[Stoves] Retted Switchgrass Fireball Test

[AJH]

I've allowed myself a little crosspost because of the synchronicity of
Tom's comment and Jeff's interest on the gasification list.

On Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:48:22 -0600, Tom Reed wrote:

>We are coming to the conclusion that producer gas has a very wide 
>flamability limit.  This would be due to the ~20% H2 in it (like 
>Synthane).  This would explain how a million non technical people could 
>operate converted cars during WWII.

Yes this is very likely but be aware the CO component also has a wide
flammability limit.

What's Synthane apart from C15H17ClN4?

Jeff Davis has mentioned running an "atmospheric" Bisschop engine on
producer gas, I've looked around and a chap I know, who builds model
engines, says that these early gas engines will not run on lpg or
natural gas because the mixture strength is so critical. He posted
that he had to resort to acetylene to get a similar engine to run. We
know acetylene has both high energy and a very wide flammability
range. This all points to producer gas being far more tolerant of
varying air:fuel mixtures than natural gas.

BTW the Bisschop cycle seems very unlikely to be a good choice because
of its poor thermodynamic performance. It appears it imbibes its
fuel:air mix on the downward stroke, possibly by a flap valve, and
then as the piston passes a port on its downward travel the mix is
exposed to a pilot flame. The burning mixture then pushes the piston
to the bottom of the stroke, hence the expansion is from air already
below atmospheric heated to adiabatic flame temperature and then
expanded for the remaining part of the stroke, there simply is not
enough temperature drop available to extract work from.

Andrew Heggie