Wood Smoke Power
January 4th, 2008 by Northern FarmerI’m happier than a pig in mud tonight because we got the small loafing shed cleaned out today. I think it was 18 or 19 loads of manure that got hauled out of there today. I need it cleaned out because I back the cattle trailer in there to load steers when I take them to the co-op to weigh them before butchering. Now that job is done for a couple of months at least and I’m satisfied. The steers didn’t make that deep manure pack, it was the calves that we had in there before we sold them last month. Good fertilizer, in fact so durn good I was spreading it all near the tar road today. Now that’s a farmer for you, spreading manure along the busy county road. The reason is simple, bragging rights! Now I know we ain’t really supposed to be bragging, but all farmers do, one way or another. So, if’n we get any rain this next summer I’m hoping for some gigantic corn over there so other farmers will see it. Plus I’ll make durn sure that the variety of corn planted over there is some tall stuff! Like that Krugs I had two years ago, awesome stuff, I posted a picture of it here in July of 2006, it’s somewhere back in the archives. When we’d make silage in those fields one couldn’t even see me chopping because it was so tall. And our silage boxes are huge!
In our shed there’s a magazine laying there on the bench, I think it’s called Farm Show or something like that. Ain’t mine, but I was paging through it yesterday while the wind was blowing outside and I was safe inside. Lots of stuff in that magazine, allot of big ag type stuff but also some pretty nifty ideas for farmers and homesteaders. But one thing caught my eye, something I haven’t seen in about 28 years. The last time I seen it was in an ancient Mother Earth News. And I must of thrown that magazine out a few years ago when I was drowning in decades of magazines in this office and had to finally give in and throw out a couple tons of magazines and newspapers, (what can I say, I save things). But what I’m writing about is wood fired combustion. Internal combustion. A automotive engine can run on smoke, I’d always figured mine just smoked and never gave it too much thought that an engine can run pretty good on firewood smoke. There, either I’ve caught someone’s attention or everyone is clicking off this blog about now.
Years ago I read the article and seen a photo of a truck run by wood smoke. It looked like an old steamer at a old time farm show. That caught my attention, but it was impractical because of the size and inefficiency of that monster. As I was paging through that Farm Show magazine I came across a new version of a firewood powered pickup and it looked good! Not that huge steamer look that I seen in the old magazine years ago. I think it was installed in a older Dodge Dakota. The workings of the thing are from smoke being burned in the normal engine. According to the article there’s very, very little to change on the engine itself. The way it looks to me. it’ll work just as good as an ethanol burning engine and one doesn’t have to cook the moonshine to get fuel. One doesn’t have to raise corn or buy it. You don’t need a license to make wood so that’s a step up from cooking ethanol.
And as far as miles per gallon, well I should say mile per cord, the article says the mileage is 9000 miles to a cord, (mpc), hmm. Around here a cord of firewood is worth anywhere between fifty and a hundred dollars a cord. It costs almost a hundred to fill my pickup with gas and I only get about 600 miles to that tank. So here we have around fifteen times the mileage for the same dollar value according to my hillbilly math! One small firing up will get a person about 70 to 80 miles down the road with top speeds of around 90! (Hey folks, this is real!) Although I suppose that the higher octane wood like oak, maple and ash would be more efficient compared to some basswood or box elder.
I’m just writing some of the general things in the article, there’s allot more, but I was thinking that this could really be a help to some country folks that aren’t commuting in some big city traffic. The article said that the pickup doesn’t have very good acceleration compared to a gas vehicle, but what the hey! I remember my first car, a snappy one owner 1962 Chevy Belair, bought from an old widow woman. Had a six cylinder and a two speed automatic. Talk about lack of acceleration! That’s when a smart farmer boy learned how to use hills to his advantage! I figure if I could survive that car for a couple of years I could survive a wood powered pickup, eh!
And now they’re working on a wood smoke powered electric generator, and this thing has possibilities! It doesn’t take much imagination to understand these could be very efficient. The thing I forgot to mention is the smoke has to be cooled before burned, and in the pickup there’s some pipe type heat exchangers that look simple and do the trick cheaply. On a generator system the heat could be exchanged to heat a building or house, the generator could provide electricity, talk about some great possibilities! Plus in many areas wood is plentiful! And when one understands how little it actually takes it gets pretty interesting.
I’ll have to look into this, because I know that it’s been around for a long time, plus they’ve got it much more efficient. By they I mean people that fool around with this stuff. You won’t find this being advertised by an oil company you know! But it is very real. The cost would be minimal, using an old farm truck, a little bit of farm handy work to get it built and bingo, ready! And some folks figure they never learn nothing on this blog, eh!
January 4th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Tom,
I really enjoy reading your blogs. I check every night for a new one. I am having trouble deciding on whether to farm or not to farm. I really enjoy it and I have lived on a farm my whole life. I am married with 2 and 3 year old boys. I sometimes feel if I farm I’ll be depriving them and my wife of all the material things. I really don’t care about the material things and my wife says she doesn’t. Is there anything you can tell me to ease my mind or help me make a decision. Thanks
January 5th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Darrell,
Thanks for commenting and checking this old blog every night!
I won’t tell you one way or another about farming. But it sure looks to me that you answered your own question on your comment! You understand what farming life is about, no wild dreams, just reality. Your wife understands and supports it, and two young boys would thrive on a farm compared to any other way of life. In fact, that’s one way of thinking about it, do you want to deprive your young boys of a life as good as farming?
And most importantly, pray about it as a family! Because there’s nothing that I can say that can truly help you make a real decision, it has to be between you all and God!
Again, thanks so much for the comment, folks like you are very important to me!
God Bless!
January 5th, 2008 at 7:08 am
“do you want to deprive your young boys of a life as good as farming?”
You know, thats what it comes down to. However bad you think farming can be money wise, plan on it being even worse. If you really, deep in your heart, don’t care about material things(all the stuff you don’t really need anyway) then think about the kids. Even if in the end they throw it away and head to the city, at least you’ve given them a chance. A chance at living life the way God intended a man to live, with the skills to opt out of the wickedness of postmodern america. Just something to think about, a little of my unasked for thoughts on the matter
January 5th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Tom,
Your readers can check out the whole wood-fired truck thing on the Mother website: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Homesteading-and-Self-Reliance/1981-05-01/Mothers-Woodburning-Truck.aspx
Bryan Welch, Publisher, Mother Earth News
January 5th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Tom, I get ahold of Farm Show every once in awhile, isn’t it amazing what some people can build out of old combines? I know of a farm family that has been repowering it’s trucks and suburbans with used skidsteer motors (3 cyl turboed), those motors are usually still good after the rest of the skidsteer is junk. They get around 30 mpg in the suburban! Never knock the creativity of a determined farmer! Oh, and speaking of corn, I just copied off of the internet a report titled “Open Pollinated Corn Variety Trials And A Discussion Of The Practical Implication For Open Pollinated Corn In Small Scale Whiskey Production”! I’m not a drinker but it looks like interesting material for those of us who lean towards OP corn!
January 5th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Scott,
You can jump in any time! I love the “plan on it being worse”, because it sure can be! That’s more like a rule
Bryan,
Thank you very much for the link! I see that link was from “81″. I do believe the article I was talking about was a bit earlier. Didn’t have any of the data on it, just an article showing someone with a big outfit on an old truck. Anyway, that’s what is still in my brain’s memory banks!
Like I said in the post, I’m wondering about a system like that on a gas generator. You wouldn’t believe the farmers and homesteaders around here that have mentioned to me the last few years about generating electricity somehow with all the wood we all burn. Of course our backward minds are still stuck in steam power, but this has me wondering about the possibilities of wood smoke power!
Brent,
Sometimes I have to stop myself from starting some project because they’d soon take over my life. And this farm is sort of setup to tackle many of the projects mentioned in either magazine.
But I have my varieties picked out, good ol’ MN 13, some good old fashion Krugs, and was thinking about experimenting with Goliath for strictly silage. If what they say about Goliath is even half true it could really help around here, grows big, and now that the JD 4320’s clutch is fixed I won’t have a problem clutching the tractor when chopping huge stuff. Oh, to see the days of not being able to make it around the field because the silage box is plump full, well a guy can dream can’t he 
Between Mother Earth News and Farm Show magazine us farmers could get ourselves into all sorts of adventures
Hmm, I’ll have to look into that about the OP corn. The last few years here I wouldn’t call our experimenting with OP corn a trail, it was more like persecution with the severe droughts
January 5th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Wonder if you have to feed the fire as your going down the road?
It sounds like that would be a huge improvement in a Dodge Dakota but then… just about anything would be..;)
January 5th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Patti,
In the article I read you can make around seventy miles on a fire up. Of coarse a person can have a little wood in the cab and use the sliding rear windows, shouldn’t be much more complicated than folks that always are gabbing on cell phones when driving
I should pass on the Dodge Dakota statement, but that would keep me out of trouble and that would be out of the ordinary. So….(maybe no one will read this far down on the comments, eh), I agree with you.
January 5th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Heh, if this keeps going, I’m just going to start checking into buying a old Stanley Steamer, Must be one stuck in a barn somewhere. Why, here in the Ozarks there is plenty of wood to fire it, and a stream or pond every mile. I’ll never buy gasoline again. No inspections, emmisions controls, no tranny problems, steam engines don’t need transmissions, Just keep an axe, and bucket in the back. I could go up hills around here, and never have to shift down. Stanley Steamers, are still some of the most powerful cars ever made. Put a power take off on it, and no tellin what kind of saws, and other gadgets you could power. Might get every kid in the neighborhood away from thier X-Boxes for awhile, just to look at the dad blamed thing.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Now there’s an idea! Them Stanley’s were something else! Now if there was a backwoods handyman out there somewhere I think he or she could do good making a bunch of them things for folks like us. Plus having a power take off attachment wouldn’t hurt either. For more info on Stanley’s here’s a link for anyone that has no idea what we’re talkin about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Steamer
January 6th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Maybe it could be designed to work with wood pellets like a pellet stove? Then you would just fill the hopper and go!
January 6th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
That’s true John! I was thinking about that yesterday. Of coarse after seventy or eighty miles to a standard fireup I figure I’m ready for a stretch anyhow. But out where your from your used to long distances, and probably in those distances a lack of wood too. Around here a person would never run out of fuel cause we’d just have to walk across the ditch and gather some deadfall.
Thanks!
January 6th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
You got me there, I can go seventy mile just making a trip to the grocery store.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:28 am
John,
I know, around here our mpc, (mile per cord) would be reduced by short trips. Gotta get fired up for a short three or five mile trip to the co-op or something. Don’t have many longer trips, heck it’s only twenty miles to the county seat! Would have to figure out how to tone down the fire a bit to save wood on those little trips
January 8th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Hmmmm,
Seems I remember an ol Cheech and Chong movie that had a car in it that ran on smoke……
.
Alright, I need some advice on this. All spiritual, ethical, and economical advice is encouraged. Seems some pasture land I’ve just bought has some of it in crop programs. Now I haven’t been to the FSA office yet to look into which programs, but the acres have been in it a while and the owners are using it for the same thing I’m going to be using it for.
The problem here is I’ve never taken a handout in my life. When I got laid off, I didn’t take unemployment or anything. I guess I’m asking how you feel about land programs. Is it a government handout, or a chance to help the farm on the bottomline. Now I know how ‘ol Charlie felt about it too. Once you said here that you should never deny the farmer a chance to make money. This wouldn’t be a whole lot of money, but it would probably take care of land taxes.
Hmmmm…. what to do, what to do……
Thanks,
Brad
January 8th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
OK
You snookered me into this Brad
All I can say, if your not desperate for the money, forget it. If you need the money I ain’t going to tell you not to take it. Personally I stay away from government programs like the plague. But that’s just me. Not for any religious , ethical or any other reasons, I just don’t like the fine print. Basically you sell your freedom. And if I don’t have to worry about some crazy government regulations I have more time to make some real money. And that’s a fact, I don’t ever worry what the government has to say about it because they can’t easily get their claws on me because of not selling out to them. Simple.
Hope that answers your question from my point of view
January 10th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I have an old photograph of relatives driving a farm truck in Germany when they couldn’t get gas.They had a 55 gallon drum in the truch bed with a fire in it,a cover over it and a hose to the carbuerator.Volvo had a car pictured in Popular Mechanics magazine back in the last fuel crises[the 70s]with a two wheeled fire pot hooked on behind.You filled it with wood,lit the fire,clamped down the lid and drive away.They’ve done away with taking the fire with them now,have refueling stations for the presurized smoke every 40 miles down the road.But guess what,only in Sweden.I’ve been thinking about an on the farm electric plant fueled by big bales of corn stalks for years,but have only gotton around to actually researching the subject now.Too many cows to milk in the past to putter around.I found this blog while googling the idea.
January 10th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Hey Walter!
Thanks for the input! This is getting more interesting as time goes on. I’m amazed at the searches that are popping up on this blog on this very subject! There have been quite a few the last few days. Pressurized smoke, now that’s interesting, funny how in other parts of the world this is not some goofy idea, eh! Also amazing on the searches popping up here are the number mentioning the generators. Funny, I’m not alone
Thanks!
January 12th, 2008 at 8:26 am
There’s another crazy guy that can be found in Australia,converted a car to run on woodgas with a hydrogen extactor add-on included.around the continent.He had the unit on a trailer with some wood storage,but he also had a buzz saw mounted on the front bumper running off the fan belt.Find The woodfired gas producer on the internet.This was done 20 years ago.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Check out the three yuong Sweeds and their wood powered car.
At http://www.vedbil.se/veddrifte.shtl
Also the Finnish at
http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/ekfiwoodgas
January 20th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Hey Kenneth!
I can’t get either link to work, don’t know what the problem is, but I wish they would because I want to investigate this all further.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Forget the pickup truck. Convert your tractor to wood. Especially an old John deere model A or Model B…
These had a “heavy distillate” engine. The engine was started on gasoline, and then when it got hot enough so the exhaust manifold could vaporize the heavier distillates (kerosene, heating oil, etc), you switched a valve, and ran the tractor on the heavier (and cheaper!) distillates.
because of the lower compression needed to run on a variety of fuels, these engines will perform much better on wood smoke than an average, (especially modern, computer-controlled engines- forget it!) automobile engine today.
I don’t think a diesel engine will convert to wood smoke very well, but maybe someone else can say something about that with more authority.
An interesting note: In the Soviet Union, they ran almost all vehicles in Siberia on wood smoke up through the 1940’s. Wood was plentiful, and petroleum fuels were impossible to bring into the wilderness. You can read about this is the book, “The Long Walk”. It is about a Polish Officer and a few others who walked from Siberia to India during WW2. it is an amazing story.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Oh, and Brad, I wouldn’t take the Gov’t money either, for spiritual reasons.
Without going into it, the gov’t is run by people (at the very top, not the rank and file), who are not controlled by the One True God. They don’t live by faith, they live by the strength of their arm and they trust in horse and chariots, like Pharoah.
The big picture is a spiritual battle- it’s too simple to say “”good versus evil”. Better I think to say, “who lives by faith, and who lives by strength?”
if you have faith, then you can give out of your want. You know you have a direct line to a source of Divine, never ending abundance. You get to be a loving person, even when by a materialistic view, things are looking pretty grim. Most people will give if they have excess, but if things get tight, they look to themselves, and their own. people can turn on a dime from being pretty decent to being truly vicious animals in situations of want and stress and fear.
The only antidote is faith. Faith isn’t acquired in a crisis, it’s like a muscle that has to be continually exercised. If we are to have it in a rough patch, we need to develop it now.
The gov’t folks, they don’t have faith, and they know that those who have it are free of them, and will think, say and do the truth, because they cannot be controlled, and they hate that, and they want to erode and destroy your faith as fast and as completely as possible. Your price support program is just one of a myriad of gov’t schemes to kill your faith. Don’t do it, for the sake of your spiritual health.
Give God a chance to show you how He can inspire you to take that land and make it pay WITHOUT any Gov’t “help”. When you see how God helps you, you’ll KNOW He can do that it every part of your life, and you don’t need the gov’t and you never will.
March 26th, 2008 at 12:53 am
I am interested in making a wood gasifier for a pickup truck. Does anyone know where I can get a copy of Vesa Mikkonen’s book “Wood Gas For Moblie Applications”? I have tried his website but it does not allow a place for me to place the order. He is in Finland, maybe a copy can be ordered from another source. The gasifier he shows has been very well enginered
and I would like to build from his plans. Thanks.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
You write very well.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:21 am
My father-inlaw was telling me that during WWII in Sweden you couldn’t by gas so most of the car ran on wood smoke. Gas stations sold bags of wood chips, that went on for 5 years. When gas finally was available alot of people didn’t want the gas. He came to America about 50 years ago and he though about converting his lawn mower to run on smoke but never did
October 31st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
In the town I grew up in some guys ran a car on wood smoke (parked). I remember the set up. It worked, but it was a test for them. They apparently started the car on gas then turn the gas off with a valve keeping the smoke gong down the carburetor. Apparently they did run the same set up in a van and drove around town in it.