[Stoves] Retted Switchgrass Fireball Test

[Jeff Davis]

Dear List,

This is a long story, I'll try to make it short.

I had this evening to burn some of my small switchgrass fireballs. Big 
disaster. They just made smoke. I oven dried them and all my burn tests are 
in the Woodgas Camp Stove. All I could think of was, I sent this stuff to 
Stove Camp! But then I told myself that I also sent some paper fireballs and 
they burn good.

Desperate I loaded up the tools of my demise and rushed off to the place where 
the larger switchgrass fireballs are (Lanny's sample). I'm now hoping that 
this compost like agglomerations are to high in carbon and the larger 
particle size will help (stronger bed). Also, like charcoal, this could be a 
poor fuel for the inverted down draft gasifier.

I loaded the stove up with my somewhat damp larger fireballs and fired up the 
propane torch to start the stove. Still mainly just smoke! I put a few paper 
fireballs on top and for a short time some nice flame. Then I added some peat 
fireballs on top, I'm still desperate at this point. Well, the peat did not 
seem to help.

After somemore time went by the smoke started to clear! Not much flame but a 
charcoal like flame and a charcoal like heat. This continued for a good 
amount of time. Unlike my first failed experiment, not that this one isn't a 
big failure, I skip all the gram scale and stop watch stuff.

When I would blow on the fuel bed a flame would come to life for a few 
seconds.

I wished that I did not add the peat on top because this could have changed 
things. It was about 10 small fireballs (OK, smokeballs). I'll have to dip 
into Lanny's sample one more time, sorry Lanny.

If the theory is correct and this stuff has too much carbon for the inverted 
down draft gasifier, I HOPE it would be a fuel for the stratified gasifier. 
This could be my only hope for retted switchgass fireballs. Any ideas?

Does it appear that retted switchgrass is NOT a fuel?


Jeff


-- 
Jeff Davis
Somewhere 20 miles south of Lake Erie, USA
http://www.velocity.net/~jeff0124