Gasifier
 

Anyone think of using a gasifier? I saw it on tv once. Guy built one for a truck. He then used horse poo to run it. :)

What sort of vehicle would you want to run on it? I'm kind of partial to fuel injected vehicles with heaters and wipers, if you get my drift. If you want fossil-free, biodiesel is the way to go for a modern vehicle.

:) He built it on the back of a pickup truck. All the of the bells and whistles would work as usual. He did use a older truck with a carb though.

Probably better suited for stationary engines, but interesting nonetheless.

My oppinion is that gassifiers are under used, they are no longer understood as well as they once were, it was not uncommon to see these around the 40's during the war and it does work. As Frank alluded to they work better for household use.

But it is much like using an antique style steam engine to run a truck, most of your cargo capacity in the back would be needed to run the gassifier.

That isn't to say that if someone were to put a little modern tech behind a gassifier that they couldn't be shrunk just like the micro boiler steam engines.

I seem to recall seing pictures and video of several European (French ?) Cars running on gassifiers during the war.


/Edit
Sorry RMay, you beat me to it. Slow connection here.

There are some gasifier engines around, and some have been discussed here before.

They need a lot of attention, though that could be automated (as in auto pellet feeders), but controlling their emissions is going to be one heck of a job !

Here's a gasifier car that won a contest on Instructables a while back. As part of the instruction, he links to other Instructables on the actual construction of the gasifier itself.

I also saw a gasifier car in person at the Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania in 2010. The worst I could say about it is that it did take a few minutes to start.

I am very interested in the gasifier technology for use in a car. I have not seen anyone going this way, but I would love to see one as an economy booster. Light it up, then start your vehicle and drive as you normally would. When the gasifier warms up enough to start producing gas it would be directed into the air intake of the engine. The sensors on the car would detect the gas and put less petroleum through the injector system.

One thing about a gasifier that would benefit by the mobil use: you wouldn't have to have an ash shaker for the burn pan, as the road vibrations would knock the ash through the grate.