Wood gas used on automobiles

[Mika Jaakkola]

Because gasoline is priced so high at the moment, it might be good time to consider something else used as fuel on regular engines?

Atleast in Finland 1/4 gallon fuel costs ~1,8 USD.

In Second WW finns (and other europeans) used wood gas as fuel on standard fuel engines.

here's a good clip from 1938 where they test a 1937-38 Fargo truck with

woodgas(carbon monoxide) generator.

http://yle.fi/elavaarkisto/?s=s&g=1&ag=7&t=321&a=2291

(click on "play" button under the picture of the truck next to "häkäpönttöautot" to see the film clip )

I guess the fuel has always been "cheap" in The States that it hasn't been necessary for you guys to use these kinda woodgas generators?

After Second WW the fuel was much easier to get in Finland and the designing of woodgas generators stopped.

Here's a nice article written by Vesa Mikkonen of Finland about his woodgas-1979 Lincoln! (it's in english)

http://www.ekomobiili.fi/Tekstit/english_etusivu.htm

Mikko has driven 15 000 miles since 2006 with the car!

Does anyone have more info about woodengas in US ? Or is this completely new thing for you guys?

[Clipper47]

Mika, Thunder Bay Ontario where I live has the highest Finnish population in the world outside Finland. A few years ago an elderly Finnish-Canadian man (who passed away this summer aged 84) came to a local cruise night with a wood burning 1954 International truck. He built it from memory having worked in the forests of Finland after World War 2 where they were apparently quite common. His daughter now drives the truck and it is a common sight at our local cruise night with the engine purring quietly while she stokes the boiler with slabs of white birch! Attached is a photo of the truck.

[Ivan Saxton]

People had to use wood gas producers in Australia during the war, too. I can remember, just; but my father said the performance was hopeless. There are two other bad problems with it. One is the health risk. The compound between carbon monoxide and blood haemoglobin which transports oxygen and carbon dioxide between the lungs and the tissues is much more stable thanhaemoglobin's compounds with O2 or CO2. This is a rather toxic partial suffocation. They didn't have such good sealing compounds for pipe or hose joints as we do now. The other trouble is very fine abrasive grit, - silica. This is deposited in the wood as a tree grows from the transpired water. Silicon dioxide has a very low, but finite solubility product, and the water which plants absorb from the soil will always carry that. (That is the reason your woodworking tools constantly need sharpening when you are restoring the wooden body frame of your antique car.) In the late 1930's Bob Chamberlain was offered one of the 1929 supercharged LeMans Stutz cars by a car dealer for 300 pounds. He surmised it may have been Brisson's car, because there was an improvised latch arrangement to stop it jumping out of gear. (You will recall he had trouble with that the previous year with the 3 speed box on the BB he ran; and the gearbox trouble certianly cost Stutz the race.)

Back in Melbourne some time later when people were starting to use charcoal gas, one of his business aquaintances asked Bob if he knew where he could get a Roots type supercharger to use on a Bedford truck to comensate for diminished performance. He contacted the used car dealer in England, who still had the Stutz. The Mecklenberg Stutz supercharger cost the same 300 pounds that they wanted for the car. It was ruined by the grit from the gas producer.

(I know people will argue about how many and which of the 1929 Stutzes had superchargers, and who drove which; and which is the surviving car. It is even possible that the car Bob was offered is the one that still exists, and there could well have been spares with it.. Bob Chamberlain was a very reliable first hand witness, and an exceptional engineer. I still have notes I wrote when he told me this.)

Ivan Saxton

[Twitch]

In 1942 WW II Germany refined fuel from anthracite. Devices that looked a bit like mini home water heaters in the trunk digested wood chips, anthracite coal, lignite coal, coke, gas, and peat moss.

In 1942 is saved 5 million barrels and 8.2 million in 1943. They were switching to hydrogen fuel for thei plants and factories also which would have saved 60 million barrels by 1946.

Fast forward to 1981- A pilot plant for the liquefaction of coal was being constructed in the Ruhr, and on becoming operational in the spring of 1981 it had a capacity for converting 75,000 tons of coal annually into 157,000 barrels of light and medium oil and liquid gas. Early in 1980 the West German government approved an ambitious program involving the construction of 14 large plants for the liquefaction and gasification of coal, requiring the investment of $7 billion by 1993. By 1986 the Germans satisfied 10 percent of their current gasoline needs in this fashion.

One thing the US still has is plenty of coal. And Admiral Byrd when exploring Antarctica by air exclaimed about "a coal seam large enough to serve the needs of the planet for a hundred years"

Of course that area is off limits to resource development......

[Bhigdog]

I heat my home with wood. Not because I have to but because I enjoy cutting, splitting, and watching a wood fire and it gives me a sense of having a bit of control over the Middle Eastern Sheiks. But I draw the line at filling the trunk with cord wood and starting a fire in the family jalopy every time I need to make a beer run.......Bob

[JohnD1956]

Wow, I sure wish I coul dhave understood the narration. but it is so neat to see that footage from '38...

How does this carbon-monixide generator work? They were actually getting liquified fuel from the wood? We'd better not let Exxon -Mobil find out about this. There won't be a tree safe anywhere...

JD

[Dave@Moon]

There are numerous processes for coal liquefaction and gassification, with varying products of each. Large coal deposits in the U,S, and in China have made research into these processes very tempting for generations. However cost concerns, even in coal rich and labor cheap places like China, have kept all of them non-competitive so far

The one overriding concern, however, is that every one of those processes emits vast quantites of CO2--<span style="font-style: italic">much</span> more than is emitted from even the use of petroleum fuels. I understand the cost of controlling those emissions would be staggering.

[Dave@Moon]

Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of how wood gas generators work. They don't really "generate" CO in so much as they a lot of CO is created along with the burnable methane and hydrogen fuel gasses.

These have 2 main drawbacks. #1 is they are filthy. It's like trying to run your car on a fireplace, only worse. The ash and tar problems are hard to deal with, especially if the car is driven for more than novelty miles. Try to imagine what the fumes would be like if a tunnel full of these vehicles were stuck in a backup!

#2 is the very low energy potential of the fuel gas made, typically about 1/10th the energy contained in natural gas (methane). That is what causes the very poor performance mentioned.

Finally, wood grows a lot slower than it burns. If corn can't keep us in ethanol because of yield, imagine what kind of yield you'd be talking about depending on pine trees!

These are interesting vehicles for a novelty, but that's about it.

[Mika Jaakkola]

Wow guys , I was quite sure that this would be very though one for you but , again, I noticed that the real experts are in AACA.

The narration of the film clip tells about the project of finnish government developing wood gas generators. Professor Harald Kyrklund of Helsinki was the main chief in this project.

The thing that was different in this "modern" system was the compressor added to front of the car which was connected directly to crankshaft. The compressor added the power of this system (as the diagram in the film shows) that the power ratio is even better than in only-fuel engines (!).

The main reason why they stopped the production was that the system never worked perfectly and after the WW2 the gas was cheap again.

Well, think about it, you could make the fuel for these cars yourself.