Oznog
Active Member
I know it as "woodgas". I heard that in WWII Japan, they had no petroleum left for civilian use and ran the buses on woodgas. Also, saw a rumor that North Korea's running farm equipment on woodgas. Seeing as they have no petroleum industry and no way to import much, this is kinda plausible.This is very old school! from around the early 1900's. It was called "Producer Gas"
There were a few farm tractors that used wood, coal, or even grain to make the gas. If I remember right it is only effective with low compression engines, under 5:1 compression.
Lindsay publishing has a book or two on the subject.
Actually, woodgas is not a bad technology for replacing gasoline in a few applications. However, the gassifier takes awhile to start up, so it's not a turnkey start, and a primary problem is that wood has far lower energy density than gasoline. You'd need carry a huge truckload of wood to equal the mpg of a tank of gas. Of course, it's not helping the environment to cut down the forests for your car, it's for fallen wood and very possibly other waste plant material like corn husks and paper mill sludge. But again, energy density problems. Not so bad for a fixed location like a generator near the source of the waste matter where you just shovel it in.
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