Hello everyone, here’s the latest news from All Power Labs on our work with gasification and biochar. We got some great news coverage, better assembly and first fire instructions, more user reports, and as always more research and testing data. It’s all part of our ongoing mission to put the information and tools in your hands, so you can make it yourself, or make it run even better.
Hope you enjoy, and as always feel free to get in touch with any questions, feedback, or user reports, and of course it’s always good to check in on what’s happening in our forums: http://gekgasifier.com/forums/
-All Power Labs.
1- Farm Show magazine reports on the GEK, calls us “a leader in turning wood and other biomass into fuel” and “a leader in putting syngas to work.”
If you’re not familiar with Farm Show magazine, you should be. A sort of how-to bible among people in the agricultural community, it’s an advertising-free monthly covering the latest inventions and innovations that are of interest to farmers, which is why hearing they wanted to write about us was so exciting.
To see a full size image of the story you can read, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/68943702@N00/3926992124/in/pool-allpowerlabs
This story, and what he wrote, was all the more important given that the writer, Jim Ruen, has been covering this issue for a long time. In fact, he wrote an article about gasification for The Farmer magazine way back in the 1980’s, so we feel pretty honored to get that kind of feedback.
Note: there was one typo in the story; it referred to a complete system as costing $5,000. The GEK Level IV is $2495, but closer to $5,000 with all the add ons like the pyrocoil heat exchanger, automated fuel auger, and Gasification Control Unit.
2: Better support: new and improved instructions:
Our Chemist In Residence, Jay Hasty, has cranked out a whole bunch of new instruction info, on how to assemble and fire up your GEK.
The Assembly Instruction are here: http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/How-to-Build-and-Run-the-GEK-Gasifier
and the First Fire instructions are here: http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/First-Run+Start-Up+Instructuions+for+GEK+v30
We’ve already gotten great feedback on them, like this posted on our wiki: “Great techie info with honest performance expectations., thanx and well done, Gents, Graham”
3: GEK Powered Thing Conquers The Rocky Mountains!
Frank Mannix in Colorado is at it again. This week, he sent in a photo of himself driving his GEK-powered VW Thing over the 11, 307 foot Berthoud Pass high in the Colorado Rockies!
Frank writes:
“Please post this picture, taken this afternoon, Thursday Sept 17 after I made it to the top of
Berthoud Pass 11,307. My house is at 8665 ft, which makes the climb over 2750 feet
in approx 15 miles, average grade over 6%(it’s downhill to Fraser, then up)
The GEK performed flawlessly going up hill, but I always have trouble going downhill,
and had to boost it with gas a few times (3 or 4 ticks of the electric fuel pump)
It’s like the throttle being closed down strangles it.
But it flies uphill (steady load- wide open – 2nd or 3rd gear,
and I even get some reaction from my “carburetor”- the butterfly valve.
Usually, I am on full woodgas- I suspect I have some vacuum leaks.
Frank”
4: Avalanche of hard data from the APL skunkworks continues
Bear Kaufman in our research lab continues to churn out impressive testing and analysis. His latest: a complete run down on a hopper of soft wood chips. If you’re into this sort of thing, you’re going to love it. Here’s an image from the test, link to all the hard data below.
http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/Instrumented-Softwood-Chip-Run-091609
That’s it for this week. Thanks for your interest and support.
-All Power Labs