How did the whole thing work? Were there any modifications needed? Did the engine behave differently when using it? Did it let off some kind of smell or unusual fumes? How would it compare to LPG?
I’ve recently read this story by a person recounting being a kid in an occupied country during WWII. He mentioned an instance of having tonsillitis and having to take a wood gas bus to go to the doctor in a far away town, and apparently it was quite unpleasant. He possibly meant just needing to go that far by bus alone, but it seemed like he’s referencing the wood gas thing in conjunction with it being winter specifically, and something about a stove was presumably used for heating?
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Its pretty wild. You hook up what’s called a wood gassifier in place of a gasoline tank (or just rig it into the system). It takes in charcoal or wood and turns it into wood gas, which is a mixture of a lot of things and can be combusted. So thats the modification you need, and its going to be less powerful than gasoline. The smell and effectiveness is going to depend on what fuel you’re using and how well built the gassifier is
Wood gas is a way of making syngas which is a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide
Normally you burn wood and you get a fair bit of heat, CO2, and water. If you heat wood in a low oxygen environment you instead just cause the molecules to break but not really combust so you end up with hydrogen and CO with just a bit of CO2, you can then burn this gas at a *much* higher temperature than the wood burns at, high enough you can use it in combustion engines
A wood gas bus would have a big firebox at one end generating the wood gas to feed the engine. Its going to be *hot*, probably dirty/smelly if they’re fueling gassifier with coal, and with a leak in the system it could result in Carbon Monoxide exposure which results in a headache at low levels
If you heat up wood in the presence of oxygen, it burns.
If you heat up wood in the absence of oxygen, it gives off flammable gasses, mostly alcohols like methanol.
So basically a wood gas engine heats up wood in a closed container, so there isn’t enough oxygen for it to burn. The gasses are then used just like any other flammable fuel to run an internal combustion engine, or turbine.
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