Imbert Gasifier footage from WWII: Transcription

Awhile back, I reposted this video from Bioenergyken, with footage of WWII Imbert gasifiers. They spoke in Swedish. You can roughly guess what they are saying, but not for sure. So.......

I found a transcription! From Fred Ivar in Norway, via the GEK Wiki :

[NOTE: I edited and cleaned this up a bit.]

Hi,
I am Norwegian and I understand Swedish pretty well because of the similarities in the language.
I made a very rough translation. It is not very accurate because my English is not good enough. It seem like the clip is some kind of a informational goverment news report or advertisement from the TV.
Anyway, here it is:
(First something I did not get)
The torpedos with the warlike look is a paracytilen gas tube which is driving this... ( video cut)
A gengas generator is challenged by... ( a little blurry but I think he is talking about coal)
This is a little presentation of generators for (coal?) and wood. Both fuels have their pros and cons, but there is no doubt that wood has great potential to become more popular.
It is cleaner and cheaper, and everything from heavy trucks to motorcycles is now driven on gengas.
Never before has the logger's work been appreciated than it is now, or the Swedish woods as valuable. Who would believe only a few years ago it was possible to drive a car on some wood chunks.
Now it is a fact that a great quantity of our timber is transformed to engine fuel. You chop it into nice small pieces and then it is ready to be used. Here is a bus driver stirring his generator. It is nice and easy and he does not get dirty. This is some of the pros of gengas.
After some details and pictures from the construction department where the generators are developed on paper, we go to down the casting area. And here the theory start to become reality.
We have been given the oportunity to have a look behind the scenes to observe how an Imbert generator is made.In this machine the sheet metal is rolled (...and he cracks a joke about how it is "rolling" sort of...)
The Swede has always been known both as an inventor and mechanic and this type of industry put both his workmanship and mind to great tests. But having passed the test really well is proven by the traffic not halting, but rather the opposite.

And in the gengas industry no wheel stands still. No arms or hands are resting. The most modern equipment is brought to use and the best craftsmen are working under high pressure.
For the layman observing ... (and something I did not understand. Some kind of joke I think)
The welding is a very important detail when it comes to gengas generators. One could say one is working with... (and some other joke I did not understand. Sorry... :-/ )
Yes, and this is how the production proceeds. One after another. And soon also a layman can see something starting to look like a generator. Here is the inner part placed in its housing. Nice and easy.
The lid is put on and holes are drilled. And this is how a generator looks like inside.

The production is going on at an amazing speed. The demand is very high. Whole rows of generators stand ready for delivery. And in the end the paint is quickly putting color on it all. And at last one is ready to mount the generator to the car.
For many car owners it is a golden moment when the car can be taken out from the garage and start rolling again.
The bus takes us to and from our work. In the morning we get our newspaper and milk as usual. The milk bottling plant has more than 500 trucks with Imbert generators. We have had a look in the busy morning hour.
The bottles shine on the car and to the right you can see the bottle that is powering it all; the gengas generator.
All too long the beloved car has been resting because of gasoline shortage. The time waiting to get going has been long and hard. But the ones who at last has got a generator on the car (...and something I did not understand, -again) and it does not take long before the wagon is goning on a long trip.
Here comes the happy family ...(blah, blah).. ...and out in the beautiful white landscape. But a car does not drive longer than the fuel supply. And how is the status quo in the matter now? He has obviously stopped to have a look in the container.
The fact is easily observed by lifting the lid. And there is not much left. Oh, well he will have to use the reserve he has in the bag. Quickly it is put into the pan. Nice and easy it goes and no one get dirty. Just keep the pan boiling and drive on.
And swiftly it goes forward along the road as it swirls like a serpent trough the woods, edged by white snow walls.
What is going on now? Is the wood already burned out? No, he simply want to have a look at the map to see where the closest station is. (And then something about a 1 km down the road there is a "torp"?)
Everything is settled, and here is just one of the advantages of a wood generator. It is very easy to handle the fuel problem. One kilometer is made swifly and happily and the idyllic "torp" is lying just where it is supposed to. Elegantly he turnes into the farm, and introduces himself to the farmer - who for the first time in his life is functioning like a gas station. Sorry, wood-station I guess it is supposed to be called.
(Then I can't catch everyting but it is something like "Just roll up your sleeves and bring out the axe. Top Swedes are we everyone") Just split the wood into bricks. Bring the fine wood first into the bag and then in the pan. The car run swiftly down the road and the farmer is left standing to think quietly about new inventions and ideas...

Thanks to Fred Ivar in Norway!

Arduino class

I have been taking a basic electronics class lately. In particular, I have been introduced to a microcontroller known as Arduino. This is really a whole platform, complete with programming environment and easy-to-use interface. This is a dream setup for prototyping in electronics; get an Arduino board, construct a physical circuit, and write some code. Bing! It's uploaded and running. Pictured is a part of a project, the Gasifier computer. I am working out a program for controlling a biomass gasifier; it will read input from an O2 sensor and make adjustments to the fuel/air mixture valve, as well as controlling the spark advance and giving a digital readout of several temperature and pressure sensors. All that from a chip that costs $4 by itself. The Arduino development board pictured cost about $30, and the software is free.

I have bumped into Arduino once before, as the basis for the MPGuino I assembled for the Geo Metro.

Arduino is based on the C language, all the operators work the same way. Arduino gives you a few built in libraries, for functions like digitalWrite( ) or Serial.read.  I haven't done any programming before, so this has been a fun challenge. It's also an exercise in precise formatting; a missing bracket or semicolon in the wrong place and the code refuses to compile, or worse it may compile fine, but won't run as expected. I may post the code for the Gasifier computer once I get it right.

I mentioned an electronics class. Walt Baldwin has been gracious enough to teach an Arduino class at the Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe on Tuesdays. He has been showing us the rudiments of programming, drawing on his background in engineering and software design. Several students and professors from KSU have been attending the class. As you may recall from my previous post, Wayne Keith has been up to KSU on several occasions. As it turns out, some of my fellow students were involved in that event, and are very interested in gasification technology. One sent me a boatload of photos of Wayne's truck. Huh! So it's a small world after all. 

28,000 lbs of wood...

I just took delivery of 14 tons of sawmill chunks from the local mill. We burn this wood for heat all winter. They sell the wood, current price is $125 for a load, 7 tons each. So that 28,000lbs of wood cost a mere $250 dollars. The wood is still fresh, I think around 40% moisture content - so that 14 tons is really 10 tons of 15% MC wood with 4 tons of water.

That 10 tons could replace 1000 gallons of gasoline, which works out to a cost of $0.25/gal.

It's wood-gas time!!