Woodgas Stoves

[a1winchester]

This is for all the Backwoodsmen and hi-tech pyromaniacs!

http://www.woodgas-stove.com/woodgas-stove/videos.php

I have one of these stoves, and they are brilliant.

Not only do you get the real deal smell of wood smoke when you are camping, but the fuel is FREE! I use a solar cell battery recharger, so don't even have to buy new batteries for the little fan in the base, not that it uses much power.

In the video the guy makes a big deal about the fuel wood, but I usually just spend a few minutes gathering pencil thick twigs to pack in at the start, and a few 'spares' in case it needs a bit of a top-up during cooking. You can also use fir cones or even dry leaves.

The heat from these stoves is amazing - forget camping gaz!

Obviously, it's for outdoor cooking not inside a tent or van!

There are other types, which use a similar 'wood gas' principal, but the addition of the fan at the base means that it will burn more varieties of wood etc. as fuel.

[ringo]

Hee hee - i like the bit when he says "the manufacturer recommends the use of some type of lighter fluid - but i think thats cheating" and then promptly plugs it into a battery which is most definitely cheating!

I think i'll stick to the Cobb - but it does look like a neat idea.

Ringo

[Bilbo Blue]

Fantastic

[jed the spread]

What flammable gas exactly is the wood tuned into, surly your just adding oxygen to a fuel (wood) with the fan and its accelerating the Fuel (wood). Although i can see how these work and am not disagreeing with the fact they are good, I think that fella is full of Sl-lIT.

jed

[andisnewsyncro]

I vaguely remember a chemistry lesson at school where some sawdust or wood shavings were heated in a test tube with a glass pipe coming from the cork in the top of it. The teacher then lit the gas that came out of the glass pipe.... No idea what it was or what it proved though, sorry

[jed the spread]

We need some chemists to solve this problem

jed

[andisnewsyncro]

You got me searching now Jed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas

Time to go and post some parcels and then see if anyone down the pub knows owt about it

[jed the spread]

So a gasifier can get methane from wood. In that stove and two logs chopped up i doubt it is the methane that has gasified enough to run the stove. I recon its the motor that accelerates the fuel like bellows do in a furnace. I cant help still feeling that fella is abullshitmerchant.

jed

[DiscoDave]

you forgot to say with a fat toungE. it's a whole pile of crap! gasify isn't even a real word! get a multifuel stove, petrol burns when it's wet, can't see your damp twigs doing much gasifying fancy fan or not.

bought me dad a kelly kettle for his birthday last year, that's quite impressive, plus, never made one cuppa that weekend!

[andisnewsyncro]

Just to keep up to date; nobody in the pub had the faintest idea what I was talking about...

[a1winchester]

In reality, the 'gas' is the smoke burning - it's the same principal as many wood burning stoves in homes, where the air supply is heated, and mixed with the smoke. This then ignites and is much more efficient than simply burning wood.

I have to confess to being a bit of a camping stove Nerd, and I have all sorts. I did a test on some of the stoves to see how long to boil an identical volume of water. This woodgas stove thingy came 2nd to a Coleman multifuel burning unleaded petrol.

[jed the spread]

Sorry i am not convinced with the gasified theory being used in this stove. Get a quality street tin, pack it with wood, set fire to it and blow on it. The oxygen will fuel the fire and it will get hot, same thing. I am up for being corrected on this but to be honest there is one thing that is riling me about this chap.
Look at his wrist, the fella is a christian. There fore as a christian he believes the world is 6000 years old and not billions of years old thus denying that even dinosaurs existed, or that we evolved from apes. These are basic scientific facts along with lets say limestone that is made from compressed sea crustaceans that are surprise surprise Billions of years old. So i cant be blamed for thinking this fellas scientific theories about this stove are bullshit. As a christian he shouldn't be talking about scientific stuff anyway because it doesnt exist.....

jed

[a1winchester]

Sorry i am not convinced with the gasified theory being used in this stove. Get a quality street tin, pack it with wood, set fire to it and blow on it.

jed

Oh ye of little faith!

I reckon there's a difference between giving extra air (oxygen) to burning wood, and burning the wood and it's combustion products in a more controlled and efficient manner.

Giving extra O2 will make the fire burn quicker and hotter, but still give off unburnt gases. If you can ignite these byproducts of the initial combustion, you can get more heat from the fuel. If you look inside a wood burning stove in someone's home you will often see the flames of the secondary combustion at the top of the stove. that's the secondary combustion. I believe I read somewhere that the additional air feeding the secondary combustion needs to be preheated.

There is another wood burning camping stove called the Bush Buddy, but this doesn't have the little fan gizmo so I don't think it is as efficient. http://bushbuddy.ca/

If you are interested in the subject of wood burning camping stoves, there's quite an interesting thread on the subject in the canoeing web site forum, Song of the Paddle here http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/ ... php?t=7436

A friend of mine has recently returned from Uganda, where by coincidence, they are introducing a new type of cooking fire which works on a similar principal (with natural draught - no batteries!), and so is much more efficient, and safer to operate than their traditional open cook fires. apparently one of the highest causes of accidents there is kids falling onto open fires! Fire wood is also in short supply in some areas, so the more efficient stoves save fuel.

[Tatty Chap]

By the looks of it, it works on a similar principle to charcoal burning for smelting etc.

I like it

[jed the spread]

Seems its true, this is from Wiki,

Wood gas is a syngas also known as producer gas which is produced by thermal gasification of biomass or other carbon containing materials such as coal in a gasifier or wood gas generator or producer gas. It is the result of two high-temperature reactions (above 700 °C (1,292 °F)): an exothermic reaction where carbon burns to CO2 but is then reduced partially back to CO (endothermic); and an endothermic reaction where carbon reacts with steam, producing carbon monoxide (CO), molecular hydrogen (H2), and carbon dioxide (CO2).
In several gasifiers, the actual gasification process is preceded by pyrolysis, where the biomass or coal turns into char, releasing methane (CH4) and tar rich in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Other gasifiers are fed with previously pyrolysed char. Wood gas is flammable because of the carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and methane content.

Pesky christians

jed