Wood gas distillation

Hello, Here is a video I made of my apparatus of trying to distill wood gas. Wood gas is made by boiling wood, sticks twigs, without oxygen in a hot fire.

So here I have a paint bucket sealed and a copper tube coming out of it. I filled it with "dry" wood chips, sticks, ect.

Then I put it over a fire and it boiled out gases and goes thourgh three loops of copper coil in a cold water bath. And then comes out and drips into a cup.

The way it looks to me, it seems that this makes a bunch of tar. The liquid that comes out is really smelly and icky looking. My goal was to make methanol fuel as an alternative energy. But it seems that the whole messy liquid only has a little alchohol in it, because I poured it on the fire, and it seemed to put it out, hehe.

Please help tell me what this stuff is, and how I may use it. And be careful, this stuff is toxic and dangerous if in the eyes, skin, or ingested.

Thank you very much for watching, and comment.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• woodgas
• distilation
• woodgasdistillation
• methanolfuel

[amzuel420]

one more thing. The conventional distillation of wood is an endothermic process. (get's it's heat from other source) So it takes a lot to make a little and there is a chance of an explosion. Remove the air from the still with an internal mounted flame source. When the flame goes out there's no more oxygen. The way we make it an "exothermic" process (producing own heat) replace the oxygen with a syn gas catalyst like co2 . That's how we get so much more product and leave only ash. Be careful!

[BasementBen]

Whoa, to make it "exothermic" all the wood needs is Co2 and heat and it will go on its own boiling the wood?

Hmm, what is that reaction? sounds interesting.

Ben.

[amzuel420]

I don't see the 2nd post...hope you got it. But I use the 1 way 2 lb check valve to make sure no air gets into my methanol still. 2 lbs. of pressure is enough to allow vapors to escape but not allow any gases back in. Those vapors are drawn up the stack by a cool coil enclosed at the top. The coil is copper tube with cold water running through it. It collects the vapors like a dehumidifier. I put a funnel under the coil and ran a line from it through side of the top part of the stack into a can.

[BasementBen]

Hmm, Great information.

I like the idea of the low pressure check valve, I just need to create a reusable heat-proof container that can seal, the seal is the hard part, but maybe I could use Threaded pipes :D

Also, have you ever heard methanol reduces to formaldeheyde in the body?

And that never leaves, I dunno if thats true though.

Ben.

[amzuel420]

You need to distill the liquid you get from the discharge tube if you're going to use water. Otherwise you can use an isomizing process that takes the wood slightly under the ignition temperature. Collect the vapors the same way you did this. Using that method you can expect to get about 6 gallons of methanol per ton of wood, and you'll have about 1500 lbs of charcoal. We use an endothermic/exothermic process that yields us up to 100 gallons per ton leaving only ash. Don't give up...LOL

[BasementBen]

Hey, thanks for those specs! That is alot of wood! :)

I could think of the charcoal as a good "byproduct" lol, thanks

Ben.

[vmelkon]

@BasementBen Your body converts methanol to formaldehyde which causes headache. I don't know if it leaves your body but it probably does. I have heard that if wine and such drinks contain small amounts of methanol, that's the reason you get a hangover (headache?).

[yellowmetalcyborg]

@BasementBen This is the chemical reaction:

CO2+C=>2CO

Although this reaction is slightly exothermic it won't drive a chain reaction throughout your reactor.



[HazMatLabz]

I think some of the stuff you made would be charcoal, most likely is tar. Heating hydrocarbons (wood is sort of a hydrocarbon) makes charcoal but since it was in water I'm not 100% sure.

[northerbrewer]

I know what he means but there are some problems you need to get the Carbon in that can hot enough that it wants to steal an oxygen atom from the CO2. Thus creating two units of CO. This could be converted to hydrocarbon in in Fisher trop reactor.

Not backyard stuff, I would not know where to begin.

Nothing is free you need to suply heat to drive the reactions or oxygen

[amzuel420]

I thought maybe I'd follow up on that a bit. If you notice, when anything burns it makes a vapor first. Smoke is the vapor in rapid oxidation. So it's actually that vapor that burns. Now suppose we made it "vaporize" but didn't allow it to burn? You can do this by eliminating the oxygen and simply cooling and collecting these vapors which will turn into liquid when they're cooled. You do not need to use water. And the finished product will be clear. I use a 2lb, one way pressure relief valve.