Some of you might be relieved to know that I do not focus only on policy issues.
This is what this little pellet gasifier looks like: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22013094/150%20Gasifier/Short/Photos/IMG_1571.JPG Today I ran this unit on pellets of diameter of 8 mm. Here I employed a fan of only half the air resistance as in the previous run. I filled the bottom half of the reactor with pellets, and the top half with loose rice hulls. The loose hulls make the pellets much easier to light, and they do a good job of filtering and cracking the gas. Without the rice hull biochar on top, I simply cannot get a predominantly blue flame from 8 mm pellets. I would have much preferred to have rice hull pellets of a 6 mm diameter. And once again the power of the fan could have been easily reduced by another 50% to only 0.2 InAq. In any case, this is what the unit looked like in operation: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22013094/150%20Gasifier/Short/Photos/MVI_1574.MOV Note that the flame is not entirely blue. What amazes me is the amount of heat this unit puts out. The biochar pellets that this unit produces are firm, hard and quite beautiful: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22013094/150%20Gasifier/Short/Photos/IMG_1563.JPG When the unit is emptied of biochar, and the biochar pellets are dropped into water, a huge crackling sound is made. Loose rice hull biochar does not react in such a forceful manner when it is quenched. It will take a while before this unit could be brought to market. A lot more work is needed. I think that a pellet gasifier would be ideal in urban areas. Transporting and storing large bags of loose rice hulls in an urban setting is messy and impractical. Hopefully such a small gasifier (the reactor weighs but 1.2 kgs) would appeal to the more affluent in Vietnam. I hope you all are not fed up with such technical detail. Thanks. Paul -- Paul A. Olivier PhD 26/5 Phu Dong Thien Vuong Dalat Vietnam Louisiana telephone: 1-337-447-4124 (rings Vietnam) Mobile: 090-694-1573 (in Vietnam) Skype address: Xpolivier http://www.esrla.com/
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