Commercial Woodwork shops have an abundance of sawdust. GSW Industries has refined and packaged the wood gassifier, wood gas burning ICE and generator into one neat and easily maintained package. The target market is woodwork shops, where it will be used to supplement the power taken from the grid. The gassifier is equipped with a hopper, where the sawdust is loaded. Internally, it compresses the sawdust into pellets for burning. It is also equipped with a timer, so it will start operating 1/2 hour before the shop opens, to get a "good head of gas" before work starts. More complex installations include a battery bank.
-- senatorjam, Nov 13 2009

Don't bother to peletize, there are already sawdust burning boilers for heat, no reason you couldn't develop one into a gasifier for generation.
-- MechE, Nov 13 2009


During WW2, wood gasifiers were developed and deployed for vehicle power (usually in the form of a trailer) so the technology is practicable.

Eminently Bakeable [+]
-- 8th of 7, Nov 13 2009


I wonder how well sawdust composts, and how big a compost pile you'd need to heat a workshop. Also, can you extract useful work from the composting process, other than by using its heat to run a heat engine?
-- notexactly, Nov 14 2019



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