How to Convert Wood Products Into Biofuel

With the energy crisis as profound as it is, many people are looking for solutions that involve renewable resources. Wood is a renewable resource more typically thought of as a building material. However, in the wood chips and saw dust that usually go to waste after a construction project, some scientists have discovered how to generate biofuels in the form of oils or gases derived from the wood waste. The methods used to convert wood into biofuel range from a moderately difficult sort of backyard project a layman might find feasible to high-tech attempts to reduce the cost of generating oil from wood waste.

Things You'll Need

  • Wood chips or pellets
  • Gasifier
  • Horse manure
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Instructions

  1. Bio Gas

    • 1

      Convert the wood into bio gas. Cut wood or collect waste wood such as wood chips and place them in a dry container. Allow them to dry or dry them using heat generated by solar panels so that you're putting as little energy as possible into your energy generation. Place the dried chunks in a gasifier. Turn it on and roast the wood until all oxygen inside the gasifier is consumed. Remove the remaining carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane inside the gasifier by passing the gases through a container with a water sprayer that will remove the heavier carbons from the bio gas and leave the methane and hydrogen. Let these remaining gases pass through a layer of horse manure and exit the container into a storage tank or engine turbine.

    • 2

      Derive oil from the wood. Heat wood chips and pellets that are less than 1 inch long or wide in the absence of oxygen; this is known as pyrolysis. About one-third of the wood will become charcoal. The rest will become a gas. Condense the resulting gas into a liquid bio-oil.

    • 3

      Turn bio gases produced from wood into an alcohol additive for gasoline. Mix wood chips and sawdust with high temperature sand. Heat this mixture with steam. Divert the methane produced by this heating to power engine turbines or into storage tanks. Convert the remaining gases into an alcohol. This alcohol can be added to gas in place of the alcohol additives already used, which are made from crops such as corn and sugar cane which could otherwise be eaten.

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