An interesting development-- running vintage farm engines on woodchip gas
using ARD to sense flywheel timing and offer choice of sparks .
Google recent LISTEROID pages to enjoy this . It is indeed the New Lard (WVO). This is kind of re inventing the wheel, in 1910 many engines ran on bio gas, oil not being available.
Johnf.
PYROLYSIS eg low-oxygen enclosed burning of wood waste, vegetable matter, etc will produce Hydrogen , Carbon Monoxide and Methane which can feed a spark ignition power plant . The Gas mixture is indeed gas, rather than light petroleum which is gasoline.
The LISTER diesel external flywheel engine was built to very high quality long ago and is still cherished by many owners.
What has been done is to lower the compression ratio with an extra thick head gasket, add electronic ignition and a very simple carburettor. Remember that this machine is designed to generate power at 600 RPM
and there is plenty of time for efficient combustion.
LISTEROIDS are foreign copies of Listers , the quality may vary but parts are mainly still interchangeable.
The Lister diesel will generate power using any oil or fat which can be filtered and liquefied so as to pass through its injector .
Using the basic engine as a 4 stroke spark ignition power plant enables a whole new range of fuels to be exploited. johnp.
Are you talking about converting a gas motor to run on wood gas? Sure it can be done, and the timing could in theory be done too, but I don't know if anyone's done it..
Sure it can be done, and the timing could in theory be done too, but I don't know if anyone's done it..
I thought the post was pretty strange myself, but it is "bar/sport"...
As far as running a gas engine off of producer gas (aka wood gas - see Wood gas - Wikipedia) gained from pyrolysis; yes it can be done, has been done, and the tech is ancient.
The real question is can you get a Listeroid to run on wood gas? Maybe? Who knows - perhaps with an Arduino changing the spark timing? Maybe this is what the poster was getting at...
I did find a place that imports and sells Listeroid engines; they are fairly cheap for a small single-cylinder (about $12-1500.00 US) - but you have to do a lot of modifications/cleanup after you get your new engine (from India, generally), as the workmanship is very variable on them; generally fuel lines and tank need to be replaced, plus a lot of other stuff has to be cleaned and adjusted after doing a teardown. Definitely a real DIY project, and the engines aren't lightweight (better have an overhead hoist or an engine lift, and a fairly large shop, if you want to play around with such an engine/genset combo).