Save Gas: Use Producer Gas from Wood!

Running an engine on wood is not for everyone. But it may be just the fuel you're looking for in order to save gasoline consumption for your car, truck, generator, or farm machinery.

Imagine adding a bag of wood chips to the hopper of your producer gas generator, opening a door on the combustion chamber, starting a small fire, finishing your morning coffee and three or four minutes later taking off down the road. It's been done!

Millions of cars, trucks, tractors, and taxis were operated this way during the worldwide petroleum shortages of the late 1930's and into the 1940's. Both Volvo and Ford build production model vehicles during those years, with the apparatus built into the design of the vehicle. Charcoal-burning taxis were still common in Korea as late as 1970.¹

What is Producer Gas?

Producer gas is a vapor by-product, primarily carbon monoxide, of a high-temperature combustion process (1800 degrees Fahrenheit), obtained by restricting the amount of air supplied to the burning fuel. Other names for it are fuel gas, water gas, and town gas.

The only requirement is that the fuel must be carbon-based--wood, charcoal made from wood (grilling charcoal is vegetable-oil based and will not work), coal, peat, rice hulls, etc.

What about Emissions?


A producer gas generator with enough capacity to operate a vehicle for several hours will only create a few tablespoons of ash.

Paper, oil, or water filters trap any tar and ash that may come through the system.

An engine running on producer gas has only two exhaust emissions coming out of the tailpipe: carbon dioxide (not a "greenhouse gas") and distilled water! According to the author of the internet article "Wood Fires that Fit, "as long as wood burning is sustainable and doesn't cause deforestation, its CO2 emissions are neutral -- the CO2 released in the fire simply gets recycled back into more trees."²

How Does a Producer Gas Generator Work?

Here is a very simplified description of the process: