Dear Tom,
Several years ago, I coupled 11 Adam retorts together. Each kiln was
almost 4 m3 capacity. We load the kilns with sawdust wooden briquettes,
2613 kg average and yield was 31.6 % good quality charcoal. As you know
we had 2 chimneys, one in the front where the burning wood and later
burning woodgas come out, and the second one in the back connected to
the wood chamber. Briquettes were very dry, it took about 12-18 hours to
get the wood gas. Than back chimney was closed and wood gas was pushed
in to fire chamber in front of the kiln. And it burned none stop for
almost 48 hours. I started wondering, what can we do with this gas?
Briquettes were high density and very dry about 6000 Kcal. per kg. The
energy was burned equaled 18233 Kwh. I was amazed and started asking
questions how to use this energy? The gas we burned was dirty. Than I
find out about wood gas, gasifiers... After long research and with the
help of many people from this forum, I build my first gasifier.
While in operation, I coupled all the back chimneys, put a long
galvanize pipe 38 cm diameter, with 10 degrees slant. I distilled the
smoke coming out of drying wood, every day we were getting wood vinegar
400 liters and more. Unfortunately no one was interested, I even offered
to local farmers associating free of charge, I gave samples to
universities to some research, nobody was interested. Wood vinegar is
highly used in Japan for vegetable gardens, flowers, in bathtub water as
detoxification the body and clean the skin and so an...
The back chimney was filled with tar in no time. This was the tar at the
beginning of coming out the wood gas. Still was bad enough for us to
clean the back chimney every month. The rest of the wood gas was burned
in the chamber.
We tried to get the gas with out burning and move to the kiln where we
dry the sawdust. The result was very good until the tar clogged the
pipes in less than a week. Finally I gave up trying the gas was
extremely dirty.
There are couple of problems taken gas from the kilns. One we can not
suck the gas, than we would introduce extra oxygen to the kiln, that
would effect the quality of the charcoal. Second if we use the small
chimney to collect the gas and collect from there, we would taken extra
air and mix with the wood gas, I think that would be dangerous..
Now we are working with 47 ovens, still every day I look at the wood gas
that we burn, and still we are buying wood and rice husk to burn in my
oven to dry the saw dust.
If anybody has an idea, how to collect this gas, I am willing to try.
Regards,
Robert
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