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Down Draft Gasifier
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Down draft gasifiers are designed to produce wood gas in a continuous feed, very controlled manner; then to cool, clean and use the gas later, or in a separate location. There are two reasons for a downdraft gasifier. One is to use the gas in an internal combustion engine. The other is to collect the gas and use a catalytic process to convert it into synthetic liquid fuels.
Downdraft gasifiers are famous (among those who know what they are) for their use in Europe and Australia during World War II. It is estimated that over a million small gasifiers were used by civilians to power tractors, trucks, car, etc. while all gasoline was going to military use. My grandfather once told me he remembered seeing wood powered cars while his US navy submarine was at port in Australia. I know now that these cars were powered by small, home-made downdraft gasifiers.
Image 1 (click to enlarge)We started this project with the intention of running an internal combustion engine generator, therefore a downdraft gasifier was required. The very first prototype gasifier we made was a downdraft made from two maple sap buckets, the fan from a hair dryer, and the gas burned off in torch after the fan. We were all surprised when it worked the first time, but it only lasted about 10 minutes before the plastic hair dryer fan melted! We then replaced the hair dryer fan with an all-metal blower, and added a gas filtering/cooling chamber. This was our first quality prototype, however it was still very crude (see image 1). The cooling chamber was made from an old glue mixing pot that was salvaged, and it was connected to the sap buckets by 3/4 inch pipe.
Image 2 (click to enlarge)Our next step was to upgrade from the sap buckets, and increase the pipe size connecting the gasifier unit to the cooling chamber. We got a second old glue pot, and found some 3 inch corrugated metal hose to connect the two pots. The resulting prototype (see image 2) worked quite well, and we decided it would be our base for future experiments.
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Contact: edreissigacker@gmail.com
Copyright Ethan Dreissigacker 2008