WOOD POWER! Off Grid Electricity from Wood - Part 1

that is really satisfying look at that look at it Christina we did it this is the magical wood gasifier like it literally takes wood in one side and it runs a generator on the other side and if you're off grid this is it it's like the what is it it's the missing link Micro Hydro is cool but maybe this is cooler you don't need a river you just need this thing so we've got the V3 wood gasifier here I've got it loaded up with fuel 1245 DE after 5 minutes 5 and 1/2 [Applause] minutes so at this point if I had the generator uh hooked up I would close the ball Bell turn off the blower yeah turn that one on and put this on the engine open up your engine start your engine and now you're running what get so the goal is in 10 minutes I'm charging the batteries it takes me 10 minutes to get this thing all fired up and my generator's running and I can use any generator I want a Honda or a champion or a old Ford straight 6 with like a giant generator on it and then I've got enough fuel in the hopper we did some quick math I think we agreed it could run like 3 to 5 hours if I was using like a 5ish kilowatt generator which is what we would use at home as our backup generator yeah so it's possible you can find one of these things all built for you and it might cost around 15 grand that's ballpark I can't quote you on that but what I think would be cool for us is for the girls just to weld it all up and assemble it what do you think I mean I might help a little bit but that will probably cost me only half so about 7500 and you know if you think about setting up an offgrid system you all know it can cost way more than that but for this thing to have the ability to burn wood at our place which is like loaded with wood forever it will have wood we could never burn the wood faster than it would regrow at our place uh this is like one of those holy Grails of energy Independence I would say there it is there is the wood gasifier kit Julia you're going to build this thing are you going to weld it in entirely I don't know okay well thanks Steve we are going to drive a long ways North yep and we're going to put this thing together well we got firewood and we got the gasifier kit and we've been at it for a couple days and man there's a lot of parts we got Parts more parts and another box toart and a ton more [Music] part oo that's a tight little weld there so we built the base so far that's the rolling kind of frame Christina's welding up the filter chamber and we got the filter basket made everything in this kit I think will last 100 years this stuff is not like a joke look at these parts they're just Real Steel so Steve said this would be 50 hours of welding if we knew what we were doing so so it might be triple do of course not all welding but kind of like figuring and putting it together and all that stuff so we're a couple days in and I guess it might be a couple more weeks this is turning into a race against Christmas time and what does everyone want for Christmas a wood G [Music] ifier JJ leather work is this for the store it is Julia is putting her stuff in stores she's building little displays and putting her leather work in stores because it's good stuff and people like it this is one of the things that makes her ammo belts really special and we got her to design these years ago because there was nothing out there there was nothing amazing and leather and good but she makes all these little individual Pockets out of suede so that your shells are just they are he tight they don't Rattle and they don't Rattle and they don't clink yeah and it looks beautiful and anyways what are you cold in here yeah it's freezing we are at a critical stage we are about to permanently weld in this air liner chamber it's basically the ignition chamber goes in here and and we've had to line up ports this will be a sight glass and the place that you ignite it and so it's got to go in there that looks pretty good can see right through to the other side we got to weld this airtight and this airtight and that's no problem the problem is somehow we got to get down there and weld that airtight I mean I could tack it no problem but an airtight weld you are going to really really have to OD do yourself after we weld it the big test is uh we're going to pressure test it let's see if it holds air those are my dirty welds down there but as long as no one puts this on the internet no one will ever know Secret Safe With Us nice Christina did some nice welds right in here look at that beautiful I think that will not leak you ready here comes the big test so we're filling up this chamber it dead ends at the bottom there and it dead ends at the top we got all these Jets plugged seems like there's a lot of air going somewhere definitely not building pressure there's a big hole right here oh there's a hole okay we found the hole where have you been this whole time we've been at this for hours how is it that duct tape can solve so many problems like in the future we will do a different thing on that hole okay good this is just for test this is an iterative process just like SpaceX right like you don't expect to land your first rocket no try number two oh you can see like yeah yeah nice oh yeah there we go still not building pressure oh bu oh boy oh my goodness oh yeah that's my welds right down there wow Christina you 100% I am what's 100 minus one two three four holes five cuz there's one there too five holes I thought it was going to be worse actually yeah me too truth comes out thanks well it's been I don't know weeks and we're so close Christina has done so much work she's actually kept track of her hours and we are at a critical point you ready yeah look at this disaster this is you know you're busy when and look we we turned all the lights off over there and even over here we have the mid winter Blues like we haven't had a decent day of sun for like a month except for maybe one or two anyways and without this thing we're still burning gas in our generator so it's killing me we got to get this thing ready and what we're doing is our final leak test it is starting to look look like something we're going to test the entire exhaust system here and I'm sure there will be some leaks but hopefully they're easy to fix okay you [Applause] ready oh yeah one here and here okay okay so we're testing get the marker that's a tiny one just so everyone knows that's my weld right there of course it would leak right on on the very bottom man it's pretty awesome Christina what is it three little spots so far that's not even steam okay well that's that's actually pretty good A three little spots and they look like they're pretty easy to fix we will fix those and then we will carry on [Music] it's amazing is it it actually is what does it do this yeah it turns wood into gas into generator gas which turns it into power electricity electricity we're turning firewood into electricity this thing is ready I hope for its maiden voyage we're going to fire it up right now but I'll show you how it works this is the reactor so right at the very bottom you can see down there that's just the great that catches the little bits of charcoal that are turning into gas that is where all the gas is coming from and that thing in the middle there that's just a little RTD so we can measure the temperature and then this part here see that that is an air jet that's the only spot where the oxygen comes in the outside air comes into those air jets in this chamber in here is actually where a little bit of burning happens and generates Heat and the rest of this this is all just full of storage Y and so then the gas goes through comes out at the bottom goes through a heat exchange assembly goes around there actually and heats the preheats the wood but then it comes out and goes through a a cooler drops into this condenser tank but then the gas keeps coming over this way and it goes into filter housing big of Steel look at that in the bottom it's all just straw just you could use wood chips or something else and then up in here there's some foam filters so all that gas comes up goes into here goes up through the filters and comes out the top into here okay put that guy back in and so this gas that's coming out here should be cool dry and now clean and here's the thing this is the deciding Junction when it's starting this valve is shut and to get it started this valve is open that whole gas passageway is being sucked by this fan and then blown out right here it might take 5 10 minutes to get the wood gasifying and then once it's producing a quality gas then you switch it and you shut off that fan and you shut that valve and you open up the other valve which is going to go to the engine the engine's going to make the electricity okay are we going to do it we're going to get it started with charcoal so the very bottom gets filled with charcoal forgot to mention the air intake is right here so only the air that gets drawn by the fan and then later on by the engine it gets sucked in through this check valve so it has no excess air in there Christina how many hours did you spend welding this have you added it all up I think it's around 80 80 hours of welding hand the fire way so probably if we didn't put that charcoal in we'd be talking about 2 five gallon pales of wood close it up getting so close so close charcoal I see something getting R in there yeah now it's coming in through here look at that just second take that window out oh yeah so we know there's no gaping holes otherwise it wouldn't bother sucking into through this valve right there there you can see it oh there we go look at that oh it's already 450° c in there oh my look at that go that's crazy oh man how hot does your oven get not that hot like when you cook like 500 is Max but that's 500 Fahrenheit this is Celsius okay that's 650° C okay so we definitely know it's like lit and going good oh I saw something fall oh we should turn the Shaker on oh yeah yeah look okay we have a problem let's see wow look at how it's all charcoaling okay oh yeah look look at it there's like a big hole down there oh my that was totally the problem there might be another problem with this moisture but I think we're going to just go for it that was a problem and maybe we fixed it but this leaking thing we going have a look at this lid we can see like a little crack there so I don't know if it's because the lid is like like the flange I mean is not level or if something's wrong with that seal but we're going to look at that I think the main issue is right here to here and I think it has more to do with this flange than with the lid CU it always see no matter how we rotate it seems like the problems right here so what I'm going to do just for now is I'm going to silicone with I'm going to RTV it and we'll see if that just helps us get through our test run okay we're going to run this thing again that is really satisfying wow okay this thing's on a timer so it runs for 3 seconds every 4 minutes just to keep the stuff moving you know what's Wild is that's 1,000° Celsius this is cool okay here's the thing it's a little bit warmer it's like just barely above skin temperature I'd say but look at this soaking wet I don't know if it just is going to take uh like a few more minutes it's been how long's it been running like maybe 15 minutes we've been playing around now on this second restart and it's looking way better the temperature is just fluctuating in the high 900s there is like a thing we didn't weld totally in the reactor I kind of thought like you know what it'll it'll be okay but it does kind of have to do with all this moisture so I could if this doesn't work we that's probably the thing we should do is like weld that thing up okay it's uh it's not working we're going to let it cool down we're going to break up some wood smaller I think we sealed the lid successfully with that little bit of RTV so I don't think that's a problem the wood was also very very wet so maybe we can dry that wood off a little bit uh sit it by the wood fire wood stove uh but we also might weld that little condenser tank better hopefully this thing works like yeah we need it to get working Christina try it look at that oh it's so close we let it cool down and we just welded up that little thing split up some new wood that was we split it up small and it's so close but it's just not quite doing it yeah the temperature is just not getting as high I don't know why this thing is going like it's like hot in there okay Dad not soon what no way Christina look at that look at it Christina we did it oh my what isn't that awesome is it supposed to be that color well yeah it's dark so you can see the flames it's hot well it's fire but I thought I thought it was supposed to be cold not the fire the smoke was cold is it supposed to do that yeah this is when we'd hook up the Jenny cool we're making electricity awesome almost like it's not quite electricity yet but it's so close to electricity I think we did it I think we can we're going to hook up we're going to hook up a generator and we're going to power our house on this gasifier right now cool except that will be in the next video what do you have to say about me good job Christina woohoo woo this thing's not besides being awesome is not actually doing anything right now other than like looking awesome um but it will we're going to hook this up to a generator and make power and we're going to run our house so this thing I mean you guys saw it I think you saw the clips uh from Steve off grid 48 he made this whole kit he's been designing these things for years so you can go to his YouTube channel I'll put a link we just welded for about an eternity but it is working that's the point the thing works when you put it together it's still going so you can buy the book and do everything from scratch or you can buy the kit and the book and like assemble it so check that out but also look for video two where we power our house on this [Music] thing

Channel: Gridlessness

Views: 825,857

Keywords: hydro power, off grid hydro power, high head low flow, low head high flow, off-grid energy, off grid power system, run of the river hydro

Id: HhnrKHF8BWU

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2024