Vintage Thing No.115 - Gasifier Land Rover

This Land Rover looked normal but smelt different. It sounded like any V8 ought to.

I was in Wales recently and experienced probably the wettest weather on holiday that I've ever known. However, the Abergavenny Show still went ahead and sheltering under the trees next to the traction engines I found this wood burning Land Rover 101. In the back is a slow wood burning stove designed to produce a steady supply of syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen that can then used for combustion in a conventional petrol engine.

This vehicle is a work in progress under continuous development. I spoke briefly to the owner who explained the general principles and pointed me to wood gas resources on the internet. It seems that many people in the US are exploring gasifiers as their - er - gas prices go up and in a land where pickups are common the bulk of the gas generating equipment isn't such a problem.

This is a close up of the gasifier in the back of the Land Rover.

This chap had gained sponsorship from a local sawmill and had many ideas for improvements over the coming winter. His fuel is effectively free and makes more sense than brewing up ethanol from similar biomass sources. He reckoned we will be facing rolling power cuts in a few years time and electricity supply problems will mean we won't be able to juice up our cars at the pumps on demand.

From memory, I think he said that he gets about 25 miles to each charge of fuel and whenever it gets short he pulls over ans simply stokes up. the trick is to get the wood to burn at the right rate - too fast and the gas gets burned, too. If the worst comes to the worst and he runs out of syngas, he can still run on petrol although as it's a Rover V8 that really hurts.

The engine is unmodified internally but wet wood has been a problem this year. It's almost a steam engine sometimes.

I found this discussion very thought provoking although not to the extent of converting anything I've got to run on syngas. Nothing in my little fleet is physically big enough to carry the fuel and the gasifier. For commercial use you lose your load space, too.

However, I'll keep a weather eye on gasifiers. There could be unrealised development potential to be found.