[Gasification] Blue water gas...... Why bother?

[drew]

I agree with Doug, as far as I can tell, there is no point in converting 
a low heat low hydrogen high CO gas to a high heat high hydrogen gas for 
most uses, this is especialy true for gas to be used in IC engines.    
The conversion requires energy, and will most often be inefficent 
reducing the finial total energy available in the output gas.      There 
may be some applications where a clean hydrogen gas from biomass is 
desired (fuel cells?) but even then it would have to be carefuly 
calculated as to weather it would be more efficent to use a conventional 
imbert style system to run a genset, using electrolysis to split water, 
and resulting in a pure gas stream.    It has been clearly shown that 
the gas output from conventional gassifiers (when properly run by 
knowlageable operators) has more than enough hydrogen to speedily ignite 
the high CO gas produced.     Unless there is a very clearly defined 
need for the higher flame speed gas, it doesn't seem to be worth 
spending much time on.  

Incidentaly I think (I have not tested this) a simple way of doing it 
(inefficent though) using an imbert style system would be to use a small 
double wall pipe that proceeds up the center of the reduction tube 
through the grate,  the inner pipe would be a longer, going slightly 
farther up the reduction tube, and the reduction tube would likely need 
to be longer than is standard.   The inner tube would inject steam (care 
would need to be taken not to reverse the gass flow in the system),  the 
steam would react with the hot char reducing the char to CO, and leaving 
the H free,   the resultant gasses are drawn down reduction tube along 
side the steam tube, and then drawn into the outer pipe by suction.    
The gas resulting from the normal gassification process exits as normal, 
but it's heat value is reduced.      There are quite a few variations on 
this idea, but the question seems to be why bother, given that IC 
engines don't require it?

My to bits
Drew

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