How To Make Wood Gas Biofuel (and an experimental gas collection method)
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- čas přidán 21. 08. 2017
- In my previous video I showed how I make my charcoal for use in fireworks. A byproduct of my charcoal making process is wood gas, a mixture of many flammable gasses that can be used as fuel. Wood gas is simple to make, but requires some careful thought to collect and process to remove tar and other contaminants. My collection method could use some work, but I did end up with a reasonable quantity of purified gas by the end.
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My grandfather bought a car dealership and garage 6 days before WW2 hit and he didn't sell a car for 6 years. He survived by selling parts and making wood gas generators that were attached to the front of cars. They were huge units about the size of washing machines but worked a treat as gas/ petrol was in short supply. He used to pump what little fuel there was out of the bowser by hooking up a bicycle to the pump and running a belt and pulley to it. My dad as a kid was the one who did most of the peddling. I still occasionally look at the photos and wonder in amazement how innovative they were back then.
I’m kind of obsessed with survival and starting from “The Basics” in terms of survival and working up in terms of technology. This, is incredibly interesting and useful.
It is and it will also help you bridge that knowledge into other industries, because they evolved from scratch. Alot of developing countries such as India are looking into this technology.
I've been interested in this type of fuel production for emergency purposes since I saw Mr Tesalonian do a video where he condensed the woodgas into a liquid form that could possibly be used in ICEs in place of normal gasoline or diesel. Can't find many instances of people doing that on a small scale like people do with the FEMA type gasifiers running generators, but enough evidence that it can be done.
I'm going to be taking place in starting a commune in the future where we'll be doing exactly that. I recommend watching Dr. Stone, the anime. It gives a lot of insight into.. a lot!
same hahah. I want to build my tools too
@@supersophisticated9943 cultist weebs, got it
I thought this would be a complicated thing, requiring some special equipment. I was wonderfully surprised to see you using nothing more than cans, jars, and pipes to extract the gas and compress it too. Awesome!
One method of charcoal production we used to use here was a 44 gallon drum on it's side on a short stand with a pipe for the wood gas that would feed back and under the drum and into the small fire beneath it. Little camp fire would heat the drum packed with wood, and the gas would then be burned off to continue the process. This would produce large quantities of charcoal which we would then use in a furnace for metal working.
Very glad you did this experiment Ben. My unpublished results are exactly the same. I've been wondering if the cleaned gas could be compressed, and used as viable source to fuel a mini foundry when propane isn't available. Also would be great to distill the smoke and let it settle into layers. I hear you can extract acetone and methyl alcohol. Definitely faster (and nicer) than working with manure.
The King of Random Maybe wait for the gases to settle down and then compress it in a gas tank? I don't know if you can do that as the wood gas is being produced though, it would definitely be interesting to see if one of you could achieve this
Hi grant
The King of Random I watch both of you guys and it would be cool to have an actual engine or a foundry like you said work on it. I am wondering if it is a viable cleaner gas than most that cars run on, also by the way ben was making it it looked like you could get tons of it from charcoal company's if they make their own charcoal the same way.
The King of Random you suck grant
Ahhhhhh king of random!!!!
I have watched several of these now. How is this guy so likable? Great videos.
Subtle confidence, knowledgeable & conveys that information in a very pedagogical way
Nice white guy with no rapey vibe
Cuz u gey
o.o its the bird yup XD
Are you kidding me within 3 seconds into the video I wanted to give him a noogie and give him a wedgie.... im sure it has been done many times before
Back in the day, I saw a version of this that used several tractor tire inner tubes as the collection vessels - which were easy to pressurize by placing a weighted platform over them.
I'm impressed by how high quality your results were with such a simple process. You managed to distill quite a pure byproduct from something that's essentially renewable. All using methods so basic a high school student could replicate them. I think this kind of work is valuable.
4:00 To remove the steam, a long spiral descending coil in the form of a cone, even with ice resting in the conical coil, would condense the steam to liquid to drip out the bottom(like a classical still), leaving much of the volatiles to burn. (some might also condense like tars and creosote, would need to control the final gas temperature to prevent this)
Need to make a nozzle with venturi oxygen mixing in like on a torch or bunsen burner etc... your gas rushing by pulls air in the holes at the base, they mix in the nozzle and with that might be able to make a flame that sustains itself
Zeff I was going to suggest this also.
Like in Oxy-Acetylen.
two years later he could use a pumper torch
Ah! Is that why the gas isn't staying lit -- too rich?
@@timmccormack3930 yeah without introducing turbulence in some way or another the gases cool before they mix and combust
This is really cool. For more efficient collection and pressurization of the gas, you could use something taller like a water barrel, and fix your collection chamber at the bottom of it at the start
I have a Solo stove (portable backpacking stove) that"s configuration is set up to burn the wood gas coming out of the stove. I didn't know the working theory of charcoal or wood gas but watching your video enlightened me as to what's going on. There are thousands of processes and chemical reactions around us that we see but don't understand, think about or appreciate what's actually happening right there in front of us. Nice work.
"Experimental Collection Method"
Makes a Gravity Bong
This comment made a significant amount of air come out of my nose
@@NavJordaan same
As far as I know from my grandpa when they had wood gas to run their cars after WWII here in Germany, the big advantage is you don´t need to store woodgas at high pressure.
After you cleaned the gas from tar with some water cooling and a sawdust filter, you can blow and collect it inside a balloon. Even the balloon will give you enough pressure to make it usable to run an engine. Just make sure it´s a vacuum system with no oxygen coming in.
Sounds like a plan
I was watching some kinda 'garage wars' show where they were tasked to improve the fuel efficientcy of some grain farm or some shit. Basically rising fuel prices to run dryers was making drying the grain too expensive with commercial fuels. One of their ideas to capture wood gas was to fill a large half tank with water then sink a slightly narrower half-tank in that. Then using a pipes to carry the smoke exaust down through between the tanks to be captured by the 'floating' half-tank. As more gas was collected it raised the floating tank out of the water. This stored quite a bit of gas. and the weight of the steel half-tank pressurizes it. So when the top tank is vented, gas can be forced out.
Probably just a mishap: Vacuum means less pressure than the atmosphere so air is sucked into the system. You need overpressure or just good seals to keep the air out.
The Quality of life in this clip is off the charts
As usual I, and I am sure I could say, "we" are not disappointed. I have known about this process and that it was used during WWII but I have often wondered how they may have filtered the smoke and tar from the newly recovered wood gas. This was a great way to do in my opinion. I have had the opportunity to talk with a few people who had experience with this during that time period and one of those was a dear uncle. He said he watched the Germans do this and one of the things they did was to use the freshly made charcoal to heat the next round of wood chunks. One other rambling thought was that when you were 1st lighting your gas after weighting it with the rocks. I made a similar in water collector for a hydrogen generator. I had some success by putting the collection vessel in a ring that allowed it to go up and down but it couldn't tip over. I know that natural gas piped in our homes only has a few pounds of pressure so I placed a two lb. weight on top to give me equal pressure (don't know if my tube size and nozzle made a huge difference or not) for and even less poppy burn. It worked out well for HHO gas torch. I don't want to suggest anyone handle such HHO, just saying what I did was ok for myself and my situation. All gases have potentially dangerous characteristics.
I suspect that the parrot is the one giving you ideas! ;-)
Hello
@@birdpump Hello have a good day 😊
You're such a happy dude
Thank you! What an amazing video! I never knew that heating an organic material such as wood in the absence of oxygen would cause the chemical bonds in the solids to break down and form gasses. This is absolutely fascinating!
I LUV u'r ' Go 4 it ' attitude. It's the BEST WAY to educate oneself. God Bless U young man. ALOHA.
Thanks for the video, probably the easiest explanation of wood gas i've seen. The transparent collection containers was helpful, I had to go back in the video to make sure the fish tank was actually clear at the beginning of the process.
Very cool experiment! I actually have a friend that converted a Geo Tracker to run on wood gas and it works very well. Much better than I thought it would. Thanks again for sharing your method!
--Eric O.
That would be a very fun project. I've got some work to do before I have a system that runs clean enough for that
To my surprise it works very well. Good luck with it and look forward to seeing more!
How does he store the wood gas. I remember a while back there was a colony reality show where they just put the entire wood gas producing system right onto the truck and piped it right into the engine.
some use a small trailer, basicly they haul their own fuel source
Probably uses a lot of wood... which would create another problem that is already present... deforestation.
Instructions unclear. I created a Level 3 Nuclear Biohazard.
My station is worse i accidentally create a nuclear bomb
Lol
Hey what if you had an afterburner oxygen depleted after burner to burn the tires s*** off first before you collected it would that not work I does work I've got it in my camper
lol
I'm sorry, not only have you failed to read the instructions properly, you have also failed to spell "unclear" consistently. You, in fact, do not have any nuclear hazard, you have an unclear hazard. Don't worry, the EPA is much more friendly than the FBI.
the level of simplicity in the video is unmatched! thanks
Just a quick shout out: You're awesome. Thanks for the great vids and good content. It's refreshing to see passionate CZcamsrs out there educating other folks on the how's and what's of the natural world. Definitely going to be putting your education to good use! Thank you.
Came from Codyslab recommending one of your videos and I'm hooked. You thoroughly explain everything, have very clever designs and ideas and your editing is fantastic. The best part is your huge grin when you see something working the way you wanted it to 😂 You are one cool ass dude and it's nice to see innovative people like you because this world seems to be losing people like you, Cody, and other CZcamsrs alike because we rely so heavily on corporations and gov't to do the work for us while we are the ones that get screwed in the end for letting them do so.
I have been trying to understand how it works. You just explained it in less than 12 minutes. Thank you sir.
Awesome! This is the clearest explanation of producing wood gas that I've seen so far.
Great video, not sure if it was mentioned but, because you started harvesting gas right from the beginning of the burn, I believe you would have collected all the oxygen that was in the can with the sticks. If you look at the volume of the can vs the collector, there is probably 30% maybe? Which would have made quite a leaner mix of gas. I wonder if you did this again but started collecting after it had run for a bit, purging the can so the gas would have been more pure/ a richer mix of wood gas. The flame then should have burned constantly out of the tip
Great video! The tank of water was sooo black after filling the vessel just once.
You sure are a smart guy. I happen to be a chemist, but I haven't done that many "life hacks" like making fuel from trash, or wood as you have. It's a fun method you used, with the fish tank. Thanks for the video.
Well now i understan! I have had a wak understaning about how to make the gass, but this short video gave me all the info i need! Thanks
Try pumping it out of the small container with your pvc vacuum pump then using the outlet of the pump to pressurize the wood gas into a separate, detachable container.
GUYS ITS WILL WHEATON
YES!!!
as in night hawk light is Wesley crusher from star trek?
Nah, it's Will Wheaton's love child with Eric Bana.
you're right! Will's eyes, Eric's voice. But whose parrot? ;)
Haha, I thought the same thing when I started the video!
This has given me a great idea for a secondary heat chamber on a wood stove. Now if I can figure out a way to get the tar it produces back in to the wood stove to use it as fuel for the fire as well. That way it doesn't collect in the gas chamber. Thanks!!
I just tried it, and it works surprisingly well! Thanks for informing me!
I love your bird! Also for an alternative collection method you could lead the gas into a small container in which the soot will be deposited, possibily full of water to scrub the gas, then have a nozzle coming out and fill balloons!
You need an air mix extension, like propane torches have, a jet in the center and air is allowed to come in from the sides and mix with it prior to the point of ignition. It might work. Also you may have too much water vapor in it, try running it through a back of rock salt, or a box of salt to remove water.
Your method is really smart. It's a great filtering method. If you wanted to store the gas you would only need a pump to compress the gas and then direct the pump to a gas tank that withholds pressure.
You are a pretty smart guy with good ideas, Thank you. In gardening circles the charcoal is desired product referred to as bio char as a great soil supplement.
another great video!
yes it is :)
I made a gas collector out of a 5 gallon bucket and an giant upside down nalgene beaker. I had 4 half inch PVC tubes as guides. The PVC tubes we're spaced from the sides of the bucket in order to loosely allow the straight sided nalgene beaker to slide up and down in the bucket.
Drill a hole in the bottom (now the top) of the beaker, a couple of rubber washers, a bulkhead hose barb.
Fill the bucket with water, push the beaker down so that it is flush with the water, hook up the hose to gas source.
The beaker will rise as it fills with gas. Place a weight on top of the beaker to increase gas pressure.
a bird in a harness is the cutest thing ive seen all day !
i never knew tar can be produced this way .. very informative .. great video , great work
Nice setup. If I could suggest a few improvements: 1. Have your container of gas at the bottom of the tank all the time, then you won't need to lower it. 2. The cap on the end made he pressure too high: I think that's why it burned better without the cap. It may burn better still if a little air is mixed with the gas before you put the lighter to it: like the mixer valve on a Bunsen burner. 3. Cool the gas before it goes into the container: put a wide section of pipe under water so that the tar condenses out. A wider pipe will take longer to get blocked with tar. These are genuine suggestions, I don't claim to be an expert and I don't have the resources to try myself, so offer these suggestions to you so that you may try them for me!
How to convert this to liquid state?
Jonathan Croley And he could have waited for the water vapor to cook off before he collected the gas
I can do it
Hook up a compressor
You might try using the nozzle from a propane torch so you get air mixing with the wood gas for better combustion. Good video!
As an artist, the first thing I thought about was using your charcoal for mark making. Awesome!
Your videos are always so easy to understand. Many thx!
It's good to see you doing a video on this! I've been interested in wood gas (also known as producer gas) for a while now, ever since I learned that it was used to power cars back during WWII. There was even a training tank converted to run off it! Minus the turret and most of the excess weight, of course. Unfortunately the problem with producer gas cars is that if everyone starts using them, it creates mass deforestation issues. On the other hand, if you have one yourself, all you need to drive cross-country is an axe and a saw.
I'd love to see all the scrap wood from mills and other places being used to produce wood gas. Maybe even wood from demolished buildings and such too? Who knows? There's certainly an untapped potential out there. Eventually we may need to start seriously considering it once other sources of fuel begin to dry up or become more expensive.
Yep
Some homes used to run on wood gas. Not the most efficient but it was a great use for the byproduct of charcoal that would other wise be wasted
I love your channel. This wood gas video is just a typical example of your top notch content. Biochar/activated charcoal might be a good parallel, but standalone video idea.
Loved the vid, Thankyou so much,
I was thinking of a cooled serpentine to condense the steam from the gas so it arrives in the the collection chamber already separated.
Superb project.
Rob
He looks like James Arthur doin' some Science and Engineering hahaha. Nice content man. Keep it up.
During the second world war many German vehicles like trucks and cars were equiped to produce and use woodgas as fuel. They were called Holzvergaser. This was due to the oil shortages at the time.
yes but they used the woodgas compressed and stored it in gas tanks
They even made some BMW motorcycles run on this princip - and not that bad and slow as well but most vehicles ran on gas that they didnt produce themselves but from mobile refinerie trucks with a stove and a steam powered compressor with a small wood fired steam engine - the engines generally burned and needed more motor oil
-bc of the hortage in oil the germans tried makeing synthetic oil from browncoal , stone coal, the black goo you collected from the wood gas and rapeseed oil they semi succeeded by makeing a additive to normal motor oil witch reduced crude oil needed for makeing motor oil by ~30%
Yes, it is a desperate option for fuel, can't win wars without sufficient fuel, fancy tanks, supply lines all required fuel
@@pckkaboo6800 I love that cat. So cute.
I always said the best inventions are made around the kitchen table and sooooo 2 speak a fish tank in the back yard has proven correctly, lol.
I loved your posts and you definitely explained things so even an old Marine like me can understand.
God bless you and thank you again..
Ben:
Nice to see you involved in Music plus Science plus Survivalism! Greetings fro a South American, Brazil.
I myself am a prepper since 1.995. I like nature, trekking, antiques, craftsmanship, detectorism, art and so on.
See you!
I'm a little sad that a channel like this gets less views and subs than something like "king of random" who boils seawater......... this channel deserves more subs!!!!
Yep, King of random is quite the garbage channel
People like things where they don't have to think.
@@stevenfeil7079 Well, it's not my case! I like to think!
Otherwise, i became dumb.
keep uploading such wonderful videos👍😄
I still have a 70s mother earth news magazine with a article about fueling a vehicle with wood turned to gas. I haven't read it for about 15 years now but will b digging it out.
a bigg thank you from sri lanka!!! your experiment is immensely valuable to us. we support your channel by all means brother....
Nice bong
It would be cool to see this compressed and running something like a stove or water heater
MrTessalonian ran a fridge and generator off of a wood gas generator
That is what used to be the town gas supply. You might be able to find my description in another comment but it is too long to repeat here.
Thank you, this will help me to give an example of how to create energy with biomass. God bless you!
Congratulations Ben ! You did a fantastic job ! Seeing videos like that just make my day , kudos to you 💪💪🤙
Lmao he basically made a fish tank bong
Hahahahaha
Who drinking the water?
so should he try the same with weed? Wouldnt the smoke loose effect by being washed out in the whater
Prinz Eugen van Sovoyen No, water pipes have been used for a very long time as a means of filtering the smoke. It doesn’t negate the thc levels that produce the high
😂😂😂
We used to call that a gravity bong.
Ok guys this is the crocodile hunter of science! Dirty hands band aid green shirt makes him so reliable. Good luck man!
I love your channel! You do things i like to do. This one is new for me.. im thinking in using it for cooking.. but obviously i need a pressurized container... keep spreading good knowledge.. some day we gona need it in real life.
if you put a condenser on the brake line (like a shine still) and then had the line running it to a jar with a lid to collect the tar and then a line out of the jar running to a compressor to compress the gas in to a lpg tank to collect it for future use, would that work? i may have to try it myself in the future. i will just have to make shure to get all the air out of the system before attempting to compress the gas so that it wont have a chance to ignite because of the pressure.
Condensing the smoke and that is hard to do in a small line without clogging it
I think the tar would/could condense and congeal in the condenser and plug it
Just make sure that you make enough gas at once, otherwise the compressor may not have enough gas to suck in which may not be that good for the compressor. I am not sure though, i don't know that much about compressors. Sorry for my bad English. But if it works, that would be really cool.
mayby have a larger copper line or just a t pipe coupling facing down and going in to a jar, there must be a way to extract the tar so that you can compress the gas. i think i will have to start tinkering with this now!
i think the compressor would work as a vacum pump so that is going to be a problem...
"- dear, walk the parrot, please.
- ok, i'll take it to make some wood gas"
The parrot may be his best friend, but small birds are an amazing gas detector. In case you were wondering why coal miners were so fond of canaries.
Very enjoyable. Instructive, too. There is a guy with a CZcams that shows his contraption for catching Hydrigen gas he produces by electrolysis. It is a large bellows (like with plywood sides large enough to trap a 15 gallon trash bag and when the bellows is full it triggers a compressor that sucks the H2 out if the bag and puts it in a cylinder. He is careful (don’t ask me how) to not get any air or O2 in the cylinder.
Ramble on as led zeppelin sings. You addressed so many awesome questions. Fantastic episode thanks.
I want to see this done a second time, but with using a series of “doublers” where the gas is passed thru methyl alcohol and/or ethyl alcohol to capture methanol. Kind of like a thump keg or thumper in alcohol distillation. Weigh the quantities present both before and after to see if it collects some methanol, and also check the “proof” using a proof and tralles hydrometer. I bet it would work well.
I'm starting a fundraiser to get NHIL an iron for his shirts.
GuildOfCalamity The initial steam proceeding wood gas would effectively remove those wrinkles! ; )
I checked an old book I own called The Lore of Still Building, and some stills use something called a “slobber box”. This is just a wider chamber with a spigot or valve on the bottom that you hook up in the middle of the outfeed tube. This might help your design, as such devices are used to collect tars and impurities and drain them off separately. But your wood gas videos are very interesting to watch and I’ll be trying this as it will work better than the methods I use now.
dude you litterally just made a massive bong for wood gas. amazing
you are a great youtuber. I enjoy your work. Please keep it up!
Hey Nighthawkinlight you should try bending the brake line at an angle in which it points the gas back into the oxygen intake to double the efficiency of your charcoal wood stove. P.s. If you make a small bubbler system for the gas to run through before going back into the stove, it will clean the gas before it burns
All you have to do to increase efficiency for charcoal is use my can with the holes in the lid but flip it upside down. The gas is ejected back into the fire.
Just remove the lid.
Put enough wood in to the can to make it "stick" when you turn it upside down. Place it in the rocket stove. Fill it with "enough" wood, and light it of. After a few runs you can tune it to the point where it produces great charcoal for BP. Charcoal produced when running it al the way to "completion" as in this video is overcooked, and doesn't work great for BP, but will do fine for pretty much anything other then pyo, where charcoal is needed.
Mr B what's BP
carolyn mmitchell black powder
By BP, you mean an activated charcoal?
Need more people like you
❤ the video and content.
Thank you, I now know that I can use not only wood to make charcoal but also I can save the gas as fuel. mucho Appreciato
I got one of those Aussie *_"QUIT SMOKING"_* ads before the video. I think it thinks that I wanna use this thing to *SMOKE.*
Fill that tank with dank weed 👌
BIG SMONK
It's possible to make bio crude oil out of wood and algea could you possibly make something in a simple and easy method
wow! nice vid. very very helpful vid.
that black liquid can be used in organic farming as pest control, improves soil quality, its called mokusaku (wood vinegar)
ive been searching on how to collect the gas, this by far is the best
thanks for giving me an idea on how to collect the gas very very helpful vid.
People make the process seem so complicated thanks for making it simple.
Brilliant! However, as a historian I must add that those kubelwagens in WWII were famously rubbish. Maybe a wood-gas native engine could be made to be more reliable, but most of what I read from the period, when they were mostly converted petrol platforms, is obscenities in four languages.
I would love to see a way of capturing the wood gas and transferring it to a pressurized filtered tank
Something like a hydraulic accumulator?
That was a nice cheap intro to wood gas. Great capture method similar to methane digester capture and use by weighting a sliding sleeve in a container. Appreciate the video..
Thanks for the information. I was thinking of using an electric gas compressor to fill some of my tanks. Now I have an idea of how to pressurize the tanks with a membrane and water. Less efficient but much safer. Thanks!
0:17 homie recorded himself dragging on the bong for the audio effect.
Hits from the bong... Pick it. Pack it. Fire it up...
Now to find away to filter the smoke and tar out quickly and effectively!
They have ways of doing it on the fly with really simple apparatus's that look like a pan flute that essentially auto sorts different elements of the exhaust.
Great video your idea for a water filter worked especially well, great ideas thanks for sharing.
your demonstration is awesome ......... thanks for your great efforts to showed us 🙏
Try to compress it to some kind of gas tank and try to use it in for example burner, that would be great.
Fill a balloon --- that would store the gas, make it portable and keep it pressurized. But keep in mind that wood gas is explosive like natural gas or propane.
In Scandinavia, in WWI, they ran busses off wood gas.
Thanks so much for this video. First time I heard of wood gas.
This was really cool! I have been a fan of wood gas for a while now.
cool experiment. Now all you have left to do is when the water rises in the tank from the pressure of the water in the container being pushed out from the pressure of the wood gas being produced and when the water is at a certain level in the tank then it triggers a vacuum pump that sucks out the wood ass and when the water in the container is at a certain depth it triggers off the vacuum pump till the wood gas pushes the water back into the tank to trigger the cycle again. Great job
Has anyone ever told you you've got a good voice? I bet radio would welcome such a voice....just saying. Thanks for the video.
Thank you for making this video. Very cool and I learned some things.
Man, i just love this chanel