Anybody ever make and/or use "wood gas"...?

I'm sure it would never be legal in current America but if there was ever long-term distribution of refined other hydrocarbons, especially if a person had an pre-emission reducing engine and access to a lot of biomass (mostly useful wood-based), it might be a solution in a SHTF sort of situation.

I first read about this process 35+ years ago and thought it was interesting. The Germans during WWII never had much actual petroleum under their control but had coal (but a lot of it was lignite) and forest products. They had a good number of vehicles running on wood gas by the end of the war. It appears that there was still commercial use of wood gas occasionally in modern times before the climate changers and emission freaks took over control in Europe and later North America.

I just wondered if anyone had any first hand use of these fuel source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas

Burnt drum after drum of Methanol in racecars. Its made from wood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol

Yeah, good old "wood alcohol". I should have mentioned that as well.

How well do you think it would burn in most pre-emission heavy engines?

My father during WWII ........was captured and used in slave labor camps for 2 years +..........always talked of germans running combustible engines on wood........prisoners never allowed near to see process.........

Doesn't run as well when engine is cool, harder to start cold.
Need almost twice as much compared to gas.

Good torque, runs cooler than gas.

I wouldn't want it for everyday driving in a vehicle.

Had no idea that the Germans were using wood smoke for fuel.
I heard from my dad ( WW II Veteran ) that the Japanese were almost all wood smoke engines for land vehicles.
Interesting , read about a couple guys driving across America on a cord of wood 30 or so years ago.

The "Mother Earth News" back in the oil crisis in the 70's had a lot of articles on it. If you don't believe wood smoke has power, next time you have some hot coals in your stove cover them up with fine stuff and get it to making real good smoke and no sparks and then throw a match in there, KABOOM, lol.

I have a friend who makes massive amounts of charcoal for making biochar. Huge amounts of wood gas are burnt off during the process. It comes out of the exhaust pipe from the charcoal cookers and puts out one heck of a flame. There should be a way to tap it from the pipes without the wood gas igniting.




Keith