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Post by daniel on Dec 24, 2015 5:19:20 GMT -8
I have made some test with gasification of wood, and burning of the resulting syngas. Gasification is done with very little oxygen by heat. What is left is carbon which could be used for fertilization of soil (after being charged with nutrients) and for firing your kiln.
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Post by exoplasmic on Dec 30, 2015 11:16:20 GMT -8
... burning of the resulting syngas. Gasification is done with very little oxygen by heat. What is left is carbon which could be used for fertilization of soil (after being charged with nutrients) and for firing your kiln. I want to research that. I've heard that you can use syngas in place of propane. But then there is how to store it under pressure. As far a charcoal goes I like that for garden. I've been doing that for a couple years whenever I have wood coal dust I throw it in the dirt. I really need to get a load of gourde manure with saw dust. They give it away and even use a loaded to put it in your trailer. I definitely want to get "off the grid" so I can save money. Solar, wind, hand-water pump, and syngas if not too difficult. I have a really old Ford Jubilee tractor (1953) that needs to be fixed; Blown head gasket. I used it a lot for about 6 years. Then left weak antifreeze in it over winter. Now there's water in engine oil.
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Post by daniel on Dec 31, 2015 10:11:14 GMT -8
I have been researching this also, what I found that storing that gas under pressure is very dangerous, you could store it but when oxygen gets to it it explodes. There are ways around it but needs to be studied with most care. I like the idea of generating electricity with a power generator. Even driving a car with that gas is easy in principle but in practice there are many more filters and tar collection issues as well as a easier method to start the initial fire. There are many people that did that to their trucks however it is quite a bit of work to maintain the installation. If you have a good wood supply, a shredder and a truck maybe its worth it. The resulted char is good in moderate quantities, it absorbs the nutrients from the ground at first and that is why I read that it must be charged with nutrients if applied in larger quantities.
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Post by daniel on Dec 31, 2015 11:38:44 GMT -8
About storing the gas I read that you can pump it in under pressure but when you use it the oxigen gets to it and it blows up, also oxigen can get in through a leaky valve...... I am looking into ways to use it as it is and store the electric energy perhaps or the heat.
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Post by satamax on Dec 31, 2015 23:04:02 GMT -8
Daniel, may be cogen? I mean, store the electricity from a generator, and the heat.
There's another way of storing energy. Gravity. Rather ineficient at this time. But simple. Dams. But in my head, there's two others.
A water tower. Where you pump water up, from a pond or else. And when you need electricity, you let the water down, powering a hydraulic turbine/generator couple. There's one trick may be behind this. It would be to build a pump which would be also a generator when reversed. Like new alternostarters on new cars.
Or there the rope and weight solution.
Imagine, a tower With a wound rotor motor at the top, some gearing, epicycloidal if tou want, no cog!
You have a huge weight, like 5/10 tons. A wire rope which can hold this. A winch capstan on top, with the rope atached. When you have electricity in surplus, you raise the weight. And when you need electricity, you magnetise the rotor, and let the weight slowly go down, powering the motor.
I don't know if it has ever been thought about. But i think it's a good solution.
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Post by satamax on Dec 31, 2015 23:10:12 GMT -8
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Post by daniel on Jan 1, 2016 2:23:07 GMT -8
Yes, something other than water would be better since it does not pose the same problems as the water. Basically from what I have seen any of these energies could be stored and used but in order to make everything as simple as possible and with less maintanance I am trying to see which type of energy or combination I would use to solve all the needs, heating, cooling, cooking, light, etc. Using wood gas wood be good to solve all this and combined with the power of sun. I was impressed with the fresnel lens concentration of solar energy which burns a penny in seconds. If harnessed and stored this solar energy is amazing. There is a house that has about 3m of sand and tubing underneath and accumulates from August to September and then it starts heating the house for about the same amount of time. I want to keep it simple and I do little tests trying to come up with the best and simpler way. Passive heating is also great with trombe walls.
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Post by satamax on Jan 1, 2016 2:45:32 GMT -8
Daniel, i've had the idea, in the past, of a Trombe wall, with Fresnel lenses. I mean, you get two type of concentration Fresnel lens. Arange theses like a chess board, but with 10cm or so, between what would be the black and what would be the whites. And overlap them a bit. This arangement would help when the sun is at an angle. And the increased temperature of the focalized sun energy would may be better for a faster temperature accumulation. Increasing the delta. Germans do passive annual storage, with a pool. They fill an insulated pool with rocks. Then run a series of pipe under the garden. Fill all that with water. And circulate the water during hot months, and gather that heated water during the winter to heat the house. I think the simpler form of energy to store is heat. Gravitational energy too with dams. But that's larger scale!
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Post by daniel on Jan 1, 2016 6:00:40 GMT -8
I need to explore this, passive heating is the most appealing to me since it requires no moving parts and low maintenance but sometimes a combination of different technologies might work better depending on the location. Hot water is good because it can be transported through pipes and heat masonry mass but it requires some electric energy and pumps. There is so much to learn
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Post by exoplasmic on Jan 13, 2016 17:50:13 GMT -8
Because my setup doesn't have a steel barrel to shed heat I could have made the inside surface area bigger than the typical 8 square meters for an 8 inch system. I'm wasting heat. This summer I'm going to raise the walls of my bell and lengthen the brick flues that store heat.
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Post by daniel on Jan 13, 2016 23:08:58 GMT -8
Perhaps going a little higher row by row and test it every two rows to see if it stalls. We should measure the exit gases temperature, I have not done that either
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