Gasifier Project: Pics

Here in no particular order are some of the shots from our Gasifier Project Yesterday:

Hank is an old timer who happens to live nearby and have enough machining tools in his shop to rebuild the USS Wisconsin if we had enough steel.  Look at the size of that lathe!  Hank forgot more over breakfast than MacGuyver ever knew.  You could give him a napkin drawing of a piece and he'd rummage through a pile of scrap, put it onto the lathe and turn it out 5 minutes later.  That the world will desperately need the Hank's of the world as we hit Peak which was a main reason I was on this work party.

Here Mike and Beth take a spin on the Band Saw.  And, yes, that is 3/16" iron plate that they are cutting a 14" circle out of.

We went slooooow, so we all still have our fingers.

 It seemed like every piece from the iron pipe, to the steel drum to the carriage bolts was modified.  I am still only half certain it was all necessary, or if we were just geeking out on all the tools!

Here our resident welder and innovator, Greg, is welding the cut plate to the 8" pipe for the combustion chamber/wood chip feeder.  Like our welding stand?  Yep, its a manhole cover.

Here is yours truly running the saber saw to modify the steel drum for the combustion chamber.  Most of the time I felt in the way due to my lack of knowledge of machining, so I jumped at every chance I could to use the tools I had experience with.  I learned alot!

Greg explaining the various parts, their end functions, and the various jobs needed to get them to their finished states.  After this we all grabbed some tools and split off to make sparks and smoke.

Mike is a retired engineer.  Which makes the fact that he used a nail, jute twine, and a pencil to draw our perfect circle all the cooler.  Keep it simple!

Mike again with our finalized ash basket (a stainless steel dog food dish with a hundred holes drilled into it) sizing it up for the bottom of the now welded combustion chamber.

As the day progressed I couldn't shake the reoccurring idea that I was living in an A-Team episode where they happen to get locked into a barn unattended while given enough time to weld steel plate onto a tractor to bust their way out.  "I love it when a plan comes together!"

With only about 6 hours (30 "man" hours) of work, and less than $100 in parts we are over half way finished with the first prototype.  Next steps are attaching the wood chip hopper (metal trash can) over the top of the barrel, and attaching a heat exchanger to cool the gas before it gets to our fan which will provide the vacuum until we can hook it up to an engine. Lots of little details left, but most of the Big Fabrication is done.  And to date no one has been seriously injured!  Can't wait to see it flare later this week!

The greatest part of it all is having 6 adults, some who barely knew each other, to give up a weekend to get together to try to make a difference.  It is these meetings, whether to weld up a gasifier, plan a community garden, or discuss Plan B 2.0 at the library that are happening all across our country and are paving the Road to a more Sustainable Future.

As the nights grow longer this month reach out and begin to build a community around yourself and start something.

Be the Change!

-Rob

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Gasifier Project: Caution Men with Tools!

One of the fantastic spin off of our starting the Sustain Jefferson project is the ability to quickly network with other local Eco Freaks.  One net result is a group of us getting together to build 2 working gasifier prototypes-one to be mounted on a tractor for use and display at fair and markets, and with the learnings from that a larger one to be used to produce energy for a home.Gasification is a relatively well know alternative energy that takes virtually any carbon intensive  material (typically coal) and through a process of low oxygen burning produces "syngas" that can then be used to power a turbine or even an internal combustion engine.  Syngas is much, much, cleaner burning that petroleum or coal.  What we are most excited about is that you can also use plain old wood chips to produce Syngas and the gasifiers can be sized to fit even midsize (20 hp) tractors.  In fact virtaully every tractor in northern Europe ran on wood chip gasifiers during WWII.  But then we conveniently forgot the  technology as Cheap Oil took over.

The plans we are working off of and lot of history are available at GenGas.

Here are some of the shots from our 5 hour workshop fest.  Total out of pocket for the project will be under $100-though we had access to a complete machine shop at hanks house 

complete with bandsaws, welding torches, lathes, grinders several drill presses and about 400,000 drill bits.

Here is most of the group.  Left to Right: Mike, Hank, Dick, and Greg

I will get some more photos up soon!

-Rob

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Peak Proof Aquaponics in Zone 5?

So I have been completely obsessing over this Aquaponics idea and I want to put some of the ideas on paper and hopefully spur some additional inputs to my thinking.  Though still definitely in the experimental stage, the skills needed to grow fish in a recirculating tank system are getting dialed in to a level that fish loses are dropping to the near zero range in well managed operations.  Where I see the next stage of design sophistication will be in making the system Peak Proof by dialing out the fossil fuel inputs to make the energy inputs as sustainable as the food system.

And those fuel inputs are sizable.  What the Growing Power system is doing is essentially keeping 10,000 gallons of water at 78-82 degrees every hour, every day, year round.  In a Hoop House.  In Wisconsin.  Given the BTU needs of keeping that much water 80 degrees during a 4 month Winter, I don't know of a feasible way around the NG heater at this point.  Preheating the water seem to be the only workable option, and that system would then handle 100% of the heating 8-9 months of the year.  

Probably system components:

• Solar Water heating with thermosyphon pumping
• Small Wind Turbine charging batteries (DC water pumps; small inverter for lights) and sized to dump excess into a heating element in a tank before the boiler.
• Running water lines through Hot Compost Piles which are also located within the greenhouse for theoretical 100% thermal efficiency.  Currently looking for BTU figures for compost piles.
• Modified Hoop House with insulated North Wall
• Modified Hoop House with multiple layers of "inflated" plastic for better R values
• Dream system based on the BioShelter of the New Alchemists with passive solar elements, built into a hill.  This system works best built onto an living structure.  This might be the only Peak Proof Aquaponics system using Tilapia.
• Ditching the Tilapia and switching to Lake Perch.  The backup system for the NG heating could then, in theory, supply 100% of the heat, reducing winter water temps to the 50-65 range.  Perch can survive being frozen solid in Wisconsin ponds...

The last piece is probably the Sustainable Option.  But the lose in harvest would be severe.  Perch stocking rates are already a third of Tilapia, and they will not grow much in water under 65 degrees.  Furthermore, Tilapia are omnivores, allowing you to grow much of the food in duckweed and water lettuce, and also giving you a better place to put your now marketable greens than the compost pile.  Finally, Tilapia are easy to breed in tanks, but a Perch system puts you into dependance on the DNR.   Other options would be using a methane digester to make your own Bio-Gas, or a biomass based boiler.  Either of these gets expensive right quick.

Partnering Aquaponics next to heat intensive industries make allot of sense, but most small landowners do not have access to that.

Still, the system is still brilliant and I know there are ways to make it work off grid.  

Please shoot me links, ideas, comments, and resources!

-Beo

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Commuting Carbon Nuetral: HPV Hybrids

This is something I struggle with. I live with a 38 mile round trip commute. There is no public transportation, and car pooling is difficult as each department has staggered start times. While there are beautiful country roads with passable shoulders for biking, there is that whole Winter thing, and the 38 mile daily commute is pretty daunting-even in my MTB racing days of yore.

Closer to work housing gets alot more expensive, and with the market this flat it would be difficult to offload a house on the freeway and not lose money.

These are the 2 year old arguments that led me to purchase my 2001 Honda Insight 18 months ago. In the summer I can go to work 4 days a week on 2 gallons of gas. Not too shabby! In the Winter it climbs to about 3. But we were running the math this weekend trying to find a way into acreage before I turn 40 and selling the Insight would save about $10k in the next 2 years between payments and insurance. That would knock 1-2 years off the Get Beo a Farm plan.

On a random Google trip this weekend I was looking for a Farm Bike. I have this weird fantasy of a very low geared quad Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) with a payload capacity of about 1 cu yd that I could put tools and veggies in and pedal out to the Back 40 with on my farm. I swear I have seen them, but recent searches have come up dry, though if anyone needs it, it is this guy. I did find some really sweet bikes that are pretty close from a small company in Montana called Light Foot Cycles. Their PediTruck is just about perfect, and they also sell one of the most reasonably priced Cargo Trailers for bikes I have ever seen. Spending $4k on a pedal truck for the farm is a joke, but I like looking at quirky bikes-if for no other reason than to re-assert my geekiness. Then I stumbled on the part that makes this a Carbon Neutral Post.

Light Foot Cycles sells a really slick power assist system. They sell 2-3 electric options, but they didn't seem to be strong enough for a 40 mile commute-I really got turned on by their gas option. They take a teeny tiny 1.5hp (your neighbor's lawnmower has 6.5hp) Honda 4-Stroke which is clean enough to pass CARB's small engine laws. When attached to one of their slick recumbents it will power you to 25+mph (
with fairing) as long as you have fuel-basically a long distance gasoline/human hybrid that would only add about 30 minutes each way to my commute. They don't give any economy figures, but with mopeds getting upwards of 100mpg I think this could do up to 500+ if you pedal enough on the uphills-heck the fuel tank is only about 1 cup!

But that is still not true carbon neutral. Back to that Honda 4-stroke. Any engine this small is carburated. And anything carburated can run on any alcohol mix you want with relatively little tinkering (ok-it takes alot of tinkering, but no computer hacking so I can do it with enough books, tools, and patience). E-85 is becoming more available, but I am a do it yourselfer, so I want to make my own. I posted in June about the possibility of using my favorite crop, Sunchokes, to make 1600 gallons of ethanol per acre. While I only have about 200 sq ft of Sunchokes, that would still be enough to make about 70 gallons of alcohol (someone check my math)-enough to power my HPV hybrid for about a decade (35,000 miles?!?). Plus if I tune the engine right (and get back inshape), I might hit 30mph average speeds.

A Light Foot Cycle with the ethanol modified power assist would be about $3k and a weekend or two of sweat equity- I could limp through carpooling in the winter and catch up on my reading. That extra $7k would also make the cold November commutes feel a little warmer.

Not sure how serious this is-selling an Insight because it uses too much gas seems extreme, but trading a car in on a bike feels like a step in the right direction. Regardless I think getting past the stigma that some bike commuters have against motor assisted bikes, and learning to start thinking of them as HPV Hybrid's could open up alot of options for alot of people.

Be the Change

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Sunny Fuel and Chickens

This morning Mia and I were searching for some alternative starch sources for an acquaintance with an allergy to potatoes, and I jumped to Wikipedia to verify that Sunchokes were Asteraceae (yes) and there have been some updates to the entry. One of them was espousing the virtues of Sunchokes as an ethanol crop. The entry claimed that one acre of Sunchokes can be converted to 1200 gallons of 99.5% Ethanol. That claim seemed ridiculous so I let it go and went on to other things.

Right so I can't just let this go, but you all knew that already. Ethanol from my favorite perennial food crop? So I went back to track it and it turns out the reference on Wikipedia came from one of my all time favorite sites: Journey to Forever, again confirming my growing suspicion that it does, in fact, contain the answers to literally everything.

The JTF reference has about 30+ pages of text on ethanol production of which I read about 2, but it is basically just making strong beer-ok that is an over simplification but it ain't hard. So if I can seriously make 1000 gallons of fuel on an acre (v. 200 for corn) the 20 acre farmstead just became alot cooler. That is enough fuel to drive about 23,000 miles if we could convert our Subaru to E-100 (28 mpg * 85% efficiency) or just buy an E-85 car and cut our own ethanol with regular gas. The process looks easier than making bio-deisel, but that is only at first blush.

Regardless this sounds alot better than corn (6x the production/acre) while not having the no till advantages of switchgrass. I hope that it gets some real time in the debate at least.

Surround the whole thing with another of the coolest things I have read about this week: the chicken moat or even a hog moat, to keep the acre of sunchokes from taking over the entire site. As much as I love pushing the limits of the HOA...I need land for all these ideas!

I came across the Chicken Moat idea in David Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens. For those of you getting frustrated by my continual references to it, bear with me- there are still 625 pages to go...

So I had heard of Chicken Tractors, and like their utility and simplicity. I also really enjoyed the chicken coops in Mollison's Intro to Permaculture where the coop is adjacent to several gardens that are each separated by a fence-and each section also has a door to the coop. The chickens can then be released to "till" in a section of garden, remove most insect pests, and fertilize the heck out of the garden. The Chicken Moat combines the two ideas to some extent while adding alot of utility to the traditional garden fence. The picture above is very ambitious. The runs would house dozens and dozens of chickens.

A smaller version, say 30' on a side, would effectively run the perimeter of my 7 beds. The gardens that Jacke demonstrates with are absolutely dripping with function stacking. On the outside the chicken fence is buried 18" to stop burrowing varmints, and the planted thick with Comfrey and other mulch crops. These are planted fairly tight to the fence allowing them to be grazed, but not killed, by the chickens while also giving them some protection from sun and wind. The run is about 6' tall and fenced the entire height with chicken wire, and then there is a larger opening arbor on top with serves as protection from hawks and climbing predators, but also holds grapes, hardy kiwis, and a variety of other edible vines. The model shown had openings on the garden side for the gardener to chuck weeds in through. If you put down a sawdust/chip mulch in the runs you would have all the compost you could ever need. Loves it.

I can see something like this, but much stronger and with hogs, running the perimeter of the Sunchoke Acreage. Any errant tuber would be gladly eaten by the hogs rooting through the soil. Maybe I need hogs to stop my quack grass problems!

-Beo

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