I see others have referenced such stuff but I’m too lazy to compare their URLs to this one to find out if I’m sending a duplicate. Anyway, I like the looks of the Volvo. Check it out.
One of my neighbors built the Mother Earth News version and ran his pickup truck on it. At the time I moved in 1986, it had been running fine for 5 years. Don’t know how long he used it after that.
Sterling Cycle engines were built by Philips in Holland and in Aachen Germany 40 years ago. I worked at Philips labs in US. We supplied the Air Force with these engines in the late 60-s and early 70-s in their reverse mode used for cooling their infrared detection systems. In Europe a bus using the Sterling Cycle Engine was built running on any heat producing fuel.
Here is your Google search link FYI.
The car your caller was riding during WWII was running on wood gas. It is made by partially burning wood in conditions where oxigen is limited. This produces a mix of gases that among other things contains methane, methanol, hydrogen and carbon monoxide (it does burn to produce CO2). The wood gas was a very popular conversion in WWII Germany, due to the shortage of gasoline.
Below are links to images of a truck (Ford) and luxury sedan (Adler) that were converted in Germany during WWII to run on wood gas. You can see the car in the Deutsches Museum (Munich, Germany). The wood gas generator is mounted at the back and there is a cooler for the gas that is mounted in front of the radiator.
Cheers,
Peter
I asked my Dad…95 years old and a veteran of WWII. He spent 6 years in North Africa and Italy, so I thought maybe he heard scuttlebutt of the wood chip car. “No”, he replied, “But there was a large truck in North Africa that ran on grape skins. It was against the law to burn wood and there was no gas, outside of Army issue, so the North Africans used what they had. If your rode behind the truck, you would feel drunk after a few miles!”
I was born in Finland in 1935, came to the U.S.A. in 1946. When I was a child in Finland, all the cars and buses ran on wood. There was abig cylindrical tank attached to the side of the cars, which spewed a black evil smelling smoke when they ran. But they worked, and we had plenty of trees in Finland.
Since you guys have italian origins you might like this one: wood chips gas generator were tried for public transportation in Rome in the '30th. It does not look like they encountered the public favor, anyways.
The system was dubbed ‘gasogeno a legna’.
more infos (and pictures) can be found here:
http://www.tramroma.com/autobusroma/rete_urb/autobus/add/gasogeno.htm (in italian, sorry…)
GLM
wierd, I just read about this last night in an old mother earth news. may, 1974 p.68. pictures, diagrams, explanitory. there is a bibliography also, popular science jan 1944 p122, ibid sept '44 p141, scientific american oct '44 p174, and four more technically oriented articles '“gas producers for motor vehicles and their operation with forest fuels” by I. Kissin (theres a new name for you to abuse!) Technical communication no. 1, imperial forestry bureau, england 1942. “Experiments on a high-speed producer gas engin” by AF burstall and MW woods, london engineer no 167, 1939 p 640-642. Producer gas for motor vehicles by cash and cash, angus and robertson ltd, sydney australia 1942, and " the modern portable gas-producer: theory design, fuels, performance, utilisation and economics" by goldman and jones, journal of the institute of fues no.12, london, 1939.
so interesting also that north koreans have read mother earth news.
i suppose this is the principal behind “Coal fired gassification plants” that are so bewoed by environmentalists but that are being touted as greenwashed energy by some as an alternative?
when I run out of gas I find it simpler to hop on a bike than to weld up a wood stove and strap it to the top of the old camery, but. . .
I heard the show today and was reminded of color slides my dad took when he was a Marine in Korea. He visited Japan on the way to the war and I’ve attached here a photo he took in March 1951 in Kobe, Japan. He labeled it as a “charcoal burning auto.” Not sure how it worked, but thought this might be of interest.
All of my life, I have heard GI stories of my dad's service in World War II. One of them involved vehicles fueled by wood.
Now 90 years old, and still very much alive and in possession of his faculties, he says there was an acetylene-type tank inserted into a cut-out in the side of the hood, behind the housing for the front wheel. They carried wood in the trunk, and put it in a firebox underneath this tank, and the fumes from the burning wood created gases that went up into the carburetor (maybe a makeshift one, he doesn't know).
He remembers civilians in Germany, Switzerland, France and Holland using these vehicles, because they couldn't get gas for transportation. They apparently were pretty efficient, because there were a lot of them. They didn't put out too much smoke.
My dad and his buddies couldn't ask about them because they didn't speak the language, but all the GI's talked about them.When I was a usually-broke college student I heard of a 1932 Mercedes Benz that was for sale about an hour’s drive from my campus. I didn’t have the $2000 required to buy it, but I love a good deal. Besides, I already had a 14 year old $400 '56 300C, and didn’t really need another Benz. Gas was cheap, so I drove my MGA to a small town where the former local Dodge (I think, this is an OLD memory) dealer’s widow had the car stored in an otherwise abandoned downtown building. It was a neat old car. A GI had imported it to the USA after WWII, and traded it in on a new car several years later. The dealer’s love of antiques as well as antique cars made him keep it. The car still had part of the rack in the trunk that had at one time held the gasifier unit. Some of it was still there, but most had been removed to make the car more useable. I wonder what happened to that car.
This is a similar car. http://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e888330120a7d2345c970b-500wi
We had these in Finland during the war 1939-44 (against Russia) since fuel was in short supply. The devices were called ‘häkäpönttö’ (puukaasu=woodgas) which translated means carbon monoxide drum. Wiki has a couple interesting pictures http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puukaasu.
¨
I was amazed at the amount of knowlege you demonstrate show afte show. And also amazed that you did not know about GASOGENO. In Uruguay, during the 40’ they used to RACE Ford and Chevis on gasogeno. They burned coal. Great show, keep on, Eduardo
Folks, Tom and Ray, while MIT attendees, did not get technical degrees, so you might give them a break on this obsure corner of automotive history.
The biggest problem with engines running on woodchips is that the cokedup burner must be cleaned out regularly, A couple loads of wood were enough to cause the gas lines to become clogged and it was necessary to stop and clean out the hot, sooty fire box and lines. The meant the operator was always dirty. I have a old friend from Sweden who used a woodchip-powered truck to visit his girlfriend (to whom he has now been married for over 50 years). During WWII in German-occupied Sweden petroleum fuels were not available so he converted his truck to run on woodchips. He would begin his journey dressed very well and arrive with rolled-up soot covered sleeves from having to stop several time both for more woodchip fuel and to clean the firebox.
Woodchip mobile? My Dad (92 and still ticking) remembers seeing cars outfitted with this device in Townsville, Australia during WWII. He also remembers Hoovermobiles. Tires were taken off the cars and put on wagons to make an easier rolling horse or mule drawn vehicle.
Ok, I tried to call in with the details to this yesterday and now notice that some people have already beat me to the punch with a link to my own uncle’s research that he did as part of a team at Mother Earth News in the 1970’s and 80’s; I do think he may have written that article shown in the link though it has no by-line. I have sent a request to Car Talk to contact me or my uncle as he would probably like to talk about this - particularly what they did at Mother Earth. Only moments ago, after sending that request, did I find this blog.
What my uncle (Richard Freudenberger; now the Publisher of Back Home magazine) explained to me is that all combustion leaves unburnt particles in it and it is possible to repass those for further combustion. In the case of the engine, there were sufficiant particles for it to run. (EDIT: Ok, since writing this this morning, I have spoken to my uncle and he explained that my use of the term combustion is wrong, that to do this, full combustion would not work; he is going to to try to weigh in here this week when he comes down off the mountain and has access to twenty first century communications). BTW, his current book is “Alcohol Fuel: Making and Using Ethanol As a Renewable Fuel” and this book has been recommended by his former employer, Mother Earth News.
I am going to call my uncle now and see if he might want to add to this.
Steve
Dear Guys,
Leave us to roll the Rock of Ignorance from the front of your Cave Entrance. The wood gas powered car is real, there is a you tube video showing a Harley running on the fumes from the cooker. When you make charcoal, if you condense the gases coming off you obtain a mixture of combustible liquids. I think the cooker the guy was talking about had two chambers, one with a firebox and an airtight one for the wood chips. The gases coming off the wood chips fed into the engine intake.
I think like the papermills extract the black liquor from the wood chips, by burning the wood chips. This must burn off the black liquor in the wood, to produce methane gas. Which in turn can be ignited in the cylinder.