asification in outdoor wood furnaces or what we also call wood gasifiers or camp stove gasifiers is being practiced and developed rapidly. It is a whole new way of burning wood. One developer rightly calls it the Green furnace.
These are starting to come on sale as great green and sustainable products that reduce use on fossil fuels while being environmentally friendly. Camp stove gasifiers or wood furnaces create less smoke, use less wood while creating more heat.
Gasification is a process for burning wood where the gases from the wood are burned at very high temperatures. Downdraft produces extreme heat up to 2000 degrees igniting all gases including smoke and creosote therefore giving almost 100% efficiency. It is almost too good to be true!
Combustion of wood gas generates no particulates and the gas thus renders very little carbon black (soot). Combustion of the gases starts in the combustion tube assembly where the temperature of the gas is increased to promote thermal cracking of tars and hydrocarbons that were liberated during gasification. Partial combustion of gas in the combustion tube assembly, automatic continuous ash discharge and precise control of the zoning of the gasification air produces a clean, low Btu content gas that can be burned in the combustion tube and chamber for drying applications or in the radiant section of the boiler or stove.
Camp Stove Gasifiers are also called Wood-gas cooking stoves and are perhaps the best answer so far. These are gasifiers that produce gas from wood and then burn the gas, leaving ash and charcoal. Wood gas are nturaly the cheaper to run by all means, but charcoal gasifiers are much easier to handle.
Wood or sometimes other biomass is fed into gasifier at regular intervals. The equipment is designed in such a way that it takes air in controlled quantities, resulting in partial oxidation of biomass into producer gas. As the biomass is fed to the gasifier, it is converted into gas and char (carbonaceous matter) sometimes aso being catalyzed (ge by clay) under the presence of what is effectively steam. As the char is accumulated on the surface of the clay catalyst, the catalyst is deactivated.
Eventually, all the biomass particles transform into syngas, and the wood is gasified. Eventually, the developers of simple gasifier stove technology hope to create the possibility of converting many forms of non-edible biomass other than wood, prunings, straw, grass) into this wonderfully useful and efficient Green Gas with an efficiency of 70%. Subsequently, the Green Gas can be cleaned and pressurized and added to the natural gas network and be used as natural gas for many applications, such as heating, transport, chemical industry and electricity production.
Fuel gases can also be cleaned and then burned in internal combustion engines for the generation of electricity and process heat.
Gasification in-situ with energy production or pyrolysis of the above mentioned residues, under a non-oxidizing atmosphere for alternative fuels production could be a solution to the environmental problems that land filling or conventional combustion could create.