I had no idea these were actually made in significant numbers.
>even a modern woodmobile requires up to 10 minutes to get up to working temperature
That was my first question, and I can't imagine it would be great to have a parking garage of these things warming up / outputting gasses for 10 min each.
In the sense of a farmer being more likely to have access to a local supply of firewood, and that tractors are probably more used for longer stretches at a time than running down to the grocery store, sure.
Historically, they weren't that common, as large-scale use of wood gas was mostly a thing in Europe during WWII, and during that period continental European agriculture was still mostly horse-driven. After WWII when agricultural mechanization really picked up, fuel was again available so there was no big motivation to put up with the disadvantages of wood gasifiers.
I didn't know about this, and initially suspected the article was an LLM-generated prank (photos and all). Now I entered the rabbit hole of water gas, wood gasification, Gustav Bischof, Lowe's gas... HN is such a great place of the Internet!
I remember John Cohn, an IBM Computer Engineer, was on some TV show called The Colony and built one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkH6mFlfH3o and I seem to remember it getting much further than this clip.
Part of the problems with it is likely long term usage because wood is not an entirely predictable fuel. All sorts of hydrocarbon oils and tars can come out of it and the moisture content of wood can be all over the place.
Possibly modern wood pellets would eliminate many of these problems, but if you aren't getting a really good burn, which takes some skill to setup with just random chopped wood pieces, you may end up gunking the engine all up and filling the oil with crap and possibly having some not so great exhaust coming out.
Otherwise you need the skills and an engine simple enough to be worth semi regularly opening it up to clean all the carbon and crap out of it. Something that might not seem like too big of a deal when people already use 1930s cars, but would become a much bigger and bigger deal in the decades after WWII when cars and engines become increasingly complex and people don't expect to be removing major engine components after 5,000 miles.
wood gas is still explosive gas. be careful; but it does work, for things you'd use propane for, at greatly reduced efficiency and probably longevity of any moving parts. with wide variance. including your lungs.
The title made me wonder if you could actually put wood in the fuel tank and heat the tank to generate wood gas. Turns out no, you need more than that.
Given the times, these vehicles need a bumper sticker that says “This is not an IED.”
Jeff Lane has a few of these in the Lane motor museum in Nashville. Just about everything in the museum is in operating condition and he likes to show his collection off on weekend demo days, but I haven’t had a chance to see these run. Great car museum, all oddball cars, nothing normal. They recently finished building an accurate reproduction of the Fuller Dymaxion. https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/dymaxio...
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 46.3 ms ] thread>even a modern woodmobile requires up to 10 minutes to get up to working temperature
That was my first question, and I can't imagine it would be great to have a parking garage of these things warming up / outputting gasses for 10 min each.
https://youtube.com/shorts/4MQGP5MME2A
Historically, they weren't that common, as large-scale use of wood gas was mostly a thing in Europe during WWII, and during that period continental European agriculture was still mostly horse-driven. After WWII when agricultural mechanization really picked up, fuel was again available so there was no big motivation to put up with the disadvantages of wood gasifiers.
I think the years since this was written has shown this to be false. BEVs are steadily replacing ICE vehicles and we have more cars than ever.
How is this the first time me (or anyone else in this comment section) is hearing about this? It seems like a pretty major deal.
Possibly modern wood pellets would eliminate many of these problems, but if you aren't getting a really good burn, which takes some skill to setup with just random chopped wood pieces, you may end up gunking the engine all up and filling the oil with crap and possibly having some not so great exhaust coming out.
Otherwise you need the skills and an engine simple enough to be worth semi regularly opening it up to clean all the carbon and crap out of it. Something that might not seem like too big of a deal when people already use 1930s cars, but would become a much bigger and bigger deal in the decades after WWII when cars and engines become increasingly complex and people don't expect to be removing major engine components after 5,000 miles.
Jeff Lane has a few of these in the Lane motor museum in Nashville. Just about everything in the museum is in operating condition and he likes to show his collection off on weekend demo days, but I haven’t had a chance to see these run. Great car museum, all oddball cars, nothing normal. They recently finished building an accurate reproduction of the Fuller Dymaxion. https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/dymaxio...
http://wiki.gekgasifier.com/w/page/6123718/FrontPage
Be warned, there are a myriad of reasons this technology never became commercially successful for modern applications.