasification for engine fuel

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67Dart273

67Dart273

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When "they", "the thems" get done with us, and you can't buy gasoline anymore, here is one way to run your genset



People tried this in various ways in WWII

some people used wood, some "coal gas' etc

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And NOTHING would be complete without a bit 'o "Mother Earth News"

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Some of the more refined versions filter out the solid particulates, which only leaves the carbon monoxide (CO). Just for reference, the combustion process converts the hydrogen in the HC fuel molecule to water. There's 65% of the power produced by the fuel. Next it converts the carbon elements to CO for another 30% of total power. Finally, CO is oxidized to CO2 yielding the final 5% of total power.

As you can imagine, the engines have almost no power! I did an experiment with it a little over 20 years ago. It was a fun little project, but I abandoned it as impractical.
 
Way back when I was in engineering college I had a part time job working at a D.O.E. research facility called GROW, (Gasification Research on Wood). Basically using a massive heat exchanger to release flammable gases off of various combustibles like different types of wood chips. I remember there was one Doctoral Candidate from China that was using rice hulls. It was a very nasty and dangerous environment to work in but I was cheap grunt labor.
 
That seems like some amount of trouble.....but I like it. It WORKS!
 
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