[Terrapreta] Backyard Biochar

[Tom Miles]

Jeff,

It's not really germane to terra preta but I'll tell the story anyway.  

I first heard of the Lockwood pulsejet in 1968 sitting next to a pool in
Beverly Hills when the president of a multinational corporation asked me, as
a college student, if I thought it would be suitable for drying fish. In
1978 I found myself using one to dry manure. 

It's the same Ray Lockwood pulsejet. The company that built the dryer used a
diesel powered pulsejet to dry layer manure for a local egg farm. We just
pumped the manure into the jet stream. I think we burned more than we dried
or charred. My job was to find uses for the dried product. I was combining
the dried product with straw for feeds (before mad cow disease was
discovered) and mulch/fertilizer products. The dryer worked best with very
wet materials like fish waste.   

Sonodyne, a successor to the original company, was still promoting the dryer
in 2003. See:
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/827030-tcxy32/native/827030.pdf
They have now applied it to spray dryers.
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-663220000004000
09
I don't know how many they have ever built. 


Larry Winiarski, who later developed the rocket stove, did his doctoral work
with Ray Lockwood at UC Berkeley. In 1976 Larry gasified straw for us. At
the time he ran a wood gasifier on his porch and burned the gas in a
pulsejet. The pulsejet does make a lot of racket. The story was that someone
called the police thinking there was someone loose in the woods with a
machine gun. 

The lesson is that if you want to attract attention to your charcoal kiln
you can heat it with a pulse jet. 

Regards,

Tom

Larry built a gasifier at the 2004 ETHOS Stoves Camp and ran his truck off
it. See:
http://www.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/ethos/Seminar/ET5/index.htm
http://www.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/ethos/Seminar/ETHOSSeminar2003.html
      
The Lockwood pulsejet is used by ThermoChem Recovery International (MTCI) to
heat an indirectly heated fluidized bed gasifier. They call it a pulse
enhanced gasifier. 
http://www.tri-inc.net/howitworks.html
http://www-acerc.byu.edu/News/Conference/2005/PDF%20files/Thurs%20Afternoon/
Whitty%20ACERC%20Presentation%202005.pdf
  
          

-----Original Message-----
From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 5:52 PM
To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Backyard Biochar

On Saturday 07 April 2007 11:25 am, Tom Miles wrote:
> Drying (high temperature sonic drying with a pulse jet -ram jet - engine)

Tom, have you been working with Peter, off-list??

I have always wanted to build one of these puppies but fuel it with producer

gas. Check out the below link:
http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/

Maybe the producer gas would not need to be super clean?

Make a rotary prime mover: Cement a a good sized pipe in the ground. At the 
top place a bearing. Next picture a rotor blade on top of the pipe and both 
are hollow to allow the producer gas to flow to the pulse engines mounted at

the ends of the rotor. Next incorporate, from the wind mill people, an 
axial-flux PM alternator. Now you can make your charcoal and burn the off 
gasses in this pulse-jet rotary axial-flux generator!

I've also thought about mounting two of these on my jeep with a woodgas 
generator. Start off with the stock gasoline and engine and once up to speed

switch over to the pulse-jet/woodgas unit. Hey, make charcoal as you drive 
and discourage tailgaters...


PLEASE, tell us more about your pulse-jet dryer.........



Jeff



-- 
Jeff Davis
Somewhere 20 miles south of Lake Erie, USA

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