[Gasification] Adding water and Stoichiometrics?

[Ken Calvert]

O.K. we are back on the adding water thingo again!
I am wading in on the side of Doug!  I guess us both being Kiwis means 
something.
You can always tell kiwis because we have long fingernails. Thats from 
trying to hold on
down underneath the World,  where we live!
Doug is so very right about using only the driest wood that you can get,
but NOT for all the reasons that have been offered up so far.

     Coal and charcoal are pretty well pure carbon, and so can only make 
carbon monoxide with air.
That process produces a lot of surplus heat which will ultimately melt down 
your hearth.
So, the good thing to do is to introduce a bit of moisture, produce some 
more combustible gases
like hydrogen and carbon monoxide and keep the temperatures down in the safe 
range for a long life of your equipment.
Hydrogen is also good because it ups the flame speed of the combustion 
charge.  Flame speed of straight
monoxide is abysmal and you will never get a high reving motor to run well 
on a high level of monoxide.

   Now consider wood, it is primarily cellulose which is a carbohydrate. And 
what that means is that for
every molecule of carbon there is also one of water built into the chemistry 
of the wood. So, even the
driest wood that you can get has more steam already in there and a higher 
hydrogen content and a better flame speed
than anything made from straight coal.  I would love to go on and pronounce 
that cellulose
has just the right chemical ie., 'stoichiometric' mixture to provide the 
maximum amount of chemical energy
when it is gasified with air, but  that would be simply shooting my mouth. 
I don't know!

 So,  Tom Miles, Tom Reed,  Doug Williams, all you experts out there?
The challenge!  how about a pronouncement on how much steam can we add or 
subtract to a wood fired gasifier
to optimise all the equations?  Can we mix wood and charcoal to get a better 
mixture?
All those recipies for 'torrified' wood?   Did that improve anything?
>From an old old timer!
Ken C.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "drew" <drew at artforging.com>
To: <gasification at listserv.repp.org>; "Doug Williams" 
<Doug.Williams at orcon.net.nz>; <seilertechco at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 1:11 PM
Subject: [Gasification] why adding water isn't likely to get you the 
resultsyou want


>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 07:45:53 +1300
>> From: "doug.williams" <Doug.Williams at orcon.net.nz>
>> Subject: Re: [Gasification] engine
>> To: "GASIFICATION" <GASIFICATION at listserv.repp.org>, "Toby Seiler"
>> <seilertechco at yahoo.com>
>> Message-ID: <004501c74ae8$3211e490$0701a8c0 at graeme753972b8>
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