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Vinal F McGraw
- Clinton, ME
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Victory Gasworks- Gasifiers and Wood Gasification
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I first learned of gassifiers while living in cookeville on an organic farm, a guy down the road lives in an old barn and uses woodgas to make electricity for welding. I think its the neatest thing ever, and would love to make a bus or truck that runs on it. I have access to a 76 school bus but no place to park and work on it. Im in Nashville,tn
Great to hear from you. I have almost no time to work on my gasifier. It looks like it will be another winter project. I seem to have more time to work on ancilary projects in the winter. Anyway, it is nice to make contact with others in the greater Maine area. I have also made contact with a couple others in Maine. It seems that there are alot of us out there hidden in the masses... BTW how is the wind turbine doing? Take care
John
Nice to make your acqaintance. Hope all is well in Maine. It seems that all who visit Ben's site tend to be of the same frame of mind as I too have been playing at "gasification" for a long time. I tend to view this in another manner than most I think.....as I am involved fairly heavily in pellets also. We started 4-5 years ago to design a pellet burner specifically suited to agricultural based pellets and all the issues that accompany them (high ash, slagging, corrosion etc.) Early on we got educated enough to find out that any combustion certainly involves gasification to a very large degree. Since we now have our commercial pellet boiler on the market....as well as a small scale (1 ton/hr) pellet facility up and running producing agricultural based pellets (hays, straws and other grasses),I have been spending time looking at gasifcation in the pure sense as Ben describes so well in his articles. My goal is a small (100kw) cogen system and have been travelling far and wide to see what is out there. I have found the big trick in producing electricity on any scale with biomass, is to have a use for the thermal energy that is given off in the process. Generally, we found that for every KW of electricity, if you are lucky you only have to deal with 3 kw thermal , if not lucky, maybe 6-7kw. The trick to make it economical is to be able to capture and use this energy. We are in an area of high electrical costs (residential rates $.16/kwhr, no demand charges)so I think a small commercial unit in the right application has great potential.
Anyway, this gives you a feel for what I have been up to. More than glad to communicate .....as this is the key to learning.
You also mentioned wind....I have a partner in another business up here and we also do some small scale wind 2-50kw....It has been a long learning curve and have just finished redesigning a control system for active yawing turbines.....(after having a couple blow up on us).I got lots of horror stories on this matter. Not sure if stupid or stubborn best describes this project....time will tell
Anyway...take care keep in touch
Regards
Andrew
progress has been slow on my gasifier. But I try to spend at least a couple hours on it each weekend. I just got a great boost of info on how to make my ejector work from my friend Eric Schrack who started the Fab Shop discussion board on here. He has been working for months on his and does some first quality fabrication - has also has lots of photos of how he made his and has some great ideas. I should be able to get mine to at least flare off after I make the mods to the ejector design. The next step will be to make some filter stages to clean up the gas before I attempt to run the genny on it.
Have you started any fab on your gasifier yet?
We will be starting your wind project in the middle of next week, so we can chat more about it then.
take care
John
Glad you joined the community. There is a tremendous wealth of info and inspiration on here. If you get the the chance watch Ben's series of videos that explain more about how gasificaiton works and stuff he is doing with the Woody gasifier and his dump truck. Pretty amazing if you ask me. Ben has been the source of my inspiration to build a gasifier. I wish I had more time to work on it and actually get it finished.......
Have fun with gasification!! Looking forward to some interesting conversatoins with you about this stuff when we come down to work on your site.
Take care
John