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[admin]

We are now in the midst of our Father's Day Gasification workshop at ALL Power
Labs in Berkeley, CA. We have about 75 people here from near and far to wander
down the rabbit hole of biomass thermal conversion.

For those of you not able to join us, we have a webcam on the 10 kW Power Pallet
endurance run. We plan 50 hours over the next several days with datalogging of
the fuel in to power out particulars.

You can watch the progress of the Power Pallet run on the webcam here:
http://www.gekgasifier.com/webcam/

Other details on the workshop are below. If you can make it, we are continuing
through Sunday eve with the workshop. The Power Pallet run will likely continue
into Tuesday. The webcam will remain on the proceedings through the end.


jim




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jim mason <jim@...>
Date: Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:56 AM
Subject: Gasification and Biochar workshop in 1 week. Project and schedule
details contained herein.
To: Icp <icp@...>




topdownfrontwithjay_img_2042-800-300.jpg

Father's Day Gasification and Biochar Workshop: June 17-19, 2011

Opening Intro & Lecture: Friday, June 17, 7:30 – 9:30PM
Weekend Build, Run and Test: Saturday and Sunday, June 17-19, 11am – 7pm

Location: ALL Power Labs, 1010 Murray Street, Berkeley CA 94710
Cost: Free if you are a GEK or BEK owner, either through self build or purchase.
Otherwise, $100 for weekend.
RSVP to the forum here. Buy your spot here.


Our summer workshop is fast approaching- June 17th - 19th. Many of you have
already RSVP'ed and are flying in from the 4 corners, but there is still room
for more. So come join us for a quality Father's Day weekend of wrenching,
rotating machinery, and guided tour down the rabbit hole of biomass thermal
conversion.

The workshop begins with a Friday evening talk on the science of gasification
and pyrolysis, and the new engineering solutions embodied in the GEK gasifier
and BEK biochar maker. Saturday and Sunday are full days of building, running
and testing the physical particulars. Come prepared to get your hands dirty
building and running machinery. We learn through both talking and working.

We'll have 4 projects going in parallel for this round of the workshop. You can
participate in all of them, and wander between them as desired.

1. 50 Hour Endurance run of the 10kw Power Pallet:
Long proving runs of the Power Pallet continue on this end. This round we'll do
a total of 50 hours over several days. We have it on good authority that it
will not rain this time, and we'll be sure to have plenty of reasonable fuel on
hand before we start. We look forward to more refined data on fuel consumption,
gas composition, and feedback on general usability from you kicking the tires
over the weekend. Runs will start on Saturday and continue into the early part
of the following week. If you can't be here, we'll have a webcam on the
proceedings as usual.

This test will use one of the current generation stainless steel Power Pallets
pictured here: http://www.gekgasifier.com/wpgallery/

2. Demonstration runs of the 20kw Power Pallet:
Those of you interested in the larger 20kw Power Pallet will can finally see one
in action over the weekend. There will also be 8 of the 20kw Power Pallets
under assembly in the APL factory, so you can see how we make them. Things will
look something like this, only bigger:
http://wiki.gekgasif...onthefloor.JPG. The engineers
and builders of these units will be on hand to answer questions and explain the
details.

3. GEK Gasifier Building:
Want to build you own gasifier? Here's your chance to do it, using our tools
and with plenty of instruction from the local crew.

This round of the workshop we're having a special GEK Level III building clinic.
We have tables and welders for 4 people who want to weld together a kit over the
weekend. Given clear inhouse instruction, you should be able to get through the
building process by the end of Sunday. Finished gasifiers can Russian doll back
into the hopper and filter for checking as oversize baggage on the plane. Yes
this does work. We do this regularly.

Anyone who wants to do this will need to reserve a spot by purchasing a Level
III weld together GEK kit. There is no additional cost for instruction, using
our tools, and burning our welding wire. The workshop is also free if you get a
kit. We're trying to make this easy and accessible.

Again, there are ONLY 4 slots for gasifier building. Welders are limited.
Please reserve ahead of time if you want to build a kit.


4. BEK Biochar maker running:

We continue to have the BEK on hold while we focus on ramping up the Power
Pallet production. This has made quite a few people unhappy, as there is so few
small scale biochar making machines available at the moment. We're trying to
get back to making these as soon as possible, but in the meantime we wanted to
give the interested a chance to run our in house machine.

We'll have the BEK on fire both Saturday and Sunday of the workshop. You are
welcome to bring your feedstock of interest and run it through. Or, you can
experiment with our variety of feedstocks on location. If you have some you
want to bring, please do write us beforehand so we can coordinate the details.



General Info and Signup

The APL workshop series offers education, research reports and hands-on
experience to bring more people to successful operation of small scale
gasification and pyrolysis units. The event is open to everyone, not just GEK
or BEK users/owners. Worshops are free if you own a GEK or BEK by either
purchase or DIY build. Otherwise the weekend is $100, which helps to cover food,
drink and other consumables.

If you want to join us, please RSVP to the forum thread here:
http://www.gekgasifi...hread.php?t=563

If you need to pay the workshop fee, you can do so via credit card here:
http://www.gekgasifi...rkshop/sign-up/

Information on local accommodation, maps and airports is here:
http://www.gekgasifi...d-accomodation/


We look forward to seeing you here soon.

jim



--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Mason
Website: http://www.whatiamupto.com
Current Projects:
- Gasifier Experimenters Kit (the GEK): http://www.gekgasifier.com
- Escape from Berkeley alt fuels vehicle race: www.escapefromberkeley.com
- ALL Power Labs on Twitter: http://twitter.com/allpowerlabs
- Shipyard Announce list:
http://lists.spacesh...p-spaceship.com

[admin]

The workshop is slowly fading to black, but long runs continue around the shop. We started another overnight run on the Power Pallet this afternoon, and plan to continue through the night into tomorrow afternoon. You can watch it on the webcam here:

http://www.gekgasifier.com/webcam/

The power pallet run over the weekend went for 32 hours straight, then we found one of the legs of the power monitoring array had switched off. Doh! We all grumbled as we acknowledged this rendered the collected numbers moot, and we needed to start again. At least the gasifier ran without issue for the stretch. Test EQ less so.

Now after a couple days of rest, all test EQ confirmed and confirmed again to be in order, we're going to try again. We plan to go around 24hrs this time, to make the two combined runs a total of at least 50 hours. We'll see how long the fuel holds out. We're starting with soaked wood chips from the local landscape supply, and we need to dry these to 30% before we can run them.

Barring any unscheduled end of the world events, we should soon have good hard numbers on fuel to power amounts, gas composition, and reactor/filter conditions for the second half of this session. First half will only have workshop visuals. For instance, here's a picture inside of the filter after 24hrs of running. http://on.fb.me/m3WaAu Not perfect, but hey for a gasifier after 24hrs, this is a white table cloth . . . ;-) More general pictures from the workshop are here: http://on.fb.me/iyiESf

jim