# Faster, Cleaner Gasifier Startup



## Eric Johnson (Oct 23, 2007)

Even though they don't make any smoke or smell at all when up to speed and running, a gasifier (mine anyway) will smoke like an OWB during the 10 or 15-minute startup period. Even after you close the bypass damper and turn on the fan, it will smoke for awhile until the gasification chamber gets up to temp and the nozzles light off.

I've been thinking, more out of idle curiosity than anything else, about how you could minimize the smoke on startup. So this morning I took 8 pieces of commercial charcoal and placed them on my two nozzles. Eight pieces--four to a nozzle, covers the nozzle openings in the firebox. I started a small paper fire with a couple of pinecones bark and let it burn for awhile. Then I stuck a few small pieces wood in there, closed the bypass damper and kicked on the fan.

It smoked for a short while and then went clear. A lot faster than usual.

I haven't used the boiler enough to have a bed of unburned coals accumulate on the nozzles, but I suspect you'd see a similar result with that. As somebody pointed out, successful gasification is all about having a good bed of coals. Lacking that, charcoal seems to work pretty well. Nice to have on hand.


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## Nofossil (Oct 23, 2007)

Nice! I have one of those chimney-style charcoal lighters where you put in a piece of newspaper, put the charcoal on top, and light it. I've also seen electric ones that are basically a toaster oven heater element. Either might get the charcoal going with even less smoke. If it ever gets cold, I have to play...


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 23, 2007)

I knew going into this that starting fires from scratch is a fact of life with a big gasifier and storage, and I expected it to be a major pain. However, getting a fire going is really no more than lighting a piece of paper under some cardboard with a few pinecones or bark piled on top. Works every time. As I said, a little smoke is no big deal at all, but there is a small perfectionist side of me wants to make it better.

I think having the charcoal right on the nozzles with air rushing past is a good way to heat them up with a relatively smokeless fuel source. If it works consistently and if you're cheap like me, you'll figure out a way to make your own charcoal, too.


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## webbie (Oct 24, 2007)

Eric, did you try upside down fires - kindling and paper on top........


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## slowzuki (Oct 24, 2007)

I've seen some reference to a manual override on the pump to bring the boiler up to temp from the storage to help light off go a bit quicker.  Your setup will probably get better as the winter gets on and the boiler is still hot between firings.


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 24, 2007)

Yes Craig, I think that's the way to go. You want the fuel as close to the nozzles as possible on startup. So I've been going: charcoal, pinecones, cardboard and paper--starting at the nozzles.

It's not very cold out, but the boiler holds its heat really well between firings. This morning I went out to build a small fire and the water was still 65C, even though it had been out since yesterday evening. Since I don't have the tank going yet, I've been getting by with small fires and frequent restarts. It's not shy about putting out the heat, I'll say that.

Know Your Boiler: It's amazing what you can make a piece of equipment do once you've had some experience operating it and begin to understand why it does what it does.


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## hkobus (Oct 26, 2007)

Erik,

You sound like you have the same idea's I have been toying with. I bought thid unit since we moved to town. (I'm a wood burner at heart and cheap dutchman to boot and believe smoke is a waste and nusance) I was sold on the smokeless burn and the fact that this is proven technology. My dad has seen this used in WWII and since in many european countries.
Since my heat storage is nit ready, I needed to find a way to reduce the Btu output. To do this I shortened the nozzle slot by inserting some fire brick pieces between the ends of the slot to just before the air inlet tubes. In your model you could probably just close off one whole slot. With that I also tempered the air by moving the slide on the blower. This setup as worked like a charm for the last few weeks.

Sure like you charcoal idea.
 :coolsmile: 
Thanks


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 26, 2007)

Excellent idea. The more I think about it, the more I really like it. I don't see why blocking off one nozzle wouldn't work. Tonight I'm going to put a firebrick over the opening of one of my nozzles, fire it up, and see what happens. Half capacity sounds just about right for now.

Nice group of new gasifier owners we've got developing here, along with a few veterans like nofossil and slowzuki. I'm thinking all our rigs are going to run a lot better this winter than if we'd all tried to go it alone.

Hopefully we can entice some owners of Tarms, Garns, Greenwoods, etc. to join the fray. Maybe just mentioning those brand names will cause people to "Google in."

Let's see:

Tarm Solo 60
Tarm Solo 40
Greenwood Boiler
Garn Boiler
BioMax Boiler
EconoBurn Boiler
Woodgun Boiler
Atmos
KP Pyro

List 'em if you got 'em. List 'em and they will come.


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## hkobus (Oct 26, 2007)

Erik,

You may also have to adjust the air, I found the flame more unstable when I did not. I run at about one third of the opening on the blower adjustemnt at this point. Good luck.

Henk.


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 26, 2007)

Are you talking about the slider adjustment on the blower body or the adjustment with the screw below the blower?

Actually, I have two of everything (blowers, adjustment screws, sliders), so maybe all I have to do is shut the air down completely on the nozzle that I'm not using. No way to shut off one fan, however, without digging into the wiring. 

Anyway, I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.


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## Nofossil (Oct 26, 2007)

On my brother's homemade gasifier, too much fan was a problem. Life got much better when we throttled back a bit. It uses a 3 speed 12Vdc heater fan out of a Dodge truck.


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## hkobus (Oct 27, 2007)

Yes I adjusted the fan, I feel it is to early to mess with the screws yet. Once I have some more time and equipment to measure the effect I may attempt the set screws.


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 27, 2007)

I'm doing it tonight Henk, and it's working pretty well. I put a piece of firebrick over the back nozzle and closed off the air supply. The one in the front lit off and has been burning well ever since. Basically, I'm operating at half capacity, which is handy when you don't have any place to put excess heat. So thanks again--I think that was an inspired move on your part and one that I plan to exploit. And I did shut off the air supply through the screw for that nozzle, as well as the fan baffle.


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## TCaldwell (Oct 27, 2007)

With the garn there are there are only 2 moving parts, the loading door and the blower motor, hence no supply air adjustment possible, the only variables are  volume and moisture content of wood and ambient boiler temp. A (fast start) fire or high starting boiler water temp will minimize morning sickness to under 5 minutes. Also suspect the 400k btu/ hr fire rate and the open, low mass fiberfrax secondary burn chamber help. However too much surface area of wood in the primary chamber will cause puffing and not enough area for secondary gasses  to flow properly, resembles a locomotive or a owb. Has anybody actually monitored secondary burn temp lite off differences based upon cast nozzle mass , could a lighter mass nozzle refractory cut morning sickness time?


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 27, 2007)

I bet nofossil has. That sounds like it's right up his alley.

In my very limited experience, I've noticed that the starting temp of the water jacket, firebox and nozzles all play a role, as does the presence or absence of charcoal around the nozzles. I suspect that the ambient temps outside might be a factor, and the material you're trying to start the fire with definitely makes a difference. Essentially, I think that if you can fire it off and heat things up with a relatively low-smoke fuel like charcoal before you start producing smoke, it will be hot enough to eat it once you do.

I'm used to conventional wood boilers which smoke but never go out during the heating season. That's good, because they smoke even more on cold startup and take forever to get warmed up. So I'm not used to handling much kindling, cardboard and other firestarters. I like pinecones and charcoal, but bark, which burns like crazy, produces a lot of smoke and you're going to see it coming out the stack if you try to use it for cold starts.


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## Nofossil (Oct 27, 2007)

Eric Johnson said:
			
		

> I bet nofossil has. That sounds like it's right up his alley.



I have monitored combustion temperature a few times, but not enough to draw conclusions yet. We're working on an oxygen sensor. In order to figure this out definitively, we'd have to do a series of controlled experiments and keep a logbook. Really, we need a flue temperature sensor as well. This is starting to sound like work....


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## Nofossil (Oct 27, 2007)

Update - first fire with my new low-mass labyrinth combustion chamber. I built a fire as usual, but with 6 or 8 pieces of dry white pine in the 3/4" - 1" size range along with a similar amount of hardwood, same size and a little larger. Switched to gasification after 5 minutes of very low-smoke warmup, and it caught.

At that point, flue temp was 250 and the water jacket was 30 degrees C.

Took another 5 minutes to get cranking, but I'd rate it as one of my better starts.

After the first ten minutes, my pristine white labyrinth had dark creosote / soot deposits all over it. After another half-hour, it's as white as snow again - actually cleaner and whiter than in the pre-fire photo below.

Feels like progress. Thanks for the ideas and inspiration.


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 27, 2007)

That's pretty cool. It looks to me like you should get even better heat transfer.

I've been running on one nozzle since last night, as per hogstroker's excellent idea. It works fine; takes longer to get up to temp, but stays in the high 60s/low 70s and the wood lasts a lot longer, of course. The front nozzle lights right off and burns hot.

I liken it to putting a smaller nozzle on your oil gun. If it gets cold tomorrow as predicted, maybe I'll try loading it up good and see if it can stay in the zone. The way I look at it, my 200 Kbtu boiler can now run at 100k for the price of one firebrick. Pretty neat.


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## Burn-1 (Oct 28, 2007)

Nofossil is that new combustion chamber an upgrade or improved re-design replacement for the Orlan products line or is that a DIY setup?


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## Nofossil (Oct 28, 2007)

Burn-1 said:
			
		

> Nofossil is that new combustion chamber an upgrade or improved re-design replacement for the Orlan products line or is that a DIY setup?



It's a DIY improved re-design replacement 

There's another thread with more photos and some history here.


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## EricV (Oct 29, 2007)

Eric Johnson said:
			
		

> Excellent idea. The more I think about it, the more I really like it. I don't see why blocking off one nozzle wouldn't work. Tonight I'm going to put a firebrick over the opening of one of my nozzles, fire it up, and see what happens. Half capacity sounds just about right for now.
> 
> Nice group of new gasifier owners we've got developing here, along with a few veterans like nofossil and slowzuki. I'm thinking all our rigs are going to run a lot better this winter than if we'd all tried to go it alone.
> 
> ...




Hey, it worked, I googled in and now your stuck with me, haha.

I have a Tarm solo 40.  I installed it last winter and used a bit without the tank.  I now have a 1000 gallon tank I built myself, that is now  online (working) as of this past weekend.  so far so good.

The tank started out at 65 degrees but it was up to 160 last night.

This forum looks real interesting and full of energy minded folks.

Thanks
Eric


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## Burn-1 (Oct 29, 2007)

EricV, tell us more about your tank. Could you share some pictures?


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## Eric Johnson (Oct 29, 2007)

Welcome to Hearth.com and our new Boiler Room, EricV.

Yes, how about some details? I'm putting the finishing touches on my tank right now.


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## Nofossil (Oct 29, 2007)

EricV said:
			
		

> I now have a 1000 gallon tank I built myself online as of this past weekend.  so far so good.



That's pretty good - most of us just talk about tanks online, but you've actually built one online ;-)

Seriously, any pictures, descriptions, heat exchanger designs, performance data, lessons learned, insulation techniques, plumbing, tank construction - any information that you can share would be of interest. Welcome aboard.


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## EricV (Oct 29, 2007)

Sorry, meant to say that it is now online, as in working, oops.

I'd be happy to share.  but it is only my personal experience with data gleaned from anywhere I could read.

I don't have any pics yet but I will take some tonight when I get home.

I've only fired with the tank attached twice.  Saturday evening and again Sunday.  It took a while to get from 65 to 160.  I hope now to not let it go below 120 so subsequent firings should be shorter.

I have the Tarm solo 40 that I purchased last year (x-mas time).  I built a small addition on the back of the house, 12 x 16.  Half for the boiler and half for added laundry room space.

I plumbed it to my tank in the basement with 1" pex through the floor so there are no exposed pipes, etc.

In the basement I have a Wiel-McLain oil boiler and the house is all baseboard fin and tube (except the new addition is in-floor which is run of my domestic tank.

I have a Tri-Tube, indirect domestic water heater at is a priority zone off my oil boiler.

The tank is just over 8' x 4' x 4', steel frame with 3/4 plywood for sides plus 2" foam all the way around the inside.  Inside that is a 60 mil EPDM Firestone pond liner.  I picked Firestone as it was the only one I found that rated the liner for enough heat, I forget now what they spec'd it at but it was enough.

The piping scheme I came up with (again, experimentation) is the 1" pex flows from the Tarm to the boiler.  This way the house and domestic gets first crack at the hot water from the boiler.  From the boiler to the tank which has 1" splitting to two coils of 3/4" copper for a total of 200'.  It then returns to the boiler.

So that's the circle of life in my situation.  Last winter I fired the Tarm without the tank and it seems to work just fine so far.

The only concern I have so far is the speed at which the tank heats up.  but, I'm premature there as I've not fired it from say 120 or 130 as of yet, that will be tonight.


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## Nofossil (Oct 29, 2007)

This thread is now officially way off-topic.

Your system looks a lot like mine - baseboards, indirect hot water, oil boiler, wood gasifier, storage tank. I also added solar hot water panels and a homebrew controller that sits alongside the oil burner and wood boiler controllers. 

I've got lots of pictures and system descriptions, performance data, and so on at http://www.nofossil.org/.

I'm about 2 hours due east of you - half an hour if there was an east-west road.


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## Nofossil (Oct 30, 2007)

In a vain attempt to get this thread back on-topic, I'm going to refer to another thread.

Part of the challenge with gasifier startup is that you have to get the combustion chamber hot enough, and that can take some time. I've played around with a combustion chamber labyrinth. The current version is made of lightweight refractory materials described in this thread.

First two fires have been very good - six minutes from match to sustained gasification on tonight's burn.


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## brad068 (Nov 20, 2007)

I'm new to this whole forum thing.  But I do know alittle about gasification wood boilers, espically the Garn unit.  Matter of fact I have a WHS-500 unit for sale.  I think that the Garn process is the best and simplest design.  Like any tinker,  I built my own out of a 1500 gal stainless steel bulk tank.  I made my fan wheel, secondary nozzle, and all the flues.   I broke up the last pass, positive pressure, with nine 2" pipes instead of one 6" pipe.  I have exhaust temperature right out of the boiler no more than 235 degrees even at max burn.  I will try to post pictures of my build.


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## Eric Johnson (Nov 20, 2007)

Welcome to the Boiler Room, Garnification. Very clever ID, BTW.

You and nofossil should get along great. His brother built his own gasifier, based on an EKO, that will blow your mind when you see the progressive build pics. Well, maybe not your mind, but it blew mine.

I do have one question about the Garn with all that onboard storage: What happens when the water in the boiler is sitting at about 50 degrees and your house is cold? Since there's no way to bypass the storage, I'm guessing you might be in for a long, cold wait. I understand that's not the way you would run a Garn, obviously, but not being able to bypass the storage does limit your options, I would think. That and the sheer size of the unit.

Pretty impressive technology all the same. The few people I know who have Gans just love them.


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## brad068 (Nov 20, 2007)

First off why would you let the water get that low a temp.  That is the hardest time for the boiler when the water is that cold.If I where to shut down my boiler right now, it would take about 5 days to get that cold. Another advantage of the Garn system is that you can pretty much choose when to fire your boiler. Say in a window of about 24-48 hours.  Maybe you have some "smelly wood" and don't want the neighborhood to see.  Its like the rotissere commerical, set it and for get it. 
 I should of asked first if everyone understands how the Garn system works and how to operate it.


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## Eric Johnson (Nov 20, 2007)

A friend of mine in Hancock, WI has two Garns. I bet you know who I'm talking about. I'm from Coloma originally. Still get back there a couple times a year.


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## Nofossil (Nov 20, 2007)

Garnification said:
			
		

> I'm new to this whole forum thing.  But I do know alittle about gasification wood boilers, espically the Garn unit.  Matter of fact I have a WHS-500 unit for sale.  I think that the Garn process is the best and simplest design.  Like any tinker,  I built my own out of a 1500 gal stainless steel bulk tank.  I made my fan wheel, secondary nozzle, and all the flues.   I broke up the last pass, positive pressure, with nine 2" pipes instead of one 6" pipe.  I have exhaust temperature right out of the boiler no more than 235 degrees even at max burn.  I will try to post pictures of my build.



Welcome to the forum. Any pictures and/or design data, drawings, performance data would be welcome. As most folks here know, I'm a data junkie. If your'e interested, here's the URL to a page of photos of the unit that my brother built based on my experience with the EKO. He does not have much heat storage - a few 55 gallon plastic barrels. His house is built on a radiant-heated slab.


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## brad068 (Nov 20, 2007)

I took pictures on my digital camera.  I am wondering what is the best way to get them from my camera to this site.  I use to be able to download them to my computer but now my camera doesn't stay on long enough to download.  As you can tell I'm no computer wizard.


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## TCaldwell (Nov 21, 2007)

garnification, did i talk to you by phone maybe in april, a whs 1500 for sale  that you and your uncle rebuilt? I have a whs 1900 in ct., have posted  on the thread  about garn feedback  would enjoy discussing


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## brad068 (Nov 21, 2007)

Yeah I think we might have spoken.  You were wondering about hooking my unit the WHS-500 in series with yours.  I still have it for sale too. I'm new to this forum and I do like to read about other tinkerers.  I think that the Garn design is still the simplest and easist to operate.  I built my own unit and have had it up and running in my workshop now for about 2 months.  I made some changes and I think they were for the better so far.

 Glad to see other garners out there!


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