Gasification PowerExchange Workshop #6:
GEK Building and 10kw Genset Configuration

Gasification Lecture and Demo: Friday, October 23, 7:30-9:30PM
Building and Testing: Saturday and Sundday, October 24-25, 11am – 7pm
Location: ALL Power Labs, 1010 Murray Street. Berkeley, CA
Contact: jim ^at^ allpowerlabs.org
Cost: FREEMore Info: http://www.gekgasifier.com

ALL Power Labs is starting a quarterly series of free gasifier workshop weekends to help bring more people to successful operation of small scale gasifiers. These workshops are open to GEK user/owners, as well as anyone with any other type of gasifier- or just a budding interest in the whole thing.  If you have a GEK and want personal instruction in how to run it, or you want to build a GEK with oversight from the mothership, this workshop will be a great opportunity to do either.

Hello everyone, here’s the latest news from All Power Labs on our work with gasification and biochar.  We got some great news coverage, better assembly and first fire instructions, more user reports, and as always more research and testing data.  It’s all part of our ongoing mission to put the information and tools in your hands, so you can make it yourself, or make it run even better.

Hope you enjoy, and as always feel free to get in touch with any questions, feedback, or user reports, and of course it’s always good to check in on what’s happening in our forums: http://gekgasifier.com/forums/

-All Power Labs.

1- Farm Show magazine reports on the GEK, calls us “a leader in turning wood and other biomass into fuel” and “a leader in putting syngas to work.”

If you’re not familiar with Farm Show magazine, you should be. A sort of how-to bible among people in the agricultural community, it’s an advertising-free monthly covering the latest inventions and innovations that are of interest to farmers, which is why hearing they wanted to write about us was so exciting.

To see a full size image of the story you can read, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/68943702@N00/3926992124/in/pool-allpowerlabs

This story, and what he wrote, was all the more important given that the writer, Jim Ruen, has been covering this issue for a long time. In fact, he wrote an article about gasification for The Farmer magazine way back in the 1980′s, so we feel pretty honored to get that kind of feedback.

Note: there was one typo in the story; it referred to a complete system as costing $5,000. The GEK Level IV is $2495, but closer to $5,000 with all the add ons like the pyrocoil heat exchanger, automated fuel auger, and Gasification Control Unit.

2: Better support: new and improved instructions:

Our Chemist In Residence, Jay Hasty, has cranked out a whole bunch of new instruction info, on how to assemble and fire up your GEK.

The Assembly Instruction are here:  http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/How-to-Build-and-Run-the-GEK-Gasifier

and the First Fire instructions are here: http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/First-Run+Start-Up+Instructuions+for+GEK+v30

We’ve already gotten great feedback on them, like this posted on our wiki: “Great techie info with honest performance expectations., thanx and well done, Gents, Graham”

3: GEK Powered Thing Conquers The Rocky Mountains!

Frank Mannix in Colorado is at it again. This week, he sent in a photo of himself driving his GEK-powered VW Thing over the 11, 307 foot Berthoud Pass high in the Colorado Rockies!

Frank writes:

“Please post this picture, taken this afternoon, Thursday Sept 17 after I made it to the top of
Berthoud Pass 11,307. My house is at 8665 ft, which makes the climb over 2750 feet
in approx 15 miles, average grade over 6%(it’s downhill to Fraser, then up)

The GEK performed flawlessly going up hill, but I always have trouble going downhill,
and had to boost it with gas a few times (3 or 4 ticks of the electric fuel pump)
It’s like the throttle being closed down strangles it.
But it flies uphill (steady load- wide open – 2nd or 3rd gear,
and I even get some reaction from my “carburetor”- the butterfly valve.
Usually, I am on full woodgas- I suspect I have some vacuum leaks.

Frank”

4: Avalanche of hard data from the APL skunkworks continues

Bear Kaufman in our research lab continues to churn out impressive testing and analysis. His latest: a complete run down on a hopper of soft wood chips.  If you’re into this sort of thing, you’re going to love it. Here’s an image from the test, link to all the hard data below.

http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/Instrumented-Softwood-Chip-Run-091609

That’s it for this week. Thanks for your interest and support.

-All Power Labs

I’m trying to figure out how to better explain the basics of gasification. This is hard, as many of you know. So I’m trying to relate it to things that are generally known about combustion, then complicating matters from there. I’m trying to figure out the layers to take the newbie through- from most simple, to, well, does it ever end . . . ?

Here’s where I’m at currently: http://www.gekgasifier.com/gasification-basics/how-it-works/

How does this work for people? Anyone have suggestions for making it better?

As most of the mysteries of the universe are somewhere contained in the wider problem/opportunity of gasification, I can’t start at its many ends. But where’s the beginning before the freefall into the bottomless rabbit hole looking glass of biomass thermal conversion?

We’re discussing this explanation of gasification over in the forum here: http://www.gekgasifier.com/forums/showthread.php?t=162 . Give us your input.

Happy partial combusting to you on this Labor Day weekend.

Jim

Put a gasifier in your Baja beach cabana.  Or in your back-to-school backpack.  Yes, it’s the first ever (and maybe annual) APL “End of Summer / Back to School 10% Off Sale” on all things Biomass Thermal Conversion.

The rules are simple.  Buy anything between now and the end of August and take 10% off our already too low purchase prices (shipping stays the same).  This can be just a cyclone kit, or an assembled Level IV GEK, or a full Tower of Total Thermal Integration solution.  Or, just a GCU.  Well, it can be the new “Biochar Experimenter’s Kit” too.  It just has to be a new order, not one already in progress, or currently waiting in the production and shipping queue.

So if you have been hovering around a decision for a bit, the next 4 days are a good time to bring your deliberations to fruition.  Go to the usual GEK purchase page (http://www.gekgasifier.com/purchase/), assemble your combination of needs and desires, and take 10% off the tally when you get to the paypal screen.

While you are considering this possibility, here is a very interesting image of a running GEK taken with a thermal imaging camera at West Point Military Academy.  Unfortunately, 10% off still doesn’t render these cameras affordable, even if we had them to sell.  More info on the particulars of the image here: http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/George-Markt-and-Russ-Lanchance%2C-PhD%3A-West-Point%2C-NY

There’s also lots of interesting things going on in the forum these days.  Come take a look and hang out with your fellow gasifier geeks at: http://gekgasifier.com/forums/

jim

Hi everyone,
It’s been another exciting, breakthrough week at All Power Labs and we wanted to make sure you’ve heard the latest:

1-APL unveils new, low cost “BEK” or Biochar Experimenter’s Kit” at International Biochar Conference in Boulder, CO.

Jim Mason and Jay Hasty are in Boulder, showing off the TOTTI architecture, and more importantly unveiling APL’s new, low cost design for a Biochar Experimenters Kit, aka  the BEK, naturally.

The BEK is completely compatible with the standard GEK cowling. It supports multiple pyrolysis modes in direct combustion, indirectly heated retorts, and hot gas recycle through bed architectures. Temperature, residence time, pyrolysis modes are fully controllable for characterized Biochar making.

The entire unit with everything shown below will be available to ship in October for $4395.  We’re now accepting orders ( several were placed at the show ), and a deposit of 50% will hold your place in the queue.

Here’s a draft image, much more soon on our site and forums. This image and all content on it protected by Creative Commons/Copy Left.

2- New video:  GEK Channel episode #5: Gasification Control Unit

Chemist-in-residence Jay Hasty and computer genius Geo Hormsy show off their state of the art electronic brain for the GEK

3-User Report: Frank Mannix of Fraser, CO.

Here’s the latest from Frank’s experiments with a  GEK Powered VW Thing–he went from hooking it up, to driving, in less than an hour!

“I drove about 20 miles on Sunday, down to town twice, and out some back roads, and I was red hot-it worked great. I was able to get up to 45 with pedal left, and even had idle when it was pumped up good. It is kind of like a flywheel, you get it pumped up and it will supply at low draw-idle and low speed (low vacuum) for a while. Having the electric fuel pump worked real well, allowing me to boost back to running when I needed (low gas supply etc.) I am working on a century ride
after I check plugs, etc for change.”

4- Tax Credit for GEK Purchase?

One odd note we thought is worth passing along–it seems possible that the use of a GEK on a vehicle, at least in Colorado, could be considered eligible for a 75% tax credit on the purchase price. If you’re more familiar with the incentives available for this sort of thing and want to pass them along, please do.

5- Finally, a FAQ

After spending one morning too many answering the same questions, we realized we could save everyone a lot of time by building out a Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQ, section of our website. If there’s a question you don’t see answered there, drop us an email and we’ll put it in the queue to answer just as soon as we can.

Cheers,

All Power Labs.

Here’s the latest news from All Power Labs and our ongoing work in gasification.  We’re happy to announce the sale of our 100th unit, and even happier to unveil our latest design innovation, the “Tower Of Total Thermal Integration”, (aka: the “Hot TOTTI”) and point you in the direction of some of our testing data of late.

GEK turns 100
Actually, make that 107. We’ve just sold the 107th GEK, a pretty incredible number considering we started just over a year ago trying to help give people tools for open source power hacking.  Here’s a map of the world showing they’ve ended up:  http://tr.im/uwKI And for those who are curious, #100 is heading to the USDA Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plants Research Center.  Very interesting folks down there, check ‘em out here:  http://tr.im/uNSN

This brings to 12 the number of research facilities or universities which have ordered the GEK to pursue their research in gasification. The others include: Lamberton College (Ontario); University of Alaska, Fairbanks; Ashton University (UK), Maharashtra Institute of Technology (India); University of California, Merced; University of Minnesota, Morris; Louisiana State University; Mississippi State University; Morrissville State (New York); and the University of Rome (Italy).

We’re now working to build a platform specifically for research facilities, so results are sharable and comparable between sites, and published research is augmented through a common test bed.  Best of all, we’re keeping the equipment inexpensive, so those outside the University can work on top of the same test bed.  This commonality of test bed, and growing network of serious users, promises many good things to come for gasification and pyrolysis.

Our work was recently used as the basis for a project by the Denver Zoo, to power their new Asian Tropics exhibit, using elephant dung for fuel. You can see a video of that project, showing our GEK and auger, by clicking the link below:

Introducing the TOTTI: the Tower Of Total Thermal Integration
As you likely know, there are a few general pathways for solving the known problems of gasification. One school of thought focuses on filtration–add enough of it, and you’ll eventually get cleaner gas. We’re focusing on another approach– fix the problem in the reactor itself, with improved hearth configurations and thermal recycling systems, and avoid having to build a long train of compensatory vessels.  Here’s our latest effort in this regard:

Larger photos here:
http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/Tower-of-Total-Thermal-Integration

From Jim Mason:
“The waste heat in output syngas and IC engine exhaust has tremendous potential for augmenting the various “thermally challenged” processes in a gasifier.  By well recycling and reusing these “waste heats”, we can remove the majority, if not the totality, of all the “thermal drags” on the combustion zone in the gasifier.  The result is higher combustion and cracking temperatures for improved tar conversion, increased tolerance for high moisture fuels, and increased total gasifier efficiency.

The GEK Tower of Total Thermal Integration (TOTTI) demonstrates a powerful new method to achieve this full thermal integration of waste heats in a gasifier and IC engine system, and do so in a compact and easy-to-build form factor.  Full thermal integrations are common on large-scale gasification equipment What is new here is a method and apparatus to achieve the same at the small and mid scale.  The usual attempt at this solution is to throw the entire kitchen sink at the problem– building a long train of filters, exchangers and cooler components, all tied together with a mess of plumbing and condensate management.  And the result is always a complex and expensive system only a government bureaucrat could love (or afford).

ALL Power Labs now demonstrates the same can be achieved through an economical combination of counter-flow vessels, directly mounted to each other, without a large elaboration of redistribution plumbing or auxillary vessels.  All waste heat is reused and returned to appropriate temp processes. Cool things are made hot and hot things are made cool, in sync and in order– thus there is no need for the usual radiator/cooler/condenser at the end to hide your “thermal sins”.

The GEK Tower of Total Thermal Integration is the culmination of all our air pre-heating, heated auger and PyroCoil work of late.  It is our best solution, and likely final answer, for establishing the correct total system thermal relationships, while also attending to the rest of the 3-D thermal-chemical-mechanical-gravimetric puzzle that is gasifier design.”

More design data and images available here:
http://gekgasifier.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134

In Lab Testing Results:
Our own Bear Kaufman and chemist-in-residence Jay Hasty have been doing some very impressive testing on GEKs using various fuels. Here’s an image from one just this week, you really should stop by here and check them all out.  Their goal: figure out what fuel runs best at what configuration, then share that with everyone else. Details here: http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/Walnut-Shell-Run-072709

We also wanted to let you know about a new video series we’re starting, called Channel GEK.  Basically it will be short You Tube videos exploring how the GEK works, various gasifier designs and applications, how to assemble and run a GEK, common problems, that sort of thing.  If you have something you’d like to see us cover, please do write tom The purpose of these videos is to explore, critique, debunk, and demystify the biomass thermal conversion arts, so do let us know what you’re interested in learning about, and we’ll do our best to get it online.

That’s it for this week, thanks for your continued interest and support.

-All Power Labs

The GEK went to university….University of Minnesota at Morris to be exact. UMM was awarded a grant of $174,258 by the Renewable Energy Marketplace – Alliance for Talent Development (MNREM) initiative to develop new curriculum in biomass gasification technology.  Jim Barbour at the university partnered with ALL Power Labs to use the GEK as the platform for learning in this three-week intensive course. The Class, Renewable Energy with Biomass Gasification, taught principles of biomass gasification with a focus on chemical, biological and economic considerations of biomass energy production. All students benefited through a curriculum of  hands-on training in chemistry and biomass with classroom and lab activities. APL’s Jim Mason went out as a guest lecturer for the last few days of class.  The class had an amazing lab set up.  Great data was gathered and more people were indoctrinated into the cult of the black goo.  Look at their set-up. Gasification – It’s a gas! Cheers, Jess and your GEK making crew

The ALL Power Labs crew is decompressing from talking enthusiastically for two days straight about small-scale-DIY-open-source-energy.  We took our GEK v3.o with new Auger and GCU to Maker Faire 2009.  For added flaire we made a special Art Deco Hopper for the new auger, check it out. With all of the added improvements GEK v3.0 made incredibly clean gas all weekend long.  In an average day at ALL Power Labs we spend a lot of time playing and tinkering with Biomass gasification and the one thing missing from this weekend was the liqiud smoke smell.  The gas was so clean we had little to no “black goo”.  The clean gas did not do much to support the “cult of the black goo”.  With such clean gas coming out of the v3.0 the cult of the black goo might now be a misnomer, maybe it should be…cult of biomass…or cult of syngas…or cult of low tar….none of these quite have the same ring.  But maybe I am looking at it the wrong way, cults often praise something that is invisible or unknowable, maybe that is what we are looking at here with v3.0 the black goo will soon just be a figment of our imaginations. Along with the clean gas we also tested the new Auger which worked flawlessly all weekend and the GCU gave us noteworthy data that we are trolling through as I write this.  Look for an update on the Maker Faire GCU run our wiki in the next week. If you saw us at Maker Faire it was great to meet you. Cheers, Jess and The ALL Power Labs Team gek [at] allpowerlabs [dot] org

ALL Power Labs recently had a visitor from Germany who got the point of why a “Personal Energy Device” might helpfully be made to look like a robot rocketship. His name is Joerg Pfeiffer, and was travelling across the US for Spiegel Online doing stories about energy and the economy. As he is German, and in the US, he of course rented a giant RV and spent most of his time in the desert doing stories about Americans doing weird things. At the end of his journey, he did a story about us. Joerg’s video does the best job to date of explaining the larger context of the GEK. He was less interested in the tech and more interested in the social experiment as a parallel to the early desktop PC kits, the hacker culture that arose around them, and the importance of Bay Area culture to the whole thing. This is of course the larger context and agenda of the GEK and its creators at ALL Power Labs. Not to ruin the suspense, but the point of the GEK is to make an Altair 8800 of energy. A personal scale power device that opens the door to a previously unaccessible tech, while recasting it as an opportunity for creative play. The promise that motivates the play is a future of energy as a distributed network of producers and improvers, not simply passive consumers more efficiently receiving the central broadcast. The method towards this an open tool that empowers others to create and play — not a sealed consumer appliance that encourages passive consumption. Many individuals with good tools in their hands is always more powerful than one center with one big product or service. Such also tends to bring many unexpected rewards ancillary to the original “problem”. Energy may in fact not be a zero sum problem. Computing turned out to be about things other than raw computation. Food also turned out to be about things quite other than raw energy and nutrients. Might energy also have similar non-zero sum creative ancillaries? The gasifier has the best potential in alt energy to be this tool and creative opportunity. It was nice to see someone from the media world understand the larger point. But why did it require someone all the way from Germany to get it? Jim

GEK with Spiegel Online

Here in Berkeley, at ALL Power Labs, in our Oasis of small scale gasification, the team has had our noses to the gridstone manufacturing and testing GEK version 3.0. The new version’s highlights are: A new injector venturi system that replaces our fan/blower system and a new one-nozzle air inlet collar. There are many other updates, like a new cyclone design which allows for easier clean out. But the best upgrade of all; our new Rocket Legs! And if version 3.0 weren’t enough to get you excited, we have also been developing an auger drying/preheating system, which can be used with any GEK version and is available now, just take a look at our purchase page for details, or as always, contact us, we’d love to answer your questions: gek [at] allpowerlabs [dot] org. More Great v3.0 images coming soon. Cheers, The GEK crew

v3.0 MAJOR NEW FEATURES

1. New Ejector/Venturi based gas pumping, mixture and flare.
- No more axial blower or long flex tube to flare
- Flare hard mounts on unit in one of the three points described below
- Variable Air/Syngas mixing for tunable mixture to the flare or attached engine.

2. Three modes of gas routing for start up and/or continued running:
- Full passage through reactor and filtering system
- Early take off and burn on the side of the gas cowling. This prevents potential start up tar fouling the heat exchange tubes, cyclone and filter
- Reversed flow updraft mode via lighting at grate and flaring out the top of the reactor. This mode can also be used to generate char from raw biomass for your first run, preventing the need to prefill with good char. It can also be used to make char for other purposes (i.e. biochar)

3. Automated lighting and startup using electric heating element mounted internally in the char bed.

4. Electric motor driven stirring system to prevent fuel bridging

5. Air manifold neck with single point air intake

Single inlet makes capping on shut down easier. Also enables air intake gas flow measurement or water/steam injection.

6. Downsized Nozzles for default reactor configuration

7. Redesigned filtering system
- Two cyclone size options to better match use needs
- Cyclone completely disassembles for cleaning and easy modification- Larger packed bed filter
- Provisions to run cylone and filter as a recirculating water shower over char system.

8. Removable base on gas cowling.
- There is now a 12″ diameter flange ring on the bottom of the gas cowling that is the same bolt pattern as the reactor lid. This allows reuse of the auger-to-reactor junction lid as an auger based ash removal system under the reactor. The open bottom also supports various biochar reconfigurations that are coming soon.

9. Pyrex looking glass and fuel fill fuel cap.
- You can now see down inside reactor while running. Easy flip hold down bar for fast open and close.

10. Wide stance rocket styled legs.
- Because a “Personal Energy Robot” should look like a rocketship, of course.

MINOR NEW FEATURES

1. Ceramic rope and rubber flange gasketing

2. Kaowool reactor insulation

3. Taller ash bin.
- Increased the space between reactor bottom and support grate, which leaves more inert char under reduction bell to counter overpulls.

4. Circumference fence around grate.
- Prevents char loss off edge of grate.

5. Smaller ash grate holes.
- The 3/16″ holes on the v2.x pass more char than ideal. Now using 1/8″ holes.