Wood Fuel Preparation

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Comment by Paul Drieman on September 18, 2009 at 3:10pm

Les, the wood you want to make into charcoal cannot have access to air/oxygen as it will simply burn up. 3 things needed for combution: heat, fuel, O2 the wood needs to be heated w/o access to air to drive off the moisture and gasses to produce charcoal! A tight fitting metal lid on your bucket might suffice!

Comment by Les Carter on September 18, 2009 at 11:25am

I put a five gallon bucket of 1" Sq. wood in a old charcoal grill. Put wood around outside of it If I lite this will wood in buck make charcoal.

Comment by Paul Drieman on September 6, 2009 at 7:48am

Hi everyone! I have been shown how tabs work in a site. When I asked about charcoal I hadn't read about fuels as I had'nt opened that tab. Please do not judge a newbie to the computer age as being less than someone who is excited to learn, both about gasifiers and computers. I have been considering using "scrap" energy to provide drying time to a charcoal bin made from a 250gal. fuel oil tank, partially converting the wood pieces before using driving out moisture, perhaps using on the wood chips afore mentioned also. My wife reminded me I am alergic to the poison type plants; ivy ash etc. She has a valid point as the smoke from these is a killer.to me. Amazing how one small fact makes a great idea look stupid. Q. Does the pyralisis of dangerous smoke render that smoke harmless?

Comment by Paul Drieman on September 5, 2009 at 2:55pm

Has anyone tried using the chips from powerline tree removal crews? I have wondered if a solar plastic "house over piles of these chips would work. They dump them for free if they are working near your home.

Comment by Paul on July 15, 2009 at 4:14pm

I guess that all depends on what quantity of wood is needed to meet your production rate demands. Smaller scale wood chippers are available and can be purchased at some hardware stores but are not cheap for the home gasifier. However they are commonly available for rental in most areas. So maybe stock piling your biomass and renting one for a day is the answer.

Comment by tallgirl on July 15, 2009 at 4:08pm

So ... for those of us who don't want to be commercial wood-chip producers?!?

Comment by Paul on July 15, 2009 at 2:28pm

On a commercial scale the conversion of wood to chips is easily obtained using equipment such as that offered by Morbark out of Winn, MI.

Comment by Adam on May 22, 2009 at 10:02am

All,

I felt like this topic deserved it's own group. Building a great gasifier is one thing, but spending hours on end cutting wood into properly sized blocks and drying it to feed the beast almost defeats the purpose. We need to pool our resources together to come up with some K.I.S.S. - innovative ideas on how to efficiently cut and dry blocky wood fuel on a budget. Any ideas, pics of your cutting/drying process, tips or links, please include here.

-A