The cyclone filter did not turn out the way I had planned. All I'll say is that when one plans on welding an old pot to the bottom of the cyclone filter (in order to provide room for the ash) make sure the pot is not an aluminum pot! You can see the test setup in picture 4.
It was time to fire the gasifier today and the plan was to just make some smoke in order to see where I need to make some tweaks. The first thing I learned was that you do not want to start this thing in the heathut. I piped the smoke into the wood stove which worked good but my blower fan adapter had a major leak and when I shut down I didn't have a good way to shut off the gasifier. So, make sure that you start yours out side.
As I said above, this was just a shake down and no big expectations where in mind. I did get the smoke to burn with a pilot map torch and you can see some of the flames in pictures 1, 2 & 3. I used a flue pipe tee to help hold the flame, I'll have to improve on this! The smoke varied from an almost clear smoke to a white smoke and a dark smoke. I even had a blue smoke for some time. I did burn some used engine oil soaked paper fireball so maybe that's where the blue smoke came from but on the other hand it did look like a charcoal colored smoke.
I tried all kinds of fuels from pine pellets, SG pellets, paper fireballs and oil soaked paper fireballs. In picture 5 you can see down the fire tube and you just might see a few fireballs at the bottom.
Well, now I have to make some changes and the next run I will only use one type a fuel per run.
Till next time,
Jeff Davis
picture 1
picture 2
picture 3
picture 4
picture 5
