Homemade Gasifier

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Fill it full?

That's a full cord of wood every 3 days if so - yikes.
Maple - Just under 5 a week when its really cold. However as a site contractor I get paid to clear and remove the wood from my customers sites. All of the wood is processed from the comfort of my excavator. I heat 2 homes an office bldg. An autobody shop and my equipment repair / welding shop. At one time it was propane that wasn't fun! It was like paying cash for a new car every year. Literally, I'm not joking here!
 
He loads with a skid steer, unsplit, unseasoned, hold the mayo. It's a badass project but he's surely not trying to win awards for efficiency.
stee, I'm not trying to win awards for anything. I can however tell you this unit is much more efficient than the cb pallet burner I had before. We have a splitter that mounts on a skidsteer that is used, with the amount of wood we consume it is difficult to get ahead sometimes. Some years in the past we have this winter we have not! lol -10 here tonight without wind chill!
 
Thanks for the sizing info. I guess turndown isn't an issue. With a unit that size I am surprised you don't need to permit as an air source.

U Maine used to have a unit sized for a greenhouse base don Dick Hills design. Super efficient but not as easy to load (logs had to be loaded vertically and they burned from the bottom up.
 
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Maple - Just under 5 a week when its really cold. However as a site contractor I get paid to clear and remove the wood from my customers sites. All of the wood is processed from the comfort of my excavator. I heat 2 homes an office bldg. An autobody shop and my equipment repair / welding shop. At one time it was propane that wasn't fun! It was like paying cash for a new car every year. Literally, I'm not joking here!


Yeah, realized later my quick math was off by a factor of 2 from 2x daily loadings. So I guess yikes xx10.

Sounds like you're happy with that - which is the main thing here. Big load no doubt.

If there's any way you can get a bit ahead on the wood with some seasoning time, you should see big improvements in efficiency & less wood burned - even though you are getting gasifying, it would do immensely better with not so much water in it. Likely a big if though, that would require some acreage of wood storage.

Also thinking you might see some improvement by insulating/bricking/refractoring the sides of the bottom chamber too, and letting all the HX action take place in the tubes.
 
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Yeah, realized later my quick math was off by a factor of 2 from 2x daily loadings. So I guess yikes xx10.

Sounds like you're happy with that - which is the main thing here. Big load no doubt.

If there's any way you can get a bit ahead on the wood with some seasoning time, you should see big improvements in efficiency & less wood burned - even though you are getting gasifying, it would do immensely better with not so much water in it. Likely a big if though, that would require some acreage of wood storage.

Also thinking you might see some improvement by insulating/bricking/refractoring the sides of the bottom chamber too, and letting all the HX action take place in the tubes.
Maple, thanks for the suggestions. Contrary to what's been stated, I am interested in efficiency. We try and use seasoned wood, even a few years back when we had the non gasing central boiler. Some years we can stay ahead, others it is difficult. A lot depends on the construction season as to when we are producing the timber clearing for a sub division as opposed to a water main project etc. We try and keep a year ahead but that's beyond our control. In the post I was merely saying that it is possible to gasify green wood, but I agree burning water isn't very efficient lol. We use a massive amount of wood, but it replaces a massive amount of LP. I could buy myself a c class Mercedes every year and give it away at the end of heating season for the cost to use propane. We tried a fire brick lining in the primary burn chamber - that's how it was constructed. Even with the increase in combustion temp the heat exchanger didn't have enough heat exchange area to keep up with the demand so we removed the lining. We have the aquastat differential set at 1 degree it doesn't cycle off for more than a couple min when its below 20 degrees outside, it is almost a constant burn. So in saying that, I guess it is sized fairly accurately.
 
Contrary to what's been stated, I am interested in efficiency.
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...then you might switch your baffle arrangement on the HX tubes. Feed the hot gas into the top and pull the cooler gas through the bottom and out - as configured the hot tubes will be sending a plume of hot water up to the upper tubes with cooler gas in them (ie, more "co-current" than counter-current" and "counter-current" is where the efficiency is at. Hotter gas to the hotter water, cooler gas to the cooler water, more total heat moved.) And consider turbulators if you don't have them; I didn't catch a mention of them, but I read the whole thread at once and sometimes I miss things doing that. In addition, if you stick a few feet of insulated SS chimney on instead of following the OWB standard of not having a stack, it will pull some draft...

If you get a Mark II, consider putting the exchanger below and.or beside the firebox.
 
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