Thanks for your questions Dave.
Rapid fire, here goes:
A) For a car a stainless oil drum. Its strong and light.
B/C) Propane tanks, preferably new ones for the reactor and cleaner. 60 gallon air compressor tanks are also good thick scrap you can use for stationary applications.
7 year old- Take this ice cube. Feel it, it's solid. Now lets heat it up in a pan. It just went from a solid to a liquid. Now heat it some more and it turned from a liquid into a gas (steam). When we make
wood gas, we do almost exactly the same thing, except
wood gas burns like natural gas and steam doesn't.
90 year old- We rapidly heat a small amount charcoal from wood like a blacksmiths bellows and the oils and
water vapor that are sucked through it are shredded down to their most basic molecules of hydrogen and
carbon. It's molecular soup that can
feed your engine flammable gas. Tasty!
When I talk to neighbors I tell them that I take the stored sunlight in wood and distill it into biogas motor fuel using heat instead of microbes.
A) Woodgas systems make the most sense out in the rural areas because that's where the tree waste is. Mount a machine next to a
greenhouse or garage and hang a roof over it to keep the rain off. Keep it ventilated. If you mount it next to a house, then keep it away from windows because it can let off some smoke if you open it while it's hot.
B) Suburban neighborhoods don't generally like electric generators running and they have small garages. It could be made to work, but probably not ideal. Makes sense if you are a prepper, or have cool neighbors and available wood waste.
C) Gasifiers work best in an urban neighborhood at the
local recycling center where there are branches that need to be disposed of.
I have not gotten pulled over by law enforcement, but I am not a big vehicle gasser. Driveonwood.com has the latest info on that. I have feared scrappers eying my machine in the back of my truck though!
Woodgas on cars is really a grey area. I don'tr think it's illegal, but it comes down to emissions inspections and not being able to modify modern cars. Plus insurance is an issue. You can make the system removable or put it on a trailer.
