I feel like I'm experiencing the Mandela Effect. How did I get to be 48 years old without knowing this part of history? Thanks for your effort in putting this together. Well done.
Where do you live? This sort of tech is prevalent in places where oil is at best rationed or at worst REALLY rationed like Europe during and after WW2...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 I live in the US. I had no idea how widely used it was during World War II. It makes sense with all of the fuel shortages in Europe. It’s just not something I’ve ever had a teacher or any documentaries. I’ve watched really address. Not saying they didn’t maybe mention it at all, but it wasn’t like a whole own section of history discussed. Probably part of it because we had so many internal combustion engines and transported fuel for the war effort once we got involved. And then I don’t think it was very widely used technology on the homefront. I’m kind of aware of it from the energy crunch in the 70s where some people were reapplying it kind of like the documentary said.
This technology MUST NOT be lost ! No , its not relevant fore today or environmentally sound, BUT ,, if There's a world war , this could gain HUNDREDS of years in development time in rebuilding civilization. Just try to imagine a world without farm tractors ??? Ontario Canada .
The best thing about gasifiers is that you can run gasifier engines on anything that burns. Coal, fuel pellets, logs, turds, plastics, you name it. So long as you can filter it enough it will run an engine.
@@seeker1015 - Thank you for answering my question. How is the vapor filtered without trapping it in the filter as a liquid, before combusting it? Or is that the intent? Then once in liquid form, revaporised into a combustible spray?
Great work in putting together the lineage of the wood gasifier.. as a young boy in Germany during the early 70's, some of my relatives had these from vehicles left over from the war. Extremely simple to operate and very reliable! Today we are enslaved by instant convenience.. it seems that the days of simplicity are gone as we continue to complicate even the most simple tasks.
I don't see how this is any simpler than pumping gasoline or diesel into a tank. Convenience? How long does it take to start up one of these gasifiers? I can let my car sit for weeks and with the turn of a key be driving on the road in less than a minute.
@@BryanTorok Yeah, that is a narrow view of the topic only realizing your particular needs.. others may look at a bigger picture and use the system/technology to maybe generate electricity for lighting/charging etc. That is ultimately what they were used for on farms back in their day, I believe they call it "co-generation" these days. The "convenience" is an other's labor, I think you're missing that too.
@@bozosplayhouse I could see an application for this where one is so far off the grid that oil and natural gas are not available. I don't see it being used at scale. We would run out of wood. Prior to the UK switching to coal, homes and businesses were heated with wood. They literally cut down all the trees and were importing wood from the colonies that would eventually become the USA. Imagine shipping wood from the Americas to the UK to burn for heat. There is enough natural gas under western Pennsylvania to supply the needs of the USA for the next 200 years. There is enough oil to last for at least 100 years and enough coal for 200 years. The current energy shortage is entirely man made by our current administration trying to force every into electric cars.
@@BryanTorok All good points!.. but this is more of a solution for a rural family, farmers. My family is from the Kerpen area or Germany, all farmers from a way back.. broke as a joke if you know what I mean.. the ones who found work dug lignite and brown coal from the dirt and had to find uses for what they could pack home on their backs, because that is all there was. Ingenuity was their evolution.. If you want examples of "Green Energy" gone awry, just look up the Koch Brothers and Biofuel.. they invented a whole industry for harvesting Federal grants and burning forests with the money.. it's priceless! The natural gas industry paid me many paychecks, that said.. I have nothing bad to say about the industry as a whole. It's the cleanest, cheapest energy hands down.. especially today! But OPEC doesn't control it! The Brandon Administration has one big flaw in their "Clean Energy Initiative" and that is where are they going to get this "clean" energy to charge the electric cars? And please don't insult with Solar or Wind! How is that supply going to funnel down through the cities and neighborhoods to hundreds of thousands of charging stations, all using current electrical infrastructure? -All charging around the same time daily! I tell you what, all that Santa has for those freezing woke countries this winter is a big bag of COAL! ..my apologies for the rant.
@@bozosplayhouse OK on the rant and I agree completely. I have great hope and also worry for the upcoming election and the sheep who can't think for themselves. And, even if that goes well, we have to get through the following two years and pray for a good outcome then. Lastly, it will take 5 to 10 years to repair the damage already done to the USA. And, that is if we don't end up in WW3 from our spineless foreign policy.
great video mate, I've always been interested in wood powered cars, they were popular in Australia until about 1948 (the end of fuel rationing) and you see old cars from that era converted to wood gas sitting in museums a fair bit, I always take pictures of them when I see them, most are homemade conversions using whatever they could find to make the gasifier
@@thearchitect4726 I only saw one in the flesh once. It was a pre-war car and had a bladder on the roof. So you've got to generate the gas and capture a handy amount of it before you can go anywhere. BTW, I despise robo-voiceovers and had to bail after 4 minutes.
In the USA, FEMA put out a manual on using wood gasification to power passenger vehicles, tractors, generators, etc in an emergency situation. It is very basic but I printed it off and it was enough for me to get started and to interest me enough to study the Imbert gassifiers and learn more. It is freely available and a starting point for anyone interested.
I've heard offhand that the simplified FEMA gasifiers produce a lot of tar in their gas, making them harmful for common use (but you're not worrying about that in emergencies).
That FEMA abortion is the worst thing to happen to wood gasification ever.....its designed to fail to produce clean gas and to destroy the engine it is feeding........with little more effort a simple imbert type can be made that is leagues ahead of that FEMA contraption
@@unhippy1 that is pretty much what I now think of the FEMA manual. But it was my first intro and was enough to make me want to learn the real deal on gassifer construction and use.
A friend who lives near my French house has a 1931 Model A Ford with a Gasogene made by the Skandinovisk Motor Co. of Copenhagen, Denmark. This was added to the Model A in 1939. He fired it up for me one day and we had a brief if rather leisurely drive around in it, once it had finally started gasifying. It uses very dry logs about 12 inches long and 4 x 4" section. Top speed is around 35 to 40 MPH (I suspect downhill with the wind behind).
After learning of the advantages of gasification, whenever I drive around and see where people have cut trees and placed their cuttings out to be picked up, I don't see tree cuttings I see free fuel lol
yeah me neither, in all the auto history docu's I've watched, never came up with cars with gas air-mattresses on top. Heard about wood to make steam but not wood gas. Tellin' ya it's like some weird new mandela effect. Gasifiers were not liked by the common person it seems. In some other parallel world there's no forests left because of gasifiers.
Yep, I still think that is a really complex prank. Just looked for other articles, and found few. Few guys even making their own these days. Some comments also confirm the existence. But in half a century I watched a lot of documentaries. Learned about many weird things, but do not remember of this. Lately found about a lot of electric vehicles, even steam vehicles, but not of this. It is like we are actually in a simulation, and I lived in a different one, and suddenly got moved in this one, almost identical, but with a weird contraption added. .
Under the previous administration in the USA, gasoline was $2.35 per gallon. The previous president filled the strategic oil reserves. A pipeline from Canada to the southern USA that environmental protesters had stopped for a decade was finally about to be built. The USA was energy independent, exporting more than it imported. The economy was growing, manufacturing was growing, inflation was low. Then the current administration took over and propelled by the green ideology and climate change, in less than one year they destroyed all of it. They stopped building the new pipeline from Canada and shut down another in the eastern USA. They stopped all off-shore oil exploration and the use of fracking. This oil shortage and high fuel prices are entirely man made. There is enough natural gas under western Pennsylvania to supply the USA for 200 years. There is plentiful oil reserves in Canada and Alaska for at least 100 years and enough coal for 200 years. If we can't power our internal combustion engines on oil or natural gas, we can gasify coal which is far more energy dense than wood. When the USA was exporting oil & gas to Europe and other areas, that drove down the costs in those areas. It also reduced reliance on Russia and OPEC+ so that those countries didn't have to bow down to egomaniac dictators and crazy men. In the pursuit of a this green ideology, leaders have shut down coal fired generating plants, impoverished their people and made much of Europe at the mercy of Putin.
In 1945, I witnessed cars and small trucks running on charcoal produced gas, in Japan. They were out of gasoline so they attached it to the vehicle. I was amazed.
This is a very interesting story. After what I've seen the US government do, it wouldn't surprise me if gasification got popular again only to have the government ban it because of the danger of "deforestation". That's being a pessimist but, on the other hand, it is nice to see that we have an alternative that we can turn to when we need it. This only goes to show that the internal combustion engine isn't going away just yet.
@@rolandgo6744 Or the evil ones cut us off from all energy as Bill Gates of Hell tries to block out sun shine and Fed zilla won't let us get at coal,oil,gas, hydroelectric dams and doesn't want us to burn wood or grow vegetable gardens or even exist it seems, among their other crimes! Worst dictators we have ever been under! Can't wait till they are voted out! Anyone could do better than they do! They are insanely evile!🐲🐉
That was absolutely fantastically put together! Glad I got into gasification when I did, my second wood burning truck is nearing completion as we speak. I hope to make the annual woodgas meet up in argos indiana next year with one or maybe both of my trucks
@@greenleafyman1028 Yup! Woodgas, and charcoal gas, has kept my generators alive for that amount of time, mainly during the winter. Solar power takes over, during the summer.
The documentary was very interesting I must say. I did heard about synthetic gasoline during WW2 and a bit about holzgas but I did not imagine it was used in civil applications at that scale even way before the war and never seen photos. Especially those gas bags were something very surprising to me. However, you completely got me lost on those final thoughts about no progress without fuel while most factories and pretty much everything except heavy construction machinery can and is running on electricity. Surely in less wealthy countries it's a problem in terms of cars and trucks without a sufficient gas and diesel supply but electricity for everything else can be produced without it and usually is. And I'm not talking about solar., wind and atom but rather coal which is still plentiful. Those countries cannot be effectively forced to abandon it, surely there can be economical sanctions or something but I cannot imagine military invasion over that. And the thought about charging an electric car with a generator sounded like being in direct contradiction on the statement about upcoming fuel crisis and wars over it. Why would anyone want to charge an electric car with something that scarce like liquid fule in those circumstances when one could do it simply with a solar panels that are widely available even in places where electric vehicles are not yet that popular and especially in those they are. It wouldn't disappear over night, would it? That's just my view on the topic which doesn't change the fact you did a nice job with the video and I appreciate it ;-)
it took a hundred years to get a gas station on every corner, it will take longer for poor counties than rich counties to make that switch. When we outlaw gas, we will simply loan Juan Valdez the money for a solar panel We will then have the poor countries by the short hairs so we can enjoy our morning coffee. Quitcher bitchin' Juan, and get to work, I want a coffee! "But is this not usury?" you may ask. ahh my young padawan learner, but this is how the world works. He could always process our recycling instead of frolicking with young virgins in the mountain coffee orchards if he wants, whatever, I don't care, nuclear disposal maybe, just give us our goddamn money back at triple our return on investment. Juan is just going to have to put off his retirement if he doesn't want his grandchildren to be flipper babies.
There are certainly many wood chip burning power plants in the US. This is actually a carbon-neutral process, especially when the chips come from fast growing trees. So this technology does exist, turning wood into electricity that can be used for charging electric cars. The gassification process is even used in small wood-fired boilers for off-grid home heating. The creators of the Lumnah Acres RU-vid channel have one on their farm, if you want to see it in action.
I can get plenty of wood chips. The gassifier interests me because wood chips can be automated 24 x 7. Otherwise, the effort to process and handle the wood is time consuming, if you can find cheap wood.
If you want to take this a step further, during the condensing of the gas, all the liquid condensate needs to be removed and the syn gas that is remaining should be passed through a red hot iron pipe with steel wool packed in. This will begin to polymerize the hydrogen and carbon monoxide into synthetic diesel fuel length hydrocarbon chains. Diesel fuel from wood.
@@gengaz-lagunov some types of zeolite will polymerize to gasoline length chains, but they are straight chain hydrocarbons and have an extremely low octane rating. You need to use a platinum catalyst under a few atmospheres of pressure to "reform" the hydrocarbon chains into higher octane "rings". Actual chemistry terms are heavily simplified for non chemist backyard enthusiasts.
Good work putting this information together. Very underrated process of using the energy that is at our fingertips on a daily basis. I can see the possibility of an even greater renaissance of gasification . . . . . especially if it were to be developed into a compact modular unit based on it's application.
Sir, THANK YOU for this video and other videos on wood gasifiers! My grandfathers used to tell me that after the war there were "trucks that ran on firewood" and had "boilers", but i confused them early on with steam trucks. once i learned about biogas vehicles, these became a topic of interest from at least 2006, and i remember back then there was essentially only vedbil and a few online articles. Finally i get to sit and see the entire history of wood gas powered vehicles. I have one question pertaining to wood gas vehicles... those in North Korea (muktancha) always seem to be bellowing smoke from the gasifier. this happened with some older ones in Yugoslavia as well, but not with other Imbert gasifiers. why the smoke? or is it just sloppy way theyre made?
I've seen a few dozen across the USA. A lot of farmers used this tech in the 40's, and the government has released a few guides though different organizations. It's not used because energy is relatively cheap here.
Interesting video! I myself tried to find informations on woodgas, but thete isn't much to find and I allways wondered why, since the golden age wasn't that long ago. My favourite engine is still the sterling engine and I think they have good chances nowadays that NASA researches them a lot. But yes, the next energy crisis might bring back woodgas! Or it depends if nuclear power gets into the "green energy sector" or not and how harsh governments treat wood burning . . . what for some reason now is bad and unnatural where I live
Thank you for an excellent documentary. I respect the amount of work that goes into making this. As a mechanical engineer and hobby fabricator I would love to build a modern semi automated wood gas generator for my house. Coupled with a house battery, Electric car and perhaps also solar and wind it would be awsome. I own enough land that I should have no problem producing enough firewood. I think you are right that energy will be highly priced in our near future and possibly not available in the required quantities.
Oil is an important lubricant, of course. Diesel is a fuel, but has significant lubricating properties. It's often called "heating oil" here in the US, after red dye is added to indicate exemption from road taxes. I think of gasoline as a fuel first, but as a solvent second. In fact, I use it to clean small engine carburetors, and that works well. My question is this: If a modern gas-powered engine, with fuel injection, were run "dry" (without gasoline) but on woodgas instead, would the injectors wear any differently?
The wear will be 50% less because the gas does not wash away the oil film (of course, unless it is a two-stroke engine where the oil must be diluted in gasoline).
The modern gasifiers produce exceedingly clean burning fuel. I want to learn more and use this fuel. I know two guys who are experts in gasification so I have no excuse for not learning. Be curious, young people. This could be a really viable option for future energy production.
Is there a part 2 to this excellent look at gasifiers? Are there any videos on modern applications for Gasifier's? I think a very good idea would be a Gasifier for whole house power generation... Not only providing electricity but heat as well to a in floor radiant heating system... you only need 185 degrees Fahrenheit or 85 Celsius for your longest heating runs... Thanks for all you hard work bringing this information to the world... Cheers!
OKAY, THEY'RE KLUNKY AND NOT VERY FASHIONABLE, BUT...RUNNING ON WOOD, YOU CAN'T BEAT THAT. I WISH I HAD A FEW OF THOSE. WHO KNEW? APPARENTLY, WE DID FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS. GASIFIERS
People in parts of Europe are reverting back to wood and coal as heating fuel with the petroleum and gas shortages. We may see wood burning cars make a comeback as well.
The best thing about the wood gas is that the source of fuel is locally available anywhere. If the wood gas gain popularity there would be a 2 scenario 1. Pessimistic - There will be more deforestation due to massive logging to satisfy the demand of the public. Calamities become stronger and deadly. Countries that was previously exploited will immediately be turned into a wasteland. More people are going to die, many proxy wars will happened in the countries with huge rainforest, Amazon will completely dead. 2. Optimistic - The governments in the world steps in, implements a worldwide sustainable practices such as coppicing afforestation and expect to see more trees in urban areas.There will be a big incentives in planting more trees and massive capital investment will be poured on GMOs in fast growing trees and fast efficient tree planting technology that would result in a more trees being grown compared to the last centuries.
according to my prediction. Diesel engines will rule the world in the future. because diesel can use cooking oil. (now there is 100% biodiesel) remember !! The battery production process is much more polluting to the environment. (not including the used waste)
I use a gasifier and I also have a biogas digester, I use sewage and plant waste to produce methane. I have solar panels and wind turbines plus a hydro generator. As a backup, engine generators that run on this compressed gas. I heat my home with a compost Jean Pain system with a water wood heater. I hate to let free energy go to waste.
I wonder what price point of petrol will motivate us to revisit this technology. My friend palletized a wood gas unit to run wood splitter, Genset,etc. Runs on pellets quite well. What ICE layout would be the best commuter, I-4,I-6,V-8?
The most important point in this video is that COMPETITION is the most important and most successful path to innovation and solving all of the world’s problems. The free market capitalist societies have done more for human kind than any other type of society.
With gas prices over 5 dollars a gallon we need a company to start making a pull behind gasifier again I bet a lot of people would buy them and with the fact that vehicles would be duel full with a tank of gas for back up there is so much waste wood at construction sites and rather than knocking down old houses they could reclaim the wood instead of hauling it to the dump and burying it only to have it turn to methane which is a more potent green house gas than carbon
Constructive criticism: Lose the background noise. Nice educational video, but you ruined it with annoying background music. I couldn't take it for more than a minute. Why do people feel compelled to add crappy music while they are talking to the world? You are what we clicked on - not the music!
Assembling all this footage was a mammoth task and makes interesting viewing. However it's embarrassingly two dimensional, because the chemistry and efficiency of these vehicles is glossed over. At no point did I feel that the author understands how these engines work!
@@gengaz-lagunov Sergey, realizing you are a reptilian who wishes to mislead...where would you direct a very experienced combustion engineer to look for sophisticated plans that could be experimented with (home generator/maybe auto)? Also interested in why you use PSA vs. VSA in your spaceship components...but I think you would just flicker your tongue & I wouldn't understand the translation.
nice content...you have my mind on a tour with this documentary, it puts everything i believed about internal combustion engines in a different perspective...thank you! 😉
'Split Wood NOT Atoms' A bumpersticker on my 1960 VW hippie-camper van said. Now we know burning wood, even using the most efficient pellet systems with perfect air mixtures and catalysts, is a terrible greenhouse gas producer. The naivete' of that bright-eyed hippie is both nostalgic and embarrassing. in the end... it looks like... WE'RE ALL GONNA FRY! (or drown), silly youmans...
Electricity and in general the electromagnetic field is humanity’s future most likely forever… whether it be using electricity for motors, for levitation, for magnetism, for gravity manipulation, for complex lithography, or for literally everything else where we need energy… of course some traditional wood burning and petrochemical application will remain but as far as energy and humankind goes, electricity will undoubtedly be our future… at the moment we know barely anything in society about the exploitation of the electromagnetic field but the government is quite knowledgeable about it… eventually this information will hit society and we will see a vast change in the way that we build our infrastructure and how we go about producing energy and consuming energy. We just need to survive the “dirty age” which I think we can use to coin the past 200 years and future 20-30 years… this research on electromagnetic field exploitation is almost at mainstream but nobody knows about it yet, but it is ready for the next step in development which is commercialization… there are even patents in place already for most of it. As humans become more clever and traverse our odds of finding new discoveries faster and faster with each new person added to the population and each increase in computing power, we are going to get to the golden age of what can essentially be called free energy (not free physically, just free for us humans) and absolutely wild new capabilities of our transportation sector… for now though we have the petrochemical industry which will not allow this new tech to see the light of day until something crazy happens and it is leaked to the world by some selfless fearless inventor (just as always was in our human history… we didn’t have to wait thousands of years to get to where we are today… we decided to. We would have achieved modern tech many centuries ago if we weren’t to be so greedy and bigoted as a society, and the worst offenders are governments and some wealthy groups of individuals controlling modern society… at some level of money and influence, one tends to be able to truly make “a difference”… just not necessarily a good one for the evolution of the human species).
Yup. You need to include a little diesel to ignite the woodgas though, unless you put sparkplugs in your diesel engine. Most people use about 10% diesel, 90% woodgas, Turbo diesels usually have too high compression so the waste-gate needs to be adjusted or the turbo disabled to avoid pre-ignition.
Charcoal briquttes are about 40 % clay don't work. You used charcoal, which is good. Mix straw with your clay and your furnaces won't crack and fall apart.
As far as an energy shortage and rolling blackouts, aren't we at the point where each individual home can produce not only enough to power itself, but also enough excess to sell a surplus back to the energy company?
Does anyone know what the song is that starts just after 43:03? It sounds German, but Shazam won't catch it. and Google Translate won't catch what the words are either.
good video, but there is not an oil crisis, electric vehicles have been around since the car was invented, america is sitting on enough oil to operate cars cheaply for 400 + years at the very least, a 200 year supply is sitting under new mexico and texas, so with that, gasifier engines are going to make a come back with the poor, cant rely on electric vehicles due to electricity shortages in places like california, new york during the summer with their rolling black outs. LP gas ( propane ) was used as a substitute back in the 70's cause of the jimmy carter created gas shortages. america has more oil under it than any other country in the world.
is an idiom from Russian that literally means that the cost of gasoline was so high that people would literally have to give a liter of their own blood to get a liter of gasoline.
Sorry but the history is just plain wrong. Gas generation on an industrial level dates from the FIRST Industrial Revolution, not the second. London started to be lit by gas from about 1815 onwards, Paris from 1820. I’m surprised the writers didn’t know this.
first industrial revolution 1740-1780s, Second industrial revolution Started in 1870 and continued until 1914. and I'm talking about gas generators, and not about when London began to be illuminated, lighting gas and gas generators are different things
Anyone like to guess what sort of power systems are and will continue to be used to produce the raw materials for all these miracle "electric" vehicles and all the cables to transport the electricity as generated by all the precision machinery in all the power stations. Rainbows and unicorn farts? "Wind" power is a cosmic joke on a large scale. The fancy blades are frozen hydrocarbons (polyester resin) encasing GLASS fibre. Solar panels require huge inputs of exotic materials MINED from all over the planet. They are all "high maintenance", Our grandchildren will ask: "What did we do for light before candles?" To which the reply will be; "Electricity". The eco-nazis are a DEATH CULT.
You couldn't be more misinformed. I suspect that I know where you get your disinformation. Modern wind turbines are supremely economically efficient. They return both their monetary investment and their embodied energy within months. All of the copper, rare earth metals, etc. are infinitely recyclable. The only problematic area has been the blades but they can be pyrolized to produce fuels and feedstock chemicals, leaving behind recyclable glass.
