Burning Charcoal & Wood Pellets in a Wood Gas Stove 

Just wanted to add a quick note...on review I realised I actually only used one cup of wood pellets not two as I stated in the video...hope you enjoy

Charcoal cannot produce woodgas, because all the woodgas has already been removed in the charcoal process. Pellets alone however are probably the best fuel for a woodgas stove.

You don't need a windscreen for a wood stove... a breeze will actually help it burn much better, just like with any fire. The idea is that air comes in through the vents at the bottom, and up between the double wall structure, where the air is heated by the burning wood in the chamber. Once the heated air comes out through the vents at the top, it mixes with gases that emit from the burning wood and causes re-ignition. This is what is known as the gasification process. I use my wood stove for outdoor BBQs all the time. One thing I'll say is that you don't need a lot of wood at the beginning. I see a lot of people stuffing their wood chamber to the brink, which will almost always cause your fire to die off half way. Fire needs oxygen more than anything, especially at the beginning... so you have to give your wood some room to breathe, and try to insert the sticks in a way that the fire can climb up and get going. Sometimes I'll just bring some kindling in case there are no sticks or twigs lying around. I sometimes also bring some charcoal as well, as it will stay proper hot much longer. Hope that helps...

Just watched your original charcoal test in the Titan, and am very glad to see this follow-up experiment! As I experiment myself and get to know my new Titan, I think I may try my own follow-up based on your commenters’ suggestions of 1) using larger and/or a higher ratio of wood pellets. And 2) I think I will light the fire from the bottom, and pack the fuel chamber more loosely to possibly permit greater airflow for the pellets to catch fire throughout the chamber. Thanks again for taking us along on your wonderful explorations! :)

What I sometimes do for fuel with my gasification stove is to use my brush loppers to "lop" me some branches about 1 inch thick and as long as needed to fit in my stove. I then fill my stove with these wood pieces standing on end until the stove burn chamber is filled. I light them with a cottonball soaked in vaseline same as you used here. I also sometimes use some thick pieces of birch bark to light the stove instead of the vaseline cottonballs. It will burn for about 20 minutes without further maintenance. If I want it to last longer then I toss in fresh pieces of wood as needed when needed. Of course a person would need to have access to proper sized branches which not everyone does.

I really enjoy your videos, informative, laid back, and entertaining....all in one package!

I have had great results with lump charcoal in same style stove as seen in this video. I pack a few large chunks in then do a top down burn, using twigs and birch bark for starter. Great way to boil, then simmer for a long time (nice for braising too).

Thanks for making these awesome videos! I love the scientific approach, and the creative use of other items.

I learn a lot from your videos. From your videos I used cat wood litter, fired it up with alcohol gel. It burned for over 2 hours on my lixadia. Cooked with it. Was really good. You produce very useful, helpful videos.

bio lite cook stove with wood pellets and the grill accessory is a great combination. does just what you were trying to do. long burn time and adjustable heat control.

great presentation - thank you for doing this!

If you did all pellets, some charcoal pellets and some regular, all the same size, I'm certain you would get a better result, for cooking. The wood gas is another thing, which is really just smoke. The wood should provide that for flavor and get the whole burn going a little faster. Most of the gas is already burned off the charcoal. It seems the lighter the are, more wood gas has been depleted. I'm not a burnologist, but the higher the wood ratio, with enough oxygen of coarse, the faster and hotter it should burn. It takes a fairly high temp and some flame to get charcoal going good on its own, reliably.

I have tried small bits of lumpwood charcoal on my wood gas stove, just to see if was a viable set up. I found with pellets there is a flame and also gasses being produced, so allowing the stove to do what it was designed to do. With the charcoal there is no visible flame so no secondary burn. making the stove design redundant. Great to see it being tried out by others as well, Thank you.

Great experiment

Just for thoroughness, you should have pressed on and put a burger over the coals to see what effect the burning of the drippings had. SPOILER ALERT The flame-broiled burgers of fast food chains are broiled by the flames of their fat dripping onto a red hot screen. Sorry DQ and BK, if I've pulled back the curtain.

Like your videos. I use wood gas stoves with wood pellets and set a folding grill over the stove for grilling meat. The grill surface is about five inches above the stove and is perfect for a steak or two hamburgers at a time.

Thanks, I had also wondered if charcoal briquettes would work in this stove. Hope you're well.

Thanks for sharing- I love seeing experiments. I use my Biolite grill attachment all the time, and it's accepted into restricted, no open flame areas. I think the offset heat really works. I have no problems cooking steak, brauts, kabobs, etc.Maybe you could try making an offset or overset grill for your stove that would solve the high heat problem

Great test Mark. I'm seeing a IKEA stove for charcoal, without cutting the hole, just as purchased would be a great way to go. No pieces falling out.

It just seems like a lot of work for a slow starting fire that goes out. I did see one idea for grilling that seemed to work. The guy used a charcoal chimney starter, filled it with charcoal, and just threw a rack on top to grill a steak. Lots of power, probably had the steak done in 2 minutes, had to be 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Thank you for the video, Mark

Parafin Wax soaked cotton pads works well. When the wax melts, I think it soaks into the surrounding fuel and ignites it. They are also water proof but not always easy to ignite with a ferro rod unless you get a good wax.

Thanks again for your very informative video. I have the Ohuhu stove with little BBQ grill arriving today. I bought it for $21 off Amazon because I admit I made an impulse buy on the MSR Windburner stove. I did not do my homework and am having a hard time wanting to part with the price of their specialized cookware. I came across your channel because the Lixada stove pot rest ring works well enough (better than the Jetboil pot rest - too small opening) as a hack to allow me to carefully use any smallish regular pot. In learning how useful and complimentary these two stoves are I will be glad to have both it seems 👍 I was especially interested in your experiments with the different types of fuel. Thank you and stay safe!

good test, i had thought of it but never did try it.

ordered one of these this morning. for the cheap price there worth experimenting with. cheers

Hi Mark, I myself recently learned that it's safe to use Vegetable Oil for a fire starter too. Ya learn something new every day. Lol 😀👍😎

Thankyou Mark

I'm new to your channel and stumbled upon it, looking for some sort of hiking-friendly wood stove. I'm going to start by building one of my own (the Hobo-way), from junk tins from my household, and I wanted inspiration. Let me just thank you a bunch - it's delightful how you go rather unplanned into these tests, and just sum it up after. Great findings and modifications you are ending up with. Thanks for the good work. Subscribed!

Hey Mark, I use hardwood chips in mine (the kind you use in your smoker). Works great! But I like the pellet idea too.

Good experiment...

That helps a lot. Thanks for the quick response. Just subbed your channel. Great videos!

Look at how charcoal is made, all the gas is baked out of it leaving charcoal that burns easily without gasification, wood pellets or tinder is best for the wood gas stove. Thanks for showing us what happens. And yes I think boiling water or frying something in a small skillet is all these are good for. And thats all a hiker out in the boonies needs lol

Aprovecho Starts Their Pellets With Kerosene Or Lighter Fluid. Works Great!!

I think the windbreak may be more of a hinderance than a help when it comes to the charcoal. Maybe try the windbreak to get started then remove it. Just my two bits. I use compressed logs instead of pellets and am very satisfied with them. However I use them in my backyard and don't pack them places. Thanks for the upload. Cheers.

Why don’t you try a combination of wood pellets and Gravy Train dry dog food? Both are roughly in the shape of pellets. I really didn’t realize that regular wood pellets were so small. The gaps in between them were rather small. Not sure if it’s the right deal for getting a wood gas type of stove going. Dry dog food looks like it’s going to be several times bigger. Better for the wood gas to get started going better because of the larger gaps in between the items. Bigger gaps in between means less resistance to the wood gas flowing through the system.

Mark, what about using a box of small matches dumped on top of the first circle you made. Forget the pellets and keep building your pile...... with another box of the small matches sprinkled in. Pretty good amt of wood and one heckuva blast of heat when then matches ignite. I’m like you........ Love R&D 😄🔥😄

Didn’t have wood pellet but I got pistachios for Christmas so I put the shells in it and it worked great lol

Thanks 🙏

can you put newspaper at the bottom to start? like a charcoal starter? heat rises and flame

Cool vid Mark! I think we need to get you hooked up with some real charcoal one of these days.

Good video, thanks. What kind of wood handle is your neck knife made of? Very nice.

Question Mark, are the wood pellets ok to grill on ? Just wondering if there are any toxins in them such as glue or something. Great video series on these stoves.

I am a big fan of the wood pellets. They seem to burn clean and are very consistent. Also inexpensive and easy to transport with me for camping/backpacking.

I actually just asked this question in a forum. I thought I have though. Using pellets are like the primer to get the charcoal going. So would you not just put a small layer on the bottom and the charcoal on the top. Pellets gasify and star the charcoal, surely though you must be able to charcoal to grill or make a stew/hotpot type dish?

alcohol stove on top of the lid works great in a gasifier stove. snuff out with the simmer ring when done

I have a question for you, sir. I do a lot of baking. I do have an old camping stove with an attached oven but really don’t want to set it up to bake bread if the power should go out. The alternative I am working on is a copper box (for even heat distribution) on top of small, portable fireplace. The box is only about the size of a large toaster oven. I an thinking about using my wood gas stove as the source of heat for this oven. The bottom of the stove will be about 4 inches (10 centimeters) above the top of the stove. My desired baking temperature is around 350 degrees. The design of the entire setup is such that most of the heat from the stove will be absorbed into the copper of the oven. I’m guessing that the amount of heat that will be absorbed by the copper will be somewhere between 90 - 95 percent. Since you have been testing fuels in your wood gas stoves I am wondering as to whether or not you might have an opinion concerning which fuel(s) I should use. I need a baking time of approximately 25 minutes. Thank you

A few years late but in my opinion it might be better to use Wood pellets first, and when the wood gas is expended add the charcoal.

I am curious as to why there is a prohibition against using the locally available twigs and such. Many parks in the US prohibit bringing wood from outside to prevent invasive insects from being introduced into the park. Great video! I am learning a lot from them. Thank you.

Bear with me here... :) :) ... long-winded... need to 'splain... :) :) ... Since you used a wood-gasifier stove whose spent product at the end of gasification (and the burn) is charcoal...I am a little mystified as to your reason to (re) introduce charcoal bricks, which is spent, gasified wood anyway-- and useless to this type of stove. The double wall of the stove re-burns the smoke (wood gas) from the heated wood pellets and produces flames as a source of high heat-- to reheat the charcoal. The charcoal will not glow unless a sufficient amount of wood pellets have been introduced to be heated sufficiently to produce wood gas, which is the source of the flame, and the only way to reheat the charcoal-- since charcoal can only glow, and not make flame on its own (it's devoid of wood gas). ?. If you wish to grill on the charcoal, then you are using the charcoal bricks because they (you assume) last longer than the residual charcoal left over after a normal wood gasifier burn .? If the above is the case, then ratios matter... I would try using smaller charcoal bricks and more wood pellets. The danger here is a runaway stove, where after getting the charcoal hot enough to grill with, the fat drippings will wick into the spent pellets and charcoal below, catching afire and possibly producing gas-- and therefore more heat-- in a loop. What you will wind up with at the end is more or less exactly what you will wind up with if you properly fill the stove with the right thumb-sized wood chunks and do the top-down lighting thing to begin with; you will have that same amount of charcoal to try to cook on. When all is said and done, I am almost sure that a large coffee can without a **double-wall gasification mechanism** (the source of your defeat) will do the job. Love these scientific videos with stoves... they are fascinating! Thanks!

Could you grill over a tripod? You could raise or lower to change heat volume.

I do not grill over my Solo Stove Lite , just use it as a normal heat source for cooking. A friend of mine like to use Hickory chips in his Zip Stove. I have not tried the Hickory Chips , I like small Oak twigs. If I can't use wood then I use a small Evernew Titanium Alcohol burner in the chamber as a 2nd heating source.

Have you tried burning stove grade corn in these stoves?

Try the swedish fire torch method from Firebox videos.

Has anyone tried dry, shelled corn in a WG stove? Corn used to be touted as a replacement for wood pellets in pellet stoves.

Did you try with wood charcoal instead of briquet charcoal?

Maybe the windscreen is blocking air from getting in the lower part of the stove

I think if you were to take smaller pieces of charcoal with you it could work, but the briquets are too pressed to burn in a smaller stove like the lixada... Just get the regular charl=coal and take out the smaller (dice size) bits for the lixada...

Can't you get bigger pellets? They seem way too small and if they were bigger I think it would allow much better airflow...

Try grilling a hot dog or burger patty when the fire goes out anyway. Sometimes the fat from the meat can get the flames going again.

You may or may not have better luck by breaking the charcoal briquettes into smaller pieces and then mixing them together. I might try that myself.

I think if you used less pellets 1 cup and more charcoal, maybe better for cooking. Thank you for this video.

The charcoal in the bottom is covering up to much of the air holes and it's chocking it.

use a griddle plate and adjust the height .

Hi Mark great video I think there may have been to much charcoal and maybe a layer of pellets then charcoal but just 3 or 4 then some more pellets would work but I do agree wood gas stoves do put out a lot of heat but treat it like a normal camp fire grill when it has just embers still good heat

walnut shells dried and methanol start .. werks for me

Sorry did I hear you right ? In the National Parks your not allowed to pick up sticks off the ground ? I was just wondering what the legal stance would be and if any what charge you would face ?

use a 1/4 hexamine tab to start it

Mark could you please tell me the make of your wind-screen? Thanks!

use the tablet first, then add the pellets, take ONE charcol and split it into 4's

Seems like the fuel pack has choked off upward airflow.

Needed to place the fire starter below the fuel.

Maybe it could have worked if the charcoal was in much smaller pieces. BTW, you use kerosine, alcohol-gel and that esbit stuff to light a fire, why not use the waxy-wood stuff instead? Much cleaner...

Hi, what is your stove sitting on ?

try to put a litle vent to push the air force burning.....''???

I appreciate your videos but,... Why haven't you discovered cast iron? I use a 12" square cast iron griddle with raised ribs on my Titan for camping & at home. The high heat is perfect for grilling outdoors!

Use lump Charcoal it burns better than briquettes

Hallo! Did you try woodchips ? I have no woodgasstove....only a Ikea hobo..It Works very well with these Chips from a woodchips heatingsystem. At its best with tough hardwoodchips. Pleased Eschweiler my Brokern english...i am from Bavaria Germany..and Song have anything präzise in your Langhagen😁. Greetings. Hans. I Like you videos

Good try!

charcoal has already been gasified so it won't work in a gasification stove

The charcoal is robbing all the oxygen leaving nothing for the pellets to burn...

I wonder if you loaded it up with charcoal, a layer of pellets on top, and boiled water for tea, then burned past that into the charcoal for the main meat dish? All in the name of science, eh? Maybe just buy those disposable charcoal grilling jobbies and just refill it. Take care!

Seems to me like your using to much charcoal