Producer Gas Vehicles: Burning Your Own Homemade Fuel

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A producer gas generator can be mounted at the rear of your vehicle.
A producer gas generator can be mounted at the rear of your vehicle.
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The crossdraft generator design is the easiest to light, but the hardest to build. The downdraft design is well suited to fuels with large tar build-ups, such as wood.
The crossdraft generator design is the easiest to light, but the hardest to build. The downdraft design is well suited to fuels with large tar build-ups, such as wood.
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The updraft generator design is said to have greater power than the downdraft or crossdraft designs, and is easier for the amateur to build.
The updraft generator design is said to have greater power than the downdraft or crossdraft designs, and is easier for the amateur to build.

Tired of shelling out your life savings every time you want to’ do a little trucking? A proven alternative fuel – producer gas – may be the right answer for you.

That’s right, proven. Producer gas (also called town gas, coal gas and power gas) is nothing new or mysterious. The principle of its manufacture has been known for about a century and a half. This fuel, in fact, enjoyed a real boom in Europe and Australia during the oil shortages of World War II. During part of that period, 90 percent of Swedish motor traffic operated on gas derived from wood or charcoal.

That same crisis, naturally, stimulated an abundance of research on coal gas, and mounds of material were written on the subject. I’ve tried to summarize part of the literature in this article . . . which is intended only to acquaint you with the fuel and prod you into thinking about it as an alternative to gasoline. Anyone who’s serious about its practical use should check out the sources shown in the reading list at the end.

Making Producer Gas

Producer gas is made by sucking a limited amount of air through a bed of red-hot carboniferous fuel (wood, charcoal, low-temperature coke, straw, peat, etc.) in a closed furnace called a generator. The result – after a series of intricate chemical reactions – is carbon monoxide. This – the primary explosive ingredient of producer gas – can be mixed with approximately the same amount of air and burned in the internal combustion engine in much the same way as gasoline.

  • Published on May 1, 1974
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