RPF0287-Drive_on_Wood_Interview
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00:00:30.160 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, we mix it up and we talk about how to drive your car on wood.
00:00:39.560 | Yes, I mean it like the hard stuff that grows in the form of a tree, literally how to use wood to fuel your car.
00:00:48.680 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:01:07.080 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:01:08.520 | Thank you for being with me today.
00:01:09.800 | Indeed, we do mix it up today.
00:01:11.920 | I don't think this is your standard certified financial planner board of standards content, is it?
00:01:17.080 | But I think if it's Radical Personal Finance, not sure how much money is going to save you today.
00:01:22.920 | But when gas prices increase in the future, who knows?
00:01:26.640 | Maybe the content of today's show can save you a few hundred bucks a month.
00:01:29.800 | Today, I've got Chris Sines and Wayne Keith on from driveonwood.com.
00:01:41.160 | And I think you can enjoy this interview.
00:01:43.160 | It's very different as far as the subject matter.
00:01:45.680 | But it's the kind of stuff that I'm into.
00:01:46.880 | It was a suggestion from a listener that sent me over a link and I just thought it was a cool topic.
00:01:51.600 | And I frankly, this interview more than anything else is just me asking some cool guys questions that I thought would be fun.
00:01:57.480 | And I hope you think it's fun too.
00:01:59.600 | These types of non-traditional, I guess, decisions, I think for a subset of you, not all of you, but for a subset of you, these types of non-traditional topics, I think might open up some doors for you.
00:02:13.520 | And if you think about it, US Americans spend more on their cars than many other categories of their budgets.
00:02:19.760 | Now, I would imagine most of you have been enjoying the low gas prices.
00:02:24.680 | It's been kind of a nice and welcome change to most of our budgets.
00:02:28.920 | And I'm glad for that.
00:02:30.160 | But gas prices aren't going to stay low forever.
00:02:31.720 | And in the future, when they increase, it might be nice to have something like the content of today's show in your back pocket.
00:02:38.320 | So sit back, relax, and enjoy being introduced to a topic that might someday save you a few hundred bucks a month in fuel costs.
00:02:45.680 | Chris and Wayne, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:02:49.520 | Thanks for having us.
00:02:50.800 | I've been excited to get you guys on and you were actually a recommendation by a listener.
00:02:56.000 | And then I went and checked out some of your website and whatnot.
00:02:59.120 | And I guess, Wayne, I've seen some of your trucks.
00:03:02.400 | I don't remember where it was, whether it was in some kind of Backwoods Home type magazine or my YouTube browsings of weird technology.
00:03:12.080 | But you've got the fleet of trucks, right?
00:03:14.000 | A little truck, big truck, and these farm trucks that you're using wood gas systems.
00:03:18.400 | And I realized, wait a second, I know your work.
00:03:20.400 | So whatever you're doing, it's good as far as getting popularity out there.
00:03:24.640 | I'm going to talk today about how to drive your car for free, right?
00:03:28.480 | We're going to save people and tell them they never have to buy gasoline again and they're going to be able to drive every mile they want for free.
00:03:34.400 | Is that an accurate assessment of the opportunity of wood gas?
00:03:38.800 | Not exactly free.
00:03:42.080 | We add a little labor in with it.
00:03:43.920 | It's okay.
00:03:44.720 | But there's no free lunches.
00:03:46.480 | Right.
00:03:47.440 | Hopefully, you heard the tongue in cheek there.
00:03:51.200 | So let's start with a simple introduction.
00:03:55.280 | How is it possible to use wood to power your vehicle and carry you down the road?
00:04:04.240 | Okay.
00:04:05.600 | Proper belief thinks the gasoline engine runs off gasoline.
00:04:09.760 | It doesn't.
00:04:10.960 | It runs off gasoline vapors.
00:04:13.200 | And in short, we are taking a solid fuel, which is wood, and turning it into vapor and then feeding it to the motor.
00:04:22.320 | So that's a process called wood gasification, right?
00:04:26.800 | Gasification, that's correct.
00:04:29.200 | We're vaporizing a solid fuel and feeding it to the motor.
00:04:34.160 | And the motor will run as if it was on LP or natural gas.
00:04:38.000 | It's being fed on vapor.
00:04:39.280 | So I'm a total newbie.
00:04:40.880 | So feel free to correct any technical thing that I get wrong.
00:04:45.360 | But what is the actual process like?
00:04:48.240 | If I wanted to bring my car or minivan to you and say, "Guys, could we figure out a
00:04:52.400 | way to where I don't need to run this thing on gasoline anymore?"
00:04:56.080 | What type of equipment do I need and how do I make that happen?
00:04:59.520 | Some vehicles work better with this.
00:05:02.640 | It has to do with, to start with, you're going to lose some power in relation to gasoline.
00:05:08.720 | So to start with, we need a big motor because you're going to lose about 25 or 30% of your
00:05:14.640 | power.
00:05:16.560 | And this apparatus called a gasifier, we usually put it in the bed of the truck.
00:05:23.360 | It takes up some room in the bed of the truck, about what a toolbox will usually take up
00:05:31.600 | in the back of the truck.
00:05:35.760 | The cost on this will depend on how well you are at scavenging around drums, old water
00:05:41.560 | heaters, and so forth that can be used to make this gasifier.
00:05:47.920 | How did you guys get into this as a hobby?
00:05:50.520 | Okay, let me start first.
00:05:56.480 | Back in the '70s, during the oil embargo, at the time I was running a little welding
00:06:01.960 | shop doing a lot of tinkering.
00:06:04.920 | I started experimenting with it back in the '70s.
00:06:08.160 | And then a little while, we could get gas again.
00:06:10.320 | The price went back down, so I forgot about it for the next 30 years.
00:06:15.280 | And back about 12 years ago, when gasoline started going up, I drew a line in the sand
00:06:21.360 | and said if gasoline ever makes it to the dollar and a half, I'm going to start experimenting
00:06:26.280 | with gasification.
00:06:27.280 | And of course, gasoline did reach that mark.
00:06:31.320 | And I started experimenting again back in 2003, 2004, and everything just evolved from
00:06:38.640 | there.
00:06:41.560 | I got interested in gasification about seven years ago, I guess.
00:06:48.840 | I read an article in Mother Earth News, and somebody there had actually built one of these
00:06:54.620 | back in the '80s.
00:06:57.280 | They actually published plans for it in Mother Earth News.
00:07:00.720 | At the time, I was researching a lot of different alternative energies, reading about solar
00:07:05.400 | power and wind power and steam and hydroelectric power and every kind of do-it-yourself off-grid
00:07:12.440 | technology because I was just interested in that sort of thing.
00:07:16.000 | And wood gasification stood out to me as the only thing that I could actually make in my
00:07:21.360 | garage.
00:07:22.360 | You're not going to go out and build yourself a solar panel.
00:07:25.280 | You're not going to be able to machine a steam engine in your garage.
00:07:30.560 | It's not something that's within the scope of the average do-it-yourselfer.
00:07:35.040 | So a gasifier seemed like the easiest thing I could do to get started with this stuff.
00:07:41.640 | So I was looking around online, and it seemed pretty scattered, the amount of info that
00:07:48.360 | was out there about these.
00:07:49.840 | There was a couple of old articles I found.
00:07:53.000 | There was occasional references to some guy in Alabama who had some trucks, being Wayne
00:07:58.360 | Keith.
00:08:01.120 | So going on some very limited information, I started building a gasifier.
00:08:06.240 | I just kind of jumbled it together from a bunch of different designs that I found, and
00:08:11.480 | it didn't work very well.
00:08:12.560 | I mean, I got it finished.
00:08:13.960 | I did get it to run a truck down the road a little ways, but it was full of mistakes
00:08:21.360 | that I could have avoided if I had known any better.
00:08:25.840 | So at some point, it was suggested to me that I go visit Wayne Keith and get a look at some
00:08:32.520 | of his trucks.
00:08:33.520 | And that was four years ago today, actually.
00:08:37.880 | We were down in Alabama, and he gave me a ride in some of his trucks.
00:08:42.520 | And I was completely floored.
00:08:44.720 | I'd never seen anything that worked so well, that was homemade.
00:08:50.080 | But it actually moved down the road, and it was keeping up with traffic, and it operated
00:08:55.420 | perfectly smooth.
00:08:57.240 | I was very impressed.
00:08:59.680 | And it wasn't a couple of months later when the two of us ended up starting Drive on Wood.
00:09:05.600 | And we now have a website where a lot of other people are able to build the same type of
00:09:11.480 | system.
00:09:12.480 | Chris, is this actually something that can save somebody money?
00:09:16.040 | Like if somebody wants to actually save money on their driving costs?
00:09:19.600 | Oh, definitely.
00:09:22.060 | If you're spending a lot of money on gasoline, it's something you can trade for labor making
00:09:32.920 | wood.
00:09:33.920 | Now, the amount of labor versus the amount of cost is going to depend on what you were
00:09:38.240 | being paid in the first place.
00:09:39.520 | So you might think, Wayne has a good example, if you were thinking of how far you could
00:09:45.480 | get on an hour's worth of pay with gasoline.
00:09:50.000 | Say you were being paid $20 an hour.
00:09:52.320 | Well, $20 right now will buy you about 10 gallons of gasoline, and that will get you
00:09:56.560 | a certain distance, maybe about 200 miles.
00:09:59.280 | If you can make more wood in that time by processing wood that you have sitting around,
00:10:06.320 | that you can find in your backyard, if you can spend that same time making wood fuel,
00:10:12.040 | then not only have you done something for yourself and reclaimed that time, but you
00:10:19.600 | will probably end up with more time left over because you're not trying to make the money
00:10:23.880 | to pay for the gasoline.
00:10:26.120 | How much wood and time and equipment is actually required to create the wood fuel, and what
00:10:32.440 | is the actual fuel that you're creating and using?
00:10:38.520 | Go ahead, Wayne.
00:10:39.520 | Let me give you something to think about, Joshua.
00:10:42.440 | I paid for my farm by selling wood at $27 a cord, and that was delivered at the mill,
00:10:49.680 | which is about a 30-mile round trip.
00:10:52.520 | So I can assume it was worth even less here on my farm.
00:10:58.640 | That wood's up a little bit now to probably $50 a cord, but that cord of wood would run
00:11:04.920 | my truck 5,000 miles.
00:11:07.880 | Wow.
00:11:08.880 | Also, I've got a little homemade sawmill that I work with part-time, and I use the
00:11:18.520 | slabs or the waste from the sawmill to run my truck.
00:11:22.880 | A good day of sawing in mediocre timber, I'll have enough waste that I've got to do away
00:11:30.360 | with, enough that would run my truck to California and back in one day of waste.
00:11:37.120 | That's remarkable.
00:11:40.160 | Now there's got to be some labor involved.
00:11:42.440 | Like I said, there's no free lunches or free rides.
00:11:45.600 | You've got to have some labor to process this wood.
00:11:51.040 | I made a homemade wood chunker, I call it, and I made it out of junk out of the junkyard,
00:11:59.200 | but I can run these sawmill slabs or sawmill waste through this piece of equipment.
00:12:06.440 | It chops them up into, I guess you could call it, bits of wood about the size of your fist
00:12:13.880 | or less, and that's what I feed into the gasifier.
00:12:17.480 | Also, it takes a test we've done, it takes about 16 pounds of wood to carry the truck
00:12:26.560 | as far as a gallon of gasoline will.
00:12:29.480 | Interesting.
00:12:30.480 | Wayne, tell me about your trucks, because you've built some that are fast and some that
00:12:35.920 | haul a lot of weight.
00:12:36.920 | Tell me about your fleet and what you've been able to accomplish burning this fuel.
00:12:41.680 | Okay, over the years, I think I've built about 14 or 15 trucks.
00:12:48.680 | I've also got a tractor now running off the wood.
00:12:51.800 | Built several little gasifiers to run small electric generators and so forth.
00:12:58.880 | For my over-the-road truck or traveling truck, I've got a medium-sized truck, a Dodge Dakota.
00:13:06.840 | It'll go on down the road pretty good.
00:13:09.280 | I think I've got some videos on YouTube showing running about 95 or so for short distances.
00:13:18.440 | They run comfortable on the interstate between 60 and 70 miles an hour, but for short distances,
00:13:24.960 | you'll even have more speed than that.
00:13:28.120 | I've also got a work truck.
00:13:30.360 | It's a V10 Ram Dodge.
00:13:33.760 | Four-wheel drive is my work truck.
00:13:36.080 | It's about a 9,000-pound truck, but I use it for farming, pulling trailers, hay trailers,
00:13:42.400 | cattle trailers.
00:13:43.400 | I even haul hay in the bed up next to the gasifier, and it works good.
00:13:51.120 | The best I can figure, I've driven somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 miles now on wood.
00:13:59.560 | I made one cross-country trip that was 7,400 miles strictly on wood.
00:14:07.760 | Also, I may be one of the few that's ever had speeding tickets on wood, but I'm guilty
00:14:15.720 | of a 75 and a 55, shows up each time I have to pay my insurance also.
00:14:21.440 | The cop wasn't merciful to you after he explained what you were doing?
00:14:27.400 | The trooper had no idea that I was using wood.
00:14:31.760 | The truck just don't stand out that much.
00:14:33.800 | He don't know that he's probably the only police in the United States that's ever given
00:14:38.240 | a wood gas speeding ticket.
00:14:42.680 | If somebody has wood, this sounds like a really cool, they have access to wood.
00:14:52.120 | It sounds like a really cool thing.
00:14:53.120 | Yeah, this is not for everybody.
00:14:56.120 | If you're having to be out looking for wood, it may not fit your lifestyle, but if you've
00:15:02.520 | got wood, looking for some way to get rid of the wood, it fits in perfectly.
00:15:07.440 | It's kind of like a ship captain, sea captain, or whatever that learns his engines run on
00:15:13.320 | seawater.
00:15:14.320 | He's got it made.
00:15:16.160 | But if you're out in the desert somewhere, that's not going to help you out any.
00:15:20.880 | But if you've got wood, and don't mind getting your hands dirty, it's a cheap ride.
00:15:29.400 | It's not a free ride, but it's about as cheap a ride as you'll ever find.
00:15:35.960 | Have you guys seen some significant improvements in the technology, especially you, Wayne,
00:15:42.640 | after building all these trucks?
00:15:44.120 | Are you getting them much better and much more efficient, and do you feel like there
00:15:47.080 | is a lot of room to improve still?
00:15:51.720 | We would like to.
00:15:52.720 | Now, we didn't invent the gasification process.
00:15:55.480 | It's an old process that was used back in World War II.
00:16:00.920 | We would like to think we have improved it a little bit.
00:16:04.340 | Back in World War II, if you're going down the roads at 35, 40 miles an hour, you might
00:16:11.080 | be considered driving fast.
00:16:13.640 | But nowadays, with these gasifiers, you can get on the interstate highway, stay right
00:16:18.800 | with the stream of traffic running 70, 75 miles an hour.
00:16:23.800 | Nobody even notices you.
00:16:27.960 | Is wood gas superior to things like, I don't know, building a still and creating alcohol
00:16:33.680 | fuel?
00:16:35.400 | Is it comparable to some of these other alternative sources, or how would you compare it to other
00:16:41.320 | fuel options other than gasoline?
00:16:43.760 | Go ahead, Chris.
00:16:46.240 | I think you've studied that more than I.
00:16:49.960 | Like I said before, I've looked into doing a lot of different kinds of homemade fuel,
00:16:57.000 | trying to figure out the cost and benefit of doing homemade alcohol and homemade steam
00:17:02.240 | engines and things like that.
00:17:04.640 | What it turns out is when you go to convert energy from one form into the other, a lot
00:17:11.720 | of times you lose most of it along the way.
00:17:16.120 | For example, if you're going to make ethanol, everybody knows ethanol is more or less a
00:17:20.960 | boondoggle.
00:17:23.040 | But even at home, you can make it, but think of what you've got to do.
00:17:27.240 | You've got to grow a whole bunch of starch crops such as corn, potatoes, etc.
00:17:34.160 | You've got to harvest all that.
00:17:35.500 | You've got to ferment it, which you lose a certain amount of energy from that conversion.
00:17:40.960 | Then you've got to boil it down considerably.
00:17:46.560 | Once it's been fermented into beer, you've got to ferment it down and concentrate the
00:17:51.480 | alcohol.
00:17:52.480 | That distillation process takes a lot of energy, which is wasted.
00:17:58.280 | It's not going into fueling the vehicle.
00:18:00.600 | It's just going to boil off water.
00:18:04.360 | By the end of the day, the fuel value that you started with is reduced into a very useful
00:18:10.520 | but much reduced amount of energy.
00:18:14.840 | The unique thing about wood gas is that you can actually take a piece of wood that's a
00:18:20.200 | very low, it's very raw.
00:18:24.160 | It hasn't been highly processed.
00:18:25.800 | As much as we've processed it is to cut it up into little pieces.
00:18:29.540 | You can directly fuel an engine with it.
00:18:31.800 | You put it in the gasifier, you get gas out, the gas makes the engine go.
00:18:37.740 | Efficiency-wise, we're talking three or four times as efficient as taking the same wood
00:18:43.040 | and putting it through some type of cellulosic ethanol process.
00:18:49.080 | Not to mention the fact that you can build one of these gasifiers yourself and you don't
00:18:54.160 | have to have a giant industrial factory to make all these chemical modifications.
00:19:01.320 | What would be the...
00:19:02.320 | Go ahead, Wayne.
00:19:03.320 | Joshua?
00:19:04.320 | We did a test at Auburn University on the efficiency.
00:19:08.080 | We tried the vehicle on gasoline.
00:19:12.720 | A million BTUs of gasoline got us Dodge Dakota 168 miles.
00:19:20.360 | Then we tried it with a million BTUs of wood and it got the truck 231 miles.
00:19:28.440 | We analyzed all the wood, sent it to the lab, got the BTU values and et cetera.
00:19:33.960 | Long story short, burning wood in the truck was 37% more efficient than gasoline in the
00:19:43.000 | truck was...
00:19:44.000 | The engine is designed to run on gasoline.
00:19:47.200 | So 37% more efficient burning wood scraps, sawmill scraps, than it is gasoline imported
00:19:55.000 | across all the way, both sides of the world.
00:19:59.720 | So are you aware that this is carbon neutral?
00:20:04.440 | Net carbon neutral.
00:20:06.480 | My friend, Dr. David Bransby at Auburn University says this truck is 67% cleaner than a total
00:20:15.000 | electric vehicle if that vehicle is charged on the Alabama grid.
00:20:19.960 | Wow.
00:20:20.960 | I love that.
00:20:22.720 | That's awesome.
00:20:23.800 | How much volume is...
00:20:26.520 | Let's say I wanted a million BTUs of wood, I'm going to go 200 and something miles on
00:20:32.920 | that.
00:20:33.920 | How much physical volume of wood chunks would I need to put through the gasifier in order
00:20:38.160 | to be able to cover that distance?
00:20:40.520 | 200 miles, you'd want about almost 200 pounds of wood.
00:20:48.760 | This Dodge Dakota I'm driving, it gets about a mile and a quarter or a mile and a third
00:20:55.200 | per pound of wood.
00:20:57.600 | So putting that into something like five gallon buckets that I can relate to, how many buckets
00:21:02.960 | or barrels of wood is that to go 200 miles?
00:21:06.720 | I use sacks, plastic bags.
00:21:12.240 | I usually have about 15 pounds of wood per bag.
00:21:16.960 | You can do the math.
00:21:18.640 | It'll take up...our hoppers, our reservoirs on the gasifier are built to take one of these
00:21:26.240 | Dakotas almost 100 miles.
00:21:30.560 | The best I've done is about 107 miles pulling a small trotter, but assume somewhere around
00:21:35.640 | 100 miles.
00:21:36.640 | So you fill up your hopper and then you can carry along a few extra bags of wood with
00:21:42.320 | you as you go.
00:21:45.080 | Let me jump in here and give you a couple more visualizations.
00:21:48.840 | A pound of wood is more or less a double handful.
00:21:51.980 | So if you had a bunch of wood chips or wood chunks, if you took about what you can hold
00:21:57.200 | in two hands, that's more or less a pound, probably a little more.
00:22:01.200 | I believe a five gallon bucket will be about 10 pounds.
00:22:05.120 | I haven't weighed it.
00:22:06.260 | It's going to depend on the species.
00:22:08.320 | Some wood is obviously heavier than others.
00:22:09.880 | You get softwoods and hardwoods.
00:22:13.020 | So that's why we mostly go by the pound measurement.
00:22:16.820 | Moisture content is also going to be a factor.
00:22:19.600 | If you have real wet wood, it's going to take more of that energy to boil the water out.
00:22:25.080 | So you'll get less energy and you also have more pounds.
00:22:28.060 | So that kind of screws with your measurements there.
00:22:31.160 | But if you have dry wood, then it will definitely go about a mile per pound.
00:22:35.920 | Wayne, when you drove...
00:22:37.920 | Josh?
00:22:38.920 | Yeah, go ahead.
00:22:39.920 | So keep in mind, we don't worry about running out of wood.
00:22:44.300 | We can switch to gasoline about as fast as you can blink your eye.
00:22:47.900 | So we don't worry about running out.
00:22:49.820 | That's not a problem.
00:22:52.220 | So you just keep a tank of gasoline in the car and then you have a fuel switch where
00:22:56.120 | you switch to the tank when you need to?
00:22:58.680 | I usually keep about a quarter of a tank in the truck just for emergency situations.
00:23:05.200 | That quarter of a tank might do me months, but I do keep a quarter in there.
00:23:10.780 | But you don't have to worry about running in.
00:23:13.460 | You just flip the switch and you're back on gasoline just like everybody else.
00:23:19.620 | Wayne, when you drove 7,400 miles across the country, how did you get your hands on the
00:23:25.020 | wood that you needed to put in your car?
00:23:28.660 | Had several sponsors going out there and back.
00:23:34.060 | I had some partners that went with me.
00:23:37.140 | They had called ahead to places like furniture shops and so forth that had waste.
00:23:44.380 | We would stop along the way and hit their dumpsters.
00:23:47.820 | I know we stopped in, I believe it was Lubbock, Texas, and hit one of their dumpsters.
00:23:53.900 | I think they built cabinets or something like that.
00:23:58.220 | Just one dumpster would have fueled us all the way out there and back.
00:24:02.980 | We just got one out of five that had parked there.
00:24:08.260 | That's cool.
00:24:10.140 | For people who are traveling, years ago I ran across some of these people who burn waste
00:24:16.220 | veggie oil in their buses or RVs or things.
00:24:20.260 | I found this group of guys who had bought a Japanese fire engine, diesel-running fire
00:24:27.580 | engine, converted it to run on waste vegetable oil, and traveled from at least Alaska to
00:24:33.460 | Panama if not down through South America.
00:24:35.540 | I don't remember, and I don't remember the name of the blog, but did the entire trip
00:24:38.820 | on waste vegetable oil.
00:24:41.040 | They burned French fry oil in the United States.
00:24:43.100 | They burned palm oil in Central America.
00:24:46.340 | It's such a cool concept.
00:24:48.900 | Obviously a lot of work, but such a cool concept to be able to take waste products and turn
00:24:54.100 | them into something useful.
00:24:57.540 | The ability to move your vehicle across the country.
00:25:01.100 | It's amazing.
00:25:02.100 | Right.
00:25:03.100 | At one time, I think that process worked pretty good, but I think a lot of your restaurants
00:25:10.540 | and so forth that had that oil, they've learned that it's a commodity now and it's a lot harder
00:25:16.740 | to find it.
00:25:17.740 | I know people around here that once did the cooking oil deal, but they pretty much had
00:25:22.980 | to stop that.
00:25:23.980 | But wood's about the same price it's ever been, maybe cheaper now.
00:25:29.260 | I was going to say, we found an inefficient market with lots of wood scraps available.
00:25:33.820 | Couple more questions.
00:25:34.820 | How does it actually work?
00:25:36.760 | As far as what does a wood gasifier do and how does it work?
00:25:39.220 | What does it look like inside of it and how do you get wood into the engine?
00:25:43.980 | Let me give you the short version here.
00:25:49.060 | When you burn biomass in an oxygen-restricted environment, the products are going to be
00:25:54.580 | carbon dioxide and water vapor.
00:25:56.900 | Now, if you heat these products up to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 degrees and run them
00:26:05.140 | through red-hot charcoal, you'll get a thermochemical reaction, which will turn these products into
00:26:10.940 | hydrogen, CO, and methane.
00:26:14.980 | It's the gas that runs the motor.
00:26:19.820 | To really understand what's going on, you'd probably need chemistry how the charcoal will
00:26:27.140 | strip oxygen atoms from the CO2 and the H2O.
00:26:34.900 | Chris can probably explain the science behind it better than I can.
00:26:38.740 | I just know how to make them run.
00:26:40.700 | I don't claim to know all the science behind them.
00:26:46.900 | Let me run one more of these visualizations by you.
00:26:50.100 | If you just took a big old knife and you sliced a gasifier right down the center so you can
00:26:55.140 | see a cross-section of it, at the very top you'd have a lid.
00:27:00.740 | For about the first half of it, you'll have what we call a hopper.
00:27:04.700 | That's where the wood sits that hasn't been burned up yet.
00:27:08.460 | That's what you refill when it gets low.
00:27:11.020 | As long as you keep putting wood in there, it'll run indefinitely.
00:27:15.380 | About the halfway point is where it will start converting into charcoal.
00:27:20.500 | You'll have some wood that's partly burnt, and then below that you'll have wood that's
00:27:24.100 | completely converted into charcoal.
00:27:27.140 | The charcoal is what does all the hard work.
00:27:31.020 | It gets hot, and as it heats up the wood above it, the wood releases vapors.
00:27:39.140 | They're called pyrolysis gases.
00:27:41.660 | The gases are consumed by the incoming oxygen from the nozzles.
00:27:48.380 | You've actually burned up all of those initial gases, and you created carbon dioxide, and
00:27:56.100 | you got some water vapor.
00:27:58.980 | You take those gases and you put them through this hot charcoal bed.
00:28:03.780 | As they go through the hot charcoal bed, like Wayne was saying, the carbon reacts with the
00:28:08.980 | water vapor and the carbon dioxide, and you get carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas and a
00:28:15.900 | little bit of methane.
00:28:18.360 | Those are all flammable gases.
00:28:22.800 | That process continues all the way through the charcoal until it comes out the bottom.
00:28:26.660 | At the very bottom of the gasifier, you've got a grate, which is just a flat plate with
00:28:30.700 | some holes in it to let the little bits of charcoal and dust fall through.
00:28:36.700 | Then the gas will come back up around the side and then go out to the filtration and
00:28:41.740 | the cooling and on into the motor.
00:28:44.740 | Mad Fientist: Can you build a generator that runs off of wood gas to power something like
00:28:53.020 | an off-grid generator situation to charge the battery bank for your house?
00:28:58.180 | Wayne Henson: Certainly.
00:28:59.940 | Mad Fientist: Is it economical and efficient to do that?
00:29:03.140 | Wayne Henson: I would say it's actually an even better use for somebody who's in
00:29:09.020 | that situation that's got a lot of wood.
00:29:10.860 | If you're already heating your house with wood, for example, it would be a perfect fit
00:29:15.940 | for a rural type situation.
00:29:17.940 | You're going to need a fair amount of wood if you want to make a lot of electricity.
00:29:24.220 | For every gallon of gas that you would've burned in that generator, you've got to
00:29:27.900 | come up with 16 pounds of fuel wood.
00:29:31.020 | This is not going to power your high electricity demand, yuppie lifestyle with lots of high
00:29:41.900 | electric home heating and electric dryers and electric this and that.
00:29:44.980 | You're going to have to tone it down a little bit.
00:29:47.700 | But the type of person who would be doing that is already looking at that from solar
00:29:51.460 | and wind power.
00:29:53.540 | So if you're already reducing your electrical needs, then it'll be a great fit.
00:29:58.220 | It's definitely good for a secondary generator to go along with a solar setup or primary
00:30:05.300 | use.
00:30:06.500 | If you've got a decent battery bank, you should have no trouble with that.
00:30:10.540 | Joshua, I failed to mention when we made our cross country trip, took a little electric
00:30:17.860 | generator, electric power tools, saws and so forth.
00:30:23.460 | We would stop and gather wood, if we find dead or dry wood along the way.
00:30:29.780 | We had this generator hooked up to the truck gasifier.
00:30:33.260 | We would run the generator to run the power tools to process your wood to go on our way.
00:30:38.980 | I've been all the way across the United States.
00:30:42.700 | I couldn't take everybody for a ride, but we would stop and hook this generator up to
00:30:47.580 | the truck.
00:30:48.860 | The generator didn't have a gas tank on it.
00:30:50.940 | I'd remove the gas tank to show them the generator was running off of wood to do these chores,
00:30:58.340 | run the power tools, et cetera.
00:31:00.980 | Also on our website, we have a lot of folks that live off grid, and they're using this
00:31:05.940 | process using the gasification to run the generator to keep batteries charged and et
00:31:13.580 | cetera.
00:31:15.140 | Mad Fientist: With somebody who has average capabilities, and they're working with some
00:31:22.220 | of your good plans, and they have average fabrication capabilities, and they want to
00:31:25.540 | build a unit to power a Dodge Dakota, an older Dakota, what kind of guesses do you have as
00:31:33.300 | far as how much the parts cost and how much time is going to be required to build something
00:31:38.980 | that can power a small pickup truck?
00:31:41.940 | Tom Hickson: The best we can figure, labor-wise, if you make it look real nice, it's labor-intensive.
00:31:52.100 | It takes me 250 hours to build one, but the trucks look nice.
00:31:58.220 | I can park in Walmart's parking lot and never get eyebrow-raised out there.
00:32:03.620 | They just don't notice.
00:32:04.620 | They just blend in with them, but it takes me 250 hours to build one.
00:32:10.180 | As far as materials, if you can look out for salvage yards and so forth to get your materials,
00:32:18.180 | you can come up with $500 or near that.
00:32:23.860 | If you're having to buy them on retail and so forth, you can look closer to $1,000.
00:32:28.620 | I'm guessing somewhere between $500 and $1,000 for material and 250 hours for your labor.
00:32:36.900 | Tom Hickson Wayne, how old are you?
00:32:39.620 | Wayne Hines I'm 67.
00:32:41.260 | Tom Hickson Are you thinking about retiring, or is this going to be something you're going
00:32:44.540 | to keep doing?
00:32:45.540 | Wayne Hines I'll keep doing it as long as I can.
00:32:49.620 | It's nice to tell folks that I've got enough motor fuel to do the rest of my life, but
00:32:55.500 | that's the situation I'm in right now.
00:32:57.060 | The amount of wood I've got piled up.
00:32:59.580 | Tom Hickson That's awesome.
00:33:01.220 | Chris, how about you?
00:33:03.140 | What are your plans for this project, this new website and things like that?
00:33:06.460 | Do you have anything specific, or are you just trying to promote an enthusiast's community
00:33:10.220 | so that the technology can be advanced?
00:33:12.460 | Chris Steele Well, certainly that.
00:33:15.620 | I have some ideas.
00:33:18.620 | I'd like to start building some of these smaller generator style units and see if people are
00:33:23.180 | interested in those.
00:33:25.900 | We've built plenty of trucks now, so those are out there.
00:33:30.740 | People can probably find those used, but the Keith style gasifier hasn't been done to a
00:33:40.260 | small generator very often.
00:33:43.820 | Just building a small one geared towards that.
00:33:46.460 | So I'm going to explore that a little bit.
00:33:49.620 | We'll continue to do the website.
00:33:51.620 | We've got a pretty sizable community where people have been passing notes back and forth
00:33:57.580 | about how their experiences have been, what modifications they've come up with, and all
00:34:03.140 | sorts of interesting new ideas and techniques.
00:34:08.220 | There's a lot of good community at the website now.
00:34:12.260 | Tom Hickson Awesome.
00:34:13.260 | So the website is driveonwood.com.
00:34:15.900 | We have some information there.
00:34:17.500 | There's plenty of things on YouTube.
00:34:19.340 | Anywhere else that you'd like people to check out your work or anything that you'd like
00:34:23.300 | to for people who are just having an introduction to the idea of wood gas?
00:34:29.020 | Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listening audience?
00:34:32.460 | Chris Steele There's a lot on YouTube.
00:34:37.500 | They can just punch Wayne Keith YouTube.
00:34:40.380 | I've got a lot of videos showing me working.
00:34:44.020 | I've got a farm tractor that runs off of wood, and I've had several trucks showing them going
00:34:51.900 | down the road, cross-country, doing farm work, and et cetera.
00:34:58.260 | Tom Hickson Chris, how about you?
00:35:01.380 | Anything else that you'd like people to know about?
00:35:03.620 | Chris Steele I think we've got pretty much everything that
00:35:09.500 | we can come up with related to wood gas.
00:35:12.020 | I've put a lot of information into the library section.
00:35:15.140 | So if you go on the website and you click on library, that'll take you.
00:35:18.740 | There's a lot of PDFs of the research that's been done and information about pretty much
00:35:26.020 | as detailed as you want to get.
00:35:27.820 | It's all there.
00:35:29.340 | But if your listeners are interested in checking this out, we encourage everybody to sign up
00:35:37.660 | on the forum, make a couple of posts, ask some questions, do some reading, and you'll
00:35:42.140 | find a lot of very knowledgeable people that are willing to help you out.
00:35:46.860 | Tom Hickson Gentlemen, thanks for coming on the show.