[Gasification] Video of Imbert factory, 1942. And grate shaking

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:38:06 -0700, jim wrote in message 
<AANLkTikxV4=xbjKr5=hZAW6co5-A8_-fbw80PMqDqtiN at mail.gmail.com>:

> arnt,
> 
> i guess it is good that i could not understand the sweedish.  for me
> it was only visual.  the step by step through the building was highly
> interesting for me as i do this daily, and had to invent my own system
> from scratch to do so.  seeing how capable gents solved very similar
> thermal vessel manufacturing problems back in the day, over a
> different tooling base, is fascinating (in an admitedly very geeky
> way).  that's what i liked.  for me the video is a secret document
> from the past about something of deep daily interest to me.

..aye, now if we could have Olli or some other Finn speaker, find or 
do an English (or Swedish) translation of the Finnish video... ;o)

> it was interesting to see, for instance, that this model of imbert was
> of a tube in tube design.  i always thought they were hard welded
> together cabinets.  instead in this video i learned that the hopper
> and reactor are one "tube", which inserts into the "gas cowling", hung
> by a flange at the top, where the cap also bolts.  they used a triple
> flange joint at the top, and it could infact come back apart.  didn't
> see what they used for gaskets here though.  anyone know?
> 
> our gek units use this same flange hanging tubes down inside tubes
> idea, but put the joints in different places.  the imbert design
> continued the rising gas up along the hopper to get some more heat
> into the fuel, and increase the particulate drop out.  it also had a
> fairly significant air preheating system with the cast tubes wrapped
> around the hearth.  that was the first gas cooling stage.  the
> transfer to the fuel hopper was the next.  still, they needed a good
> deal of cooling on the gas after the reactor and fuel drying/heating.
> 
> the gas is pulled off one side at the top.  what i didn't see a good
> solution for is how you pull the gas off one side without creating
> very uneven gas flow and heat transfer up the annulus.  i have dealt
> with this problem all over the gek base unit,  pyrocoil and drying
> bucket.  these on the gek are all very are similar heat transfer
> annuli.  in the base, i ended up with wrapped lines.  in the pyrocoil
> and drying bucket, i ended up with baffles in them to get the gas
> passing back and forth over the center vessel.  these solutions have
> pros and cons, and often still have the uneven pull off the top side
> problem.

..easy, as in annoyingly "Duh!" easy, draw the gas from one 
side, at an angle, to have it spiral up to your outlet. ;o)

> the imbert also had a fairly narrow annulus by the top.  this often
> tempts one to put some sort of widening manifold to distirbute the
> pull.  a straight pipe hole is going to have restricted volume to pull
> against if the annulus space is very shallow.  this is why we do
> widening manifolds like this:
> http://www.gekgasifier.com/nggallery/page-1309/image/1037 .  this one
> is for the pyrocoil, but we do the same thing all over.
> 
> the grate again is fascinating.  the bump up in the middle of the side
> to side motion i never knew the imberts used.  why is this not in any
> of the books?  the up/down motion in combination with side to side or
> rotary, we're finding interesting.
> 
> the huge space between the bottom of the bell and the grate is even
> more than i've understood from the drawings.  this creates known
> problems.

..that can be fixed with a charcoal cage on the grate top. ;o)
It's only when we have gas cooling off in charcoal, that we 
risk 2CO -> C + CO2 reversal.

> the ton of access ports through the side shows they actually ran these
> units regularly, and not just as demos.  and also that they had lots
> of problems inside that required frequent digging out and poking.
> good access to the bell is critical if you are getting bell packing
> probs regularly.  and as this is a known problem of the imbert, they
> clearly put good bandaids on it allow operators to recover.
> 
> as for acetylene, i'd never heard of engines being run on it.  i'd
> think it would be impossible given the extreme flame speed of
> acetylene.  it would be way more poppy than a nitro car. 

..it's more like hydrogen, you just retard the timing. ;o)

> while yes, you could also run an engine on small charges of gun
> powder, it would not be, umm, very smooth.  did they really do this
> back in the day?

..yes, but _very_ few did, I've never seen any references to 
bottled acetylene before this video, only to WWI style "roof 
balloons" and to WWI and WWII carbide gasifiers.  
Wood gas was, and is _much_ cheaper, and _much_ safer.

..if you draw too much gas out of an acetylene bottle, it'll 
split up the gas and start "burning", if you're at sea, you 
toss it overboard and speed away, in an harbor, you attach a 
rope and toss it overboard and tow it out to sea trailing 
smoke out of the water too, to save the harbor.  

..bottled acetylene as automobile fuel, is _totally_ nuts.

> arnt, do you know of any other old videos like this?

..nope, this one I found searching the "ur.se" end hint web site.
Olli?

-- 
..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;o)
...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry...
  Scenarios always come in sets of three: 
  best case, worst case, and just in case.