©2014 FIRECRACKER™GUW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Automatic gasifier
(Click to enlarge photo)
Because of the difficulties of feeding fuel into the tank gasifier I built this as a solution to gasifier automation. It is essentially and inverted version of the tank gasifier but with a much smaller fuel tube as there was no longer a need to hold so much fuel in the gasifier itself. I believe this version is known as a down-draft gasifier. Fuel is supplied through a 6 inch tube at the top and moves down under gravity. There is a grate (stainless-steel kitchen colander) suspended on chains at the bottom of the tube and the fuel is ignited in the grate as a continual process. As gas forms it is immediately ignited in the water-jacket chamber and the combustion gases are taken to the flue through a cast-iron gas central-heating heat-exchanger. Air enters and passes down the same tube as the fuel and the flue was fan-assisted to maintain the flow. Ash falling from the grate was collected at the bottom of the chamber where there was an air-tight exit port. This system worked well enough (around 10kW output) and, had I not discovered stoker-burners, I am sure I would have developed it further. The combustion was nowhere near as clean as the tank gasifier and the heat-exchanger fins were continually getting clogged. I think this was simply a matter of getting the air-flow and temperatures right but, unfortunately, I got distracted by other projects!
©2014 FIRECRACKER™GUW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
