How to Run Your Own Car on Wood
Tired of shelling out your life savings every time you want to do a little trucking? A proven alternative "producer gas" may be the right answer for you.
May/June 1974
By Travis Brock
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Producer gas vehicles: World War II, England
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Tired of shelling out your life savings every time you want to do a little trucking? A proven alternative — producer gas — may be the right answer for you.
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That's right, proven. Producer gas (also called town gas, coal gas and power gas) is nothing new or mysterious. The principle of its manufacture has been known about a century and a half. This fuel, in fact, enjoyed a real boom in Europe and Australia during the oil shortages of World War II. During part of that period, 90% of Swedish motor traffic operated on gas derived from wood or charcoal.
That same crisis, naturally, stimulated an abundance of research on coal gas, and mounds of material were written on the subject. I've tried to summarize part of the literature in this article . . . which is intended only to acquaint you with the fuel and prod you into thinking about it as an alternative to gasoline. Anyone who's serious about its practical use should check out the sources shown in the reading list.
The Manufacture of Producer Gas
Producer gas is made by sucking a limited amount of air through a bed of red-hot carboniferous fuel (wood, charcoal, low-temperature coke, straw, peat, etc.) in a closed furnace called a generator. The result — after a series of intricate chemical reactions — is carbon monoxide. This — the primary explosive ingredient of producer gas — can be mixed with approximately the same amount of air and burned in the internal combustion engine in much the same way as gasoline.
A fine jet of water or steam added to the generator's air intake will result in a gas of higher hydrogen content, sometimes called "water gas" or "blue gas". This is generally a better-quality fuel than the plain producer gas. The addition of liquid, however, complicates the design of the generating unit.
Coal gas — when used as a motor fuel — is usually manufactured in transit, by a device installed right on the moving vehicle. The mobile plant can be built most easily from mild steel (a 55-gallon drum, for instance) and is composed of a generator, a cleaning and cooling apparatus and a mixing valve. These parts are connected to one another and to the engine by means of pipes. A fan can be added to the system to aid the flow of gas. Usually, though, the suction of the powerplant's intake is all that's required to pull the air and fumes through the unit.
Generators
In the simplest generators, the fuel is gravity-fed from a hopper into a combustion chamber. Unless the unit is designed to avoid a heat problem, the high temperatures in the firebox call for special construction of that area: The compartment may be lined with refractory brick, or built double-walled with the intervening space used as an air intake or preheater. It's also necessary — as a precaution against fire — to fit any generator with a flame trap at the air intake.
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