cool things to do with woodchip and waste wood

Porkbrick

TreeHouser
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
1,631
Location
santa cruz, Ca
I am enthralled by the idea of using the wood chip and wood we produce for something cool and constructive. co-generation and composting are obvious uses. mulching, soil amending etc are cool, but I'm thinking it would be cool to hear some more out there ideas. as soon as I'm over this crud that's got me down, I'm going to revamp my wood heated hot tub to run on wood chip. here's a couple other ideas to get it started:

http://www.treehugger.com/green-arc...-way-to-use-up-mountain-pine-beetle-wood.html

http://www.foxmaple.com/proclay.html

http://faswall.com/our-product/

http://www.cordwoodmasonry.com/Whatiscordwood.html
 
Interesting stuff!

What crud has you down, are ya sick?
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #3
yah, the flu. today is the first day ive been out of bed since monday, and somewhere in there i lost a whole day.
 
That's tough, but maybe you got caught up with little stuff around the house, or reading etc, when not sleeping
 
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yYGKn12Weu4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Nothing I'd like to do day in and day out but great to be able to when (not if) the feces hits the ventilator.
 
There have been several more modern day experimentations with producer gas .One was a person drove some old truck clear across Australia using a gas gen .Another was Mother Earth News in the 70's using a Pontiac Tempest 6 cylinder as a generater .

Both engines suffered the same fate from extended runs .Failure of the valves and pistons from the gas .Turned them into junk pretty fast .

BTW that Onan gen in the flick was not a diesel .It was a Ford 4 cylinder industrial gasser ,2.3 liter .Same as the car engine except it had forged pistons and hardened valve seats.FWIW Onan used a lot of Ford industrials from the little 2.3 all the way up to the 460 V8 .,in gasoline ,propane or natural gas

Edit : Oops it's a 6 cylinder not a 4 ,sorry .
 
Friend of mine has an 800kw producer gas plant. 2 V16 spark ignition Jennbacher engines.

Its relatively easy to clean the gas up Al, using filters and a wet wash system.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #14
you'd think the survivalist types would be more interested in wood gas. i mean, how much more grid independent could you get? i would love to have a small backup generator able to run on wood. question: ive never seen or heard mention the idea of storing the gas. can it be pressurized and stored like propane or ng?
 
Wiki had a note on storage.

Long-term storage of wood-gas, except through the use of a gasholder-type water-displacement apparatus, should not be attempted, due to the volatile elements present in the gas, which, if allowed to excessively precipitate, will condense in the storage vessel. Under no circumstances should wood-gas ever be compressed to more than 15 pounds per square inch (1.0 bar) above ambient, as this may induce condensation of volatiles, as well as lead to the likelihood of severe injury or death due to carbon monoxide or deflagration if the vessel leaks or fails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator
 
There is a company in Florida that in my opinion, built the best small scale (25 - 120kw) woodgas generator systems I've seen. I'll dig up the details and post them.
 
Back
Top