running out of gas?

[huskymill]

so i just recently came across the idea of a device called a wood gasifier. the basic idea is to heat up wood to the point that it releases a gas that is combustible enough to run most engines instead of gasoline. the link im posting here is a small very simplified version of one. the guy making it sorta stutters a bit but its still an interesting idea. and if you could scale it up enough i imagine it would be a viable source of energy for a very long time, depending on how much wood you have sitting around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgu9BdHeUYg

(of course instead of a propane stove like this person is using, you would use a wood or charcoal fire for a heat source)

---there are also many other designs that are a bit more complicated and might be a bit more evicient but this still seems to work.

[Trabitha]

They tried to do that on the last season of The Colony. It WORKED...but it was almost like building a bomb. Looked rather dangerous. You know I saw something on the History Channel not too long ago that had a different solution to not having gas...can't be used long term...but it works. I'll see if I can find the video. It was history channel's apocalypse man. (yeah...another one that Bear Gryll's stolen idea...)

[huskymill]

http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/support-files/wood_gas_generator.pdf

another design. i am annoyed by the people that are always screaming about global warming but this particular artical is informative about the wood gasifier.

[Trabitha]

Erg...sorry, can't find it. It was on during Armageddon week so they don't have anything on their playlist anymore.
Anyway, they used cooking oil and...ugh...something else. It was a common household ingredient...did anyone else watch it? Now I want to know what it was!

[Justin Case]

Erg...sorry, can't find it. It was on during Armageddon week so they don't have anything on their playlist anymore.
Anyway, they used cooking oil and...ugh...something else. It was a common household ingredient...did anyone else watch it? Now I want to know what it was!

Were you talking about home made Bio diesel ? http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-prepare-used-cooking-oil-for-biodiesel

[Trabitha]

THAT'S it! I forgot how he picked out the diesel truck...guess that would have helped me remember if I had just remembered that one little detail. LOL! Thanks Justin!

[Justin Case]

You are welcome,, Here is how to make Bio diesel in a pop bottle.. http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-pop-bottle-biodiesel



(looks to me like somebody cooking Meth, lol )

[whitewater4x4]

During ww2 the germans had a trailer that they pulled behind the car that would gassify just about any vegetable material ( wood , grass, corn stalks, ect) Think it was made by BMW . They had hoses that ran to the carb . Also I think Mother Earth News or Backwoods Home Magazine had an article about using a gassifer to run a small engine generator

[Rick]

Not just vehicles but whole cities were using gas that had been extracted from coal rather than wood. Germany used a lot of gasifier vehicles during the war. Not just war vehicles but certainly a lot of those as well. Somewhere around half a million or so. City buses in Berlin ran on wood gas. They even had wood gasifier motorcycles. I have no idea how that worked. They didn't have access to much raw oil so they first used Benzol from coke and then turned to coal.

[SemperFi]

you can also extract alcohol from grass , so in theory you could have all your neighbors dump there lawn mowing sessions in your yard and you could use chemistry to extract the acohol , then you would need to adapt the engine to run on alcohol

[hunter63]

Mother Earth News Magazine was really into wood gas back in the early '80's

We made a trip to the Mother Earth News Village in N.C. in 1984, camped there for a week and were able to take 'classes" on a lot of the stuff they had in the magazine, was all set up and running on the property.

Wood gas was represented by both the pick up and a generation station with a 6 cyl truck motor converted to run wood gas.

Guys that built it were NASCAR mech's and not only did the truck win an alternate fuel race, got a speeding ticket for over 100 mph.

The truck had a 454 V-8 with a 4 barrel carb that ran primaries on gas to get it started the switched over to the secondaries for the wood gas.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportation/1981-05-01/Wood-Gas-Truck.aspx

Instruction on how to convert the carb were also covered as well as the wood gas generator.

Was a cool trip to see all this stuff talked about as well as meathing the people that had the ideas and did the stories.

[Rick]

Semper Fi - If you're going to go to all the trouble of converting grass to alcohol why on earth would you convert your car to run on it. You don't need to go to the liquor store. You already have the booze!