Gasifier Experimenters Kit

Biomass Energy Foundation: Small GasifiersBecome aMemberof theBiomassEnergyFoundationpower and transportation that I can make in my own smalllaboratory here in Golden Colorado. These small gasifiersare particularly useful and educational because they areeasy to build, alter and study. From 1980-1986 we builtand operated a 1 ton/day gasifier at the Solar EnergyResearch Institute, spending possibly $6 million fordesigners, fabricators, instrumentation engineers andrented space at Hazen Research here in Golden. Eachinstitutional step could take days or weeks to complete.While waiting for the institutional wheels togrind, we took matters into our own handsand built a 5 gallon pail gasifier in the alleybehind our laboratory. It had a blower and aflair, and we learned more about the basicscience of gasification in that zero costproject than we learned from the $6 millionproject. All of this is described in our book"FUNDAMENTAL STUDY AND SCALE UPOF THE AIR-OXYGEN STRATIFIEDDOWNDRAFT GASIFIER" (see Books).One of our smallest gasifiers was used to investigate therelationship between the superficial velocity and theamount of charcoal and tar produced in the pyrolysisstage of gasification. It resulted in a paper, "SuperficialVelocity - The Key to Biomass Gasification", which isone of the most fundamental studies of my long careerand which informs my judgment on all gasifier design. Thegasifier was only 30 cm tall and 5 cm inside diameter. Theresearch was completed in less than a week (but tookmonths to appreciate the importance).Currently our smallest gasifier is incorporated in ourhttp://www.woodgas.com/small_gasifiers.htm (2 of 3) [10/9/2008 08:23:16]