Workshop this weekend – Lister spark conversion – 6 Gas Analyzer now in house

Last chance reminder!

The next quarterly workshop at ALL Power Labs is coming up this weekend.   We hope you will join us for what is always a very enjoyable descent into (and back out of) the deep recesses of biomass thermal conversion.

The workshop offers education, research reports and hands-on experience to bring more people to successful operation of small scale gasification and pyrolysis units. The event is open everyone, not just GEK or BEK users/owners. So come and join us while we progressively make small-scale gasification and pyrolysis a reasonable proposition, adequately advanced for everyday use.

This fall we’re running the workshop in an extended format so we can take on some long-anticipated projects requiring more than the usual weekend to finish. The main event will be four days this time (Friday through Monday) but with one of the projects continuing until the following weekend. (yes, we’ll have a live webcam so you can watch the whole process, even if you’re not here).

There are 4 tracks/projects during the workshop.  Everyone can participate in all of them.

Bear is happy.  We finally have a proper real time 6 gas analyzer in house with which to monitor the produced gas in GEK tests.  Actually, we have two of them now– one 19″ rack mount and one portable.  Both of these are NDIR machines, designed and built by Wuhan Cubic in China.   Having two of then will allow us to monitor and datalog the produced gas in both the GEK and BEK projects this weekend.

We’ve long been suggesting these Wuhan units as the best value we’ve found to date for low cost gas analysis.  They cost about $8,000, which about half of the next best proper EQ options available.  And now that we finally have one inhouse, we can attest from direct experience how well they are designed and built.  Of course the first thing we did was disassemble it, and the inhouse electronics geeks signed off with broad smiles.

Dr Youhui Xiong, the developer of these units and the founder of Wuhan Cubic, will be here for the workshop and is giving a talk Friday night on gas sensing/analysis technology.  This should be very interesting.  We’re honored to have him all the way over here from China.

We are now reselling these units for Wuhan Cubic through the GEK store.  Write us if you would like more details on getting one.  And of course, come see it in action this weekend.

Lister spark conversion

Ken Boak and Marcus Hardwick have created a new wiki page with good documentation of the Lister spark conversion project for this coming workshop.  There is full doc on the electronics and code, as well as the machining dimensions to modify the COV valve to hold the spark plug.

This time we’re going in through the COV plug on the side of the head, so we can keep the diesel injection system intact, and have immediate dual fuel capabilities.  No wrenching to go back and forth between diesel config and 100% wood gas spark config.

see the details of here:
http://gekgasifier.pbworks.com/Spark-conversion-for-Lister-slow-speed-diesel-engines

On other less technical fronts, the lister is now removed from its previous MAXIMUM resonance mounting pad, and is now just on its C-channel skid frame.  It should shake much less this go around.  Everything is in good order and ready to go on the lister front.