[Stoves] Charcoal making retort that makes use of the wood gas produced

[Charlie Sellers]

As a part of a Burning Man project that tries to incorporate terra pretta, gasification, waste biomass recovery, etc. concepts, I am trying to make a 55 gallon drum that makes charcoal AND captures the crude gas for direct application in a lighting system (and for attractive flares).  I have installed 4 two inch ports around the base of the drum (one takes a variable speed blower fan), and now have 2 suspended grates to hold the starter fuel charge and the main biomass load that is to be converted to charcoal.  On the tight lid are 2" and 1" threaded ports to pipe the gas to the simple lamps.

I start it by getting the starter charge well lit, then add the main fuel and close the lid - I use the blower and/or other bottom ports to get the fire roaring and then close them off once it seems the water vapor phase is passed (hard to judge, just by color of smoke).  As the charcoal forms I try to light the gas coming out of the top port, but it does not  seem flammable enough (using a flame spreader and steel wool to slow it down) AND there is not enough of it (so low energy density and low volume?).  The WoodGas Camp Stove can use just primary air (bottom holes, just like on this drum when the fan is blowing through one) to make an intense fire or a huge volume of flammable smoke (when there is no flame), but my colleagues say that I need to be sucking the gas out of the top holes (bottom ones closed) if I want more volume of undiluted wood gas.

With this set up, what procedure should I use to extract a large volume of decent gas (art projects don't need clean gas since they have a short life) so I can run several lamps (wavering flames so no huge volume for each) or flare all the gas using a simpler burner (so that we do not produce the smoke usually associated with charcoal making) - like they do at oil refineries?  Do I blow air into the bottom (like the WoodGas) or suck out of the top of a closed container (like when running a gasified vehicle)?  What would be good fans (from scrap sources) for the sucking application, a vacuum cleaner?

Thanks for help in this project.

Charlie




       
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