Faster, Cleaner Gasifier Startup

[Nofossil]

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.

 

[Nofossil]

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.

 

[brad068]

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.

 

[Eric Johnson]

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.

 

[brad068]

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.

 

[Eric Johnson]

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.

 

[Nofossil]

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.

 

[brad068]

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.

 

[TCaldwell]

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

 

[brad068]

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!