O/T:Wood chips and energy....

I've been thinking (uh-oh!).

Several years ago I looked into steam powered generators. A guy not all that far from me who sells this kind of machinery talked me out of it, explaining things I had never considered. He suggested that gasifying wood would be safer and easier.

Well, the thread below about UofMN and ethanol stirred my pot again.

I've got several sources nearby of shredded/chipped wood wastes free for the taking. These are available on an ongoing basis. A bit further away, I've got a source of cheap wood chips, though not free and hauling them would be a much larger expense.

Is there a way these could be converted into some product which could be burned in an engine to produce electricity? That is, without such a huge investment that it would take decades to pay it off compared to using power company electric.

Some thoughts which come to mind are wood alcohol, anaerobic digestion to produce methane, gasifying the chips (whatever that is), or directly burning them (though they are probably too wet and too difficult to dry in large quantities).

This is more of an idea I like to play with when the soil is frozen and I've got nothing more interesting or pressing to do, rather than a serious quest.

So what thoughts do you have on this...?

Christopher

Probably only good on a large scale basis. Central Michigan University has a chip burning facility, where they bring in the chips in semi-tralier loads. Appaerntly working, been in use several years.

In Europe during WWII some cars were converted to run on charcoal. The engines actually ran on the smoke from smoldering charcoal, beyond that I don't know. I'm sure more information is available.

do a search for wood gasification .fema has plans online to build a unit using common parts you can find anywhere in case of fuel shortage.tested on a tractor, and said to run engines up to 750 hp I believe.pretty cool if you had enough wood available.

Farm Show magazine has more than one article about people running their pickups on smoke.

Wood smoke - uncle did it back in the war years when fuel was rationed. More for fun than practical.

Mother Earth News did a series on it back in the days when they were good.

Probably what is now called gasification?

--->Paul

The University of South Carolina is running 3 gasifiers and 1 oxidizer, we are burning about 57,000 tons/ year pine bark and chips and producing 60,000 lbs/ hr ,600 lb steam. We will soon place a small generator online making about 800 kW for campus use.

Works on small scale too.I have some books on running a 3 hp B&S on wood smoke.They will be on the next list I mail out.There is plenty of info on wood gasification.

I get trailers full of wood mill waste. Handling small stuff is a pain. You need something like a snow shovel w/ something large enough to throw it in, to simplify handling.
Local store has a wood stove that was made for burning saw dust. It has two fan motors, one is to move hot air after it's lit, and the other (wish I looked now) goes to what I guess is a tube with hole in it in the inside to keep the saw dust stirred up so it would burn.
Never saw it burn sawdust but the girl that operated every day said it was great for starting fires and would burn anything even green wood.

Wayne Keith, an Alabama farmer, last summer drove his woodgas powered pickup from Charleston, SC, to Berkeley, Calif, for the Escape From Berkeley race to Las Vegas. He came in second.

Others are running diesels (trucks and machinery) on 90% woodgas. Stationary electric generation is a little more complicated. Not getting the engine to run, but in supplying a continuous feed of fuel to the gassifier and having it run with no operator care. There's a yahoogroup devoted to the subject. The gassifier needs to be designed for the particular fuel.

My interest is electric generation, expect to off-grid by next year. Gassifying is simple (and safe), making it consistent is more complicated.
Escape From Berkeley

EXCEL Energy, (Formerly "Northern States Power")
burns up to 10 semi trailer loads of wood chips
and sawdust daily, at its power plant on French Island,
near LaCrosse Wisconsin. They purchase it from
area sawmills--don't pay much, but enough to
pay for the trucking, and it cleans up around
the mills. They've been doing this for about 10
years

Our mill here in Dallas Oregon had it's own powerhouse and made electricity up till 1996. They made more than they used. When it got old and outdated they shut it down and removed it....James

The process of "cooking" wood and burning what comes off as gas was widely done in Europe during the war (as there was no gasoline to speak of) and is called "producer gas". Google it- over 3 million hits. It works, if you have a passenger to tend the fire.

The French Island plant also burns tons of garbage each day and chipped up old railroad ties. The generators in the power plant are from the 1940's. It is fun to take a tour of the place. At the end of the day, the area where the garbage is dumped, everything is all cleaned up.