
From gasoline to gasification, or why we don’t power cars with wood today (2017) - bryanrasmussen
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2017/01/22/from-gasoline-to-gasification-or-why-we-dont-power-cars-with-wood-today/
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nanomonkey
While it may not be great for vehicles, it's still one of the most promising
choices for stationary power production. Plants are self replicating solar
power fuel sources, and by converting them to syngas you can produce
electricity, heated water and air, and biochar. The biochar is wonderful for
the soil when properly used, and locks away carbon that used to be in the air.

There are any number of cogeneration plants that use waste wood chips to run
their kilns and produce electricity. All Power Labs (www.allpowerlabs.com)
produces small scale (10-20kWh) generators that fit on a 4' pallet and thus
can be transported to a fuel source.

~~~
sh-run
This is really interesting. I'm fortunate enough to live in a city that
collects yard waste and composts it. I've never considered that it could be
used as an energy source, much less a carbon negative one. I doubt I could
produce a usable amount of electricity by myself with something like this, but
I'd be curious to see how much energy a city of 900,000 could produce with
yard waste.

Edit: From the feedstocks page ([http://www.allpowerlabs.com/support/support-
feedstock](http://www.allpowerlabs.com/support/support-feedstock)) it looks
like this works best with wood and woodlike fuels. I'd still be curious if
grass clippings could be processed in a way to make them work similarly.

~~~
nanomonkey
Grass clippings and a variety of waste streams can be pelletized to produce a
fuel that can be gasified. Although it's generally not recommended to leave
pelletized fuel in a gasifier during shut down, as any residual moisture will
cause the pellets to decompose into their powdered form and thus clog up the
reactor. Solid fuel handling is more difficult than liquid or gas fuels as you
have to use augers and gravity. There is a tendency for "bridging" and
compacting where the space between the solid components become either too
large or too small. Different reactor designs can accommodate different fuel
sources but there is no one size fits all for all fuel types.

 __*

While composting is great, it does produce a significant amount of methane,
which is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (~84 CO2e). Ideally
this would be captured and put to use.

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Yetanfou
The 'bridging' problem is one area where vehicular applications have less of a
problem given the fact that the generator is constantly being shaken,
especially when used on tractors or other similar equipment (e.g. old-style
bone-rattler pickup trucks). A modified diesel engine in which the injectors
have been swapped for long-necked spark plugs can run on gengas and has a
higher efficiency and relative power output than a petrol engine which is fed
with the same fuel. On this type of application the extra bulk for the
generator and fuel doesn't matter as much either.

~~~
nanomonkey
Adding a spark plug (and the timing circuitry) is definitely possible. You can
often find diesel engine blocks that have been converted to propane or natural
gas that are essentially this arrangement.

You can also run a diesel engine on duel fuel, where the (bio)diesel injection
provides the flame front to ignite the woodgas and air mixture. In this case
no modification is necessary. Only the bare minimum, equivalent to just idling
on diesel is necessary. This is a robust system where the governor for the
diesel engine can compensate for lower woodgas fuel content when need be.

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coconut_crab
Apparently North Korea still has a lot of those[1], and as recent as 30 years
ago they were quite popular on Vietnam's streets. I have heard of people died
from the heat or suffocation riding on them.

[1] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/how-north-
ko...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/how-north-korea-fuels-
its-military-trucks-with-trees/)

~~~
tyingq
The picture of the truck:
[https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2013/01/a...](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2013/01/a-look-
inside-north-korea/n19_75880979/main_600.jpg?1420511278)

