Dear Ken and All Several years ago I urged the Community Power Corporation (CPC) to increase the compression ratios of the engines they sold with their gasifiers. My memory is that they tried 17/1 and found a considerable increase in both efficiency and power output.
I am copying this to RobbWalt, head of CPC in hopes that he will have comments on this. Tom Reed The Biomassenergyfndn.com Thomas B Reed On Apr 24, 2012, at 12:59 PM, Ken Boak <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear A.D. Karve & Gasification Colleagues > > Is there any documentation of this village scale electrification project? Is > the project currently running? > > I have read the IISc Papers on the Hosahalli Village project - but that was > more than 20 years ago. > > I have been working on an experimental spark ignition conversion of the > Lister type single cylinder engine - so that it can be run either on woodgas > or diesel/biodiesel. > > The intention is a diesel start-up (for convenience) and then a rapid switch > over to woodgas, when the gasifier is up to temperature. This minimises the > amount of diesel needed over the whole run time - yet provides the > convenience of a quick start-up cycle. > > We have retained the 17:1 compression ratio of the Lister engine - and are > currently re-tracing the work - initially done in India to prove that woodgas > can be used at these compression ratios - without pre-detonation (knock). So > far, the results look promising and we have achieved between 2500 and 3000 > electrical watts from the 6HP Lister engine running in this mode. > > The project has been ongoing for some time now - and we hope that it will > result in a spark ignition kit being offered for owners of small diesels. > The Lister type engines are particularly suitable for conversion - but we > hope that other small diesels - such as Kirloskar are also fairly easily > converted - with the addition of the sparkplug. > > This work is being undertaken at All Power Labs in Berkeley, California - and > was recently demonstrated at a Weekend Workshop earlier this month. > > > > Ken Boak > > Principal Electronic Engineer > All Power Labs > Berkeley > CA 94710 > > 510 684 2640 > > > _______________________________________________ > Gasification mailing list > > to Send a Message to the list, use the email address > [email protected] > > to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page > http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org > > for more Gasifiers, News and Information see our web site: > http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/ _______________________________________________ Gasification mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Gasifiers, News and Information see our web site: http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/
