Anyone think this is a joke?

I'm going to say it's a hoax. I'm basing this on one thing. Lengthy article but no pictures. You'd think that there would have been at least one picture.

CNN aired film on it but they could have been taken in. It was an old pickup truck with a barrel behind the cab to add the wood. I thought it was a bit nuts when I first saw it but I am convinced they were tricked.

STANLEY STEAMER! image a vehicle powered by water, heated by a flame! Never catch on! h

It is possible, if done right. Remember back to third grade elem school... Teacher heated up wood in a test tube. Heated wood gives off volatile gases (mostly methane & ethane) which teacher lit on fire. Same principle as creating charcoal. Heat wood in a container using other wood. One part that is wrong is where he states the gas given off was hydrogen. Not true.

Maybe not. I recall reading in history books of vehicles running on charcoal in Europe during the war. How it might be done I don't know. Regds

ISTR seeing pictures of WWII-era London buses with small trailers that I think generated "producer gas":

Perce

On 05/02/05 08:01 pm frank tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

The guy that owns that truck was interviewed last week on CBC Radio's "As it happens". A subsequent listener's e-mail (read on air a day later) said that the Germans were able to run Panzer tanks by burning wood during WW2.

The theory behind it was not really expained during the radio interview. A web search turns up what I think it the best explanation of how this works:

"The actual process works by subjecting a biomass (wood) to a high temperature (above 800 degrees Fahrenheit), which affects a release of an aromatic hydrocarbon, or arene. This hydrocarbon, similar to a benzene ring in structure provides the necessary energy when further burned. It is flammable because of the methane, hydrogen, carbon monoxide and tar contained in the original wood. The so-called "gasifier" thus takes wood chips, charcoal, or sawdust and burns them. Ashes, dirty soot and wood gas are produced. Those are periodically cleaned from the gasifier, like cleaning the old coal burner in the basement making the operators dirty as well! Also, the gas had to go through another step before it was delivered to the internal combustion engine. The tars and other impurities had to be filtered out to deliver clean "gas" to be burned. Without this step, the motor would easily become "gummed up" after a period of use."

That's called producer gas. The part of wood that actually burns (the volatile stuff) can be made into low-btu gas. If you're old enough to remember the last energy crisis, you may have seen this article before (with pictures the first time). People were playing with this in the 70's, but producers are very very old technology.

So it's a known technology. Whether it's a hoax is harder to answer.

Hi newsgroup,

Producer gas is far away from beeing a hoax. In fact it is a very old technology. In the last years of WW2 a German engineer named Elsbett developed systems which could be run on nearly any common type of car. For those who are interested in this subject a look into some sites in Finland, Norway and Sweden may deliver more information. About two years ago I found a Finnish site named "Gengas Page" which has many actual informations about producer gas. Unfortunately I did not have its ULR. But some "googeling" may help.

Some of the major problems for todays cars is probably the amout of sulfuric acid which is contained in the produced gas and because of its lesser content of energy per volume compared to petrol a loss of power has to be taken into consideration. But the rest could make us a little more independant of those sheiks and their companion petrol firms ;-)

Peter

"Joe" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:TyCde.28361$ snipped-for-privacy@fe06.lga...

Don't know if this is a hoax or not but back in the '40s (WWII time) my grandfather had an old ford that he drove that ran on wood chips (no ration coupons). Even in summer it took hours to get up a 'head' of fuel to go to town.

Wood burning truck was featured on CNN a couple of weeks ago.

We've been discussing that for about a week. See the thread "Does anybody think this is a joke" and you'll find it. No danger to forests - it would be way too expensive.

"Joe" | >

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Sorry posted to the wrong group.

It's no joke-producer gas made by incomplete combustion of wood or charcoal was very common in WWII. In Brazil they were called "gasogenios". Many have ben built. It's a very, very labor intensive, messy way to run a vehicle though.