A Truck that Runs on Wood Fuel: For the Truly Desperate
May 14, 2008 · Print This Article
When gas prices are high and you’re desperate enough to just not give a f#!k, rigging your vehicle to run on wood fuel might just be your answer. All you need are some materials you’ve probably got laying around in your garage, and a lot of patience, because you’re going to be throwing trees into this thing like there’s no tomorrow.
A listener to the Coast to Coast AM with George Noory radio program, Dave B., submitted this photo along with a few others and had this to say about it:
I ran into this interesting character today at my local farmers market that drove up in an old pickup with a crazy looking contraption in the bed of the truck composed of ducting, PVC pipe, a 50 gallon drum, an old furnace, and of course, a lot of duct tape among other many other things.
I had to ask him what in the world was on the back of his truck. It was a wood burning oven that catches the combustible fumes from the wood coals, condenses any moisture, then feeds the fumes into the engine to make it run. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it.
Apparently this is a concept that was engineered back in WWII when there were fuel supply shortages. I have never heard of it.
Probably would not be good if we all did it, but at least I know there is someone in town with a truck that will run no matter what happens with gasoline.
You gotta hand it to the guy for ingenuity. The setup looks like a traveling moonshine still. If this isn’t giving Big Oil the middle finger, I don’t know what is. It’s not very practical, and the emissions factor makes it less than an eco-friendly choice, but it’s definitely funny.
[Update!] Back in 1981, Mother Earth News published this piece on using firewood to fuel a truck. A guy named Chicken John also has one with a pretty interesting setup
Link [Coast to Coast AM with George Noory]
Photo credit: Dave B., submitted to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory
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Actually you guys don’t know what your talking about when you say that wood isn’t green fuel. The efficient burning of wood is greener then gas, electricity or practically anything. When you look at the amount of total energy used to extract and refine that oil from klms below the earths surface, or worse, below the bottom of the ocean, and it’s associated oil spills and other environmental effects. Then add on the fact that even in a car with no visible smoke coming out of exaust pipe, there is heaps of CO2, the main cause of global warming. The wood gasifier is full of smoldering…….not flaming……..wood chips or small offcuts and wood rubbish etc……it smolders and gives of wood gas…….which is a mix of hydrogen, methane, and a few other bits and pieces…….this gas is filtered, cooled, and fed into the motor and burned up along with any unburnt emmissions from the smoldering wood………it is actually very clean………completely renewable……..unlike oil…….and doesn’t have any of the massive energy requirments of extraction, refining or even transporting half way around the world if it’s sourced locally.
Same with wood stoves and slow combustion heaters…….my grandmothers wood stove used a total of about 10kgs a day to heat her kitchen and lounge room as well as provide hot water……….no visible smoke coming out except if you let it go completely out and have to start the fire from scratch and only then for a few mins until the fire is hot enough to burn up everything completely. On top of that……..plantation wood being grown and cut down and regrown is actually carbon neutral or even carbon negative because the growing trees actually suck up more CO2 then they release when they are burned.
People should really educate themselves about wood…….the world was burning wood in inefficient open fires and stoves exclusively for energy since man learned to make fire…….up until the age of coal and oil……..and it wasn’t burning wood that has led to global warming…….that’s all happened in the last century……..more then the previous entire history of human wood burning over 10s of thousands of years.