Woody Gasifier announces the release of the Off Gridder, the first multi-fuel gasifier for the home power generation market.  Using wood pellets, wood chunks, chips and certain types of agricultural waste, it is able to meet the power needs of an efficient home in as little as 2-4 hours a day.  Beneficial bi-products include heat for hot water and biochar for gardening.

The Off Gridder uses thermal decomposition to break the wood into it’s most basic elements including:  hydrogen, burnable carbon gases, methane and inert nitrogen.  These gases, created on site, act like natural gas to power engines and electric generators.

Plant waste called biomass, makes a compelling alternative energy source because it’s usually available on site or locally and allows plants to provide oxygen, clean water, habitat and carbon sinking before becoming a renewable energy fuel. Truly green energy.

“What most people don’t understand is that we don’t have to level mountains or go beneath the sands of Saudi Arabia to meet our personal electric needs. We have hydrocarbons right here growing all around us.  Trees and plant waste are renewable, carbon neutral fuels that we can grow and harness locally”, says the designer, inventor and CEO Ben Peterson, a winner of Popular Mechanic’s Backyard Genius Award 2009 and founder of Victorygasworks.com, the largest  social network on gasification in the world.

The Off Gridder will be available for sale on Sept. 28, 2009 at the product’s website www.woodygasifier.com.  The starting price is $4,995 and it goes up from there dependent on what options and features one picks to make the ideal configuration for their needs.

When I started into gasification it was for one goal: To get off the grid and power my life come hell or high water. It turns out that more than a few people feel the same way. So I went to work on a set of plans and a soon to be released gasifier kit called Woody to help other people achieve that too. Here is a quick introduction video below. Plans are available at woodygasifier.com

I saw this on the Yahoo WoodgasBuilders Group, its an overview of a 75 kw gasifier in Denmark by the Biomass Gasification Group. Its essentially a tar-free combined heat and power system.

Here is an excerpt from their site about their activities:

BGG is working with several gasification processes at our premises:

• The Viking gasifier is an unmanned, automated and essentially tar free gasifier plant with an integrated gas engine for heat and electricity production based on the two stage fixed-bed gasification process and fueled by wood chips. Until now it has produced electricity from wood chips for 3200 hours.
• The LT-CFB gasifier (Low-Temperature Circulating Fluid Bed) is a 500 kW gasifier for difficult fuels with high alkali contents. Until now it has successfully been operated on straw containing more than 12% ash, pig manure and chicken litter. Also its smaller 50 kW predecessor is still operational.
• The Low-Tar BIG gasifier is a new fluid bed implementation of the low tar two stage gasification process intended for large scale two stage gasification plants.

There is a pdf that you can download here that gives some details about their project pictured.