[NonToxic]

I think I am posting in the right forum. Go to http://video.msn.com/video/p.htm?setcp=b and search for Wood Burning Truck.

Anyone have any more info on this setup? Looks interesting but gives no info. It must be steam powered.

[yooper]

It is a wood gasifier, Mother Earth News sells plans for it. You need an older large engine that is not fuel injected and has a carb and a distributer.
You will get about half power from the motor and go about a mile per pound of wood.

[Googolplex]

Personally, Im much more interested in a stationary wood gas electric generator. Dealing with a wood gasifier on a moving vehical sounds like a real pain.

What the matter with an electric car?

[Doly]

The problem with an electric car is that it need electricity. Which may, or may not, be abundant in the future. Depends on how much of the electricity of your country is based on gas.

[Googolplex]

Well thats what the wood gas generator is for, isn't it?

[ubercrap]

I believe that wood gasification was another thing that was used in Europe during WWII in some places to run things like buses.

[Plantagenet]

I was just chainsawing some wood, and I it started to rain and I came in and saw this crazy article.

Who needs tarsands when you've got firewood to run your car.

Yup. Just burn wood back in a stove back in the pickup bed, pipe the fumes directly into the carborator (wood-stove fuel injection) and your engine will run on the fumes from the stove.

woodstove powered pickup truck

America and Canada are the Saudi Arabia of firewood!

[mercurygirl]

Sorry, I think peak firewood was a long time ago.

[Plantagenet]

[

Pimp my ride, dude!!!!

I'd like 10 gallons of firewood and a six pack. Oh, and throw in a pack of matches, please.

[Novus]

This smells like a hoax to me. The engine up front looks like a regular gasoline engine. I really doubt it runs on wood chips alone.

[Plantagenet]

I don't think its a hoax.

They used the same technology in WWII and that wasn't a hoax.

I just did a google and saw a pic of a wood-powered tractor plowing a field. Apparently you can burn wood, take off the gas, pipe it directly into the carberator, and run the engine. In fact, here is a manual telling how to pimp your ride into a wood-powered car.

Wood gas

Wood gas as motor fuel

The Gengas Page -- Fuel gas, produced by the reduction of coal and peat, was used for heating as early as 1840 in Europe, and by 1884 it had been adapted to fuel engines in England. Petroleum shortages during World War II led to widespread gas generator applications in the transportation industries of Western Europe. (Charcoal-burning taxis, a related application, were still common in Korea as late as 1970.) This report attempts to preserve the knowledge about wood gasification as put into practical use during World War II. Detailed, step-by-step procedures are presented in this report for constructing a simplified version of the World War II, Imbert wood gas generator. Full text online.
http://www.gengas.nu/byggbes/index.shtml

[Plantagenet]

[Fredrik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', 'I') really doubt it runs on wood chips alone.

[Cloud9]

Mother Earth News did a story on this process back in the 70's.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-H ... Truck.aspx

[vision-master]

Burning wood for power has to be converted to steam (called boiler) in order to operate pistons. Fake............

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'B')urning wood for power has to be converted to steam (called boiler) in order to operate pistons. Fake............

[oowolf]

Millions of these have been built:
http://www.windward.org/notes/notes63/wal63_b.htm

[Plantagenet]

Here is a truck that runs on coffee-grounds-gas. It sounds like the same principle as the wood-gas truck, but the gas is liberated by burning coffee grounds.

truck runs on burning coffee grounds

Again, they don't seem to modify the engine at all.....they are just piping the gas liberated by combustion directly to the carborateur.

[Plantagenet]

"The reason a wood gas generator can power cars and trucks is that the internal combustion engine is actually powered by vapor, not liquid. In a gasoline-powered engine, gasoline is vaporized before entering the combustion chamber. Diesel is a little different; it’s sprayed into the combustion chamber as fine droplets which burn as they vaporize. Either way, if you can put a clean combustible vapor into the engine, you’ve got power....

Gasifying a solid material partially burns it, which preserves some of the energy that would normally be wasted in the gas (otherwise there wouldn’t be anything left for the engine to burn). The gas contains a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N), and a small amount of methane (CH4)."

---from the link in the prior post.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

You can run a car off methane too. If you take a tank and put the hose right in the carb you can run your car, no fuss, no muss. I am going to try building one of these puppies.

This year I'm only experimenting on building a stove till I get the concept right etc. Mostly because I am getting a ceramic top stove that you can't pressure can on and need something to fit the bill. I am going to see if my dad and I can't adapt it to work on the barbecue too.