Area man beating gas prices

[/media-credit] John Cleve­land puts some wood chunks into his wood gas gen­er­a­tor on the bed of his pick-up truck before he goes on a trip. Then, he ignites it with a propane torch. (Linda Moody photo)

By Linda Moody
lmoody@dailyadvocate.com

GREENVILLE — A young, rural Greenville man has come up with an inno­v­a­tive way to uti­lize an alter­na­tive fuel to power an older Ford pick-up truck he bought.
John Cleve­land has used a process called Wood Gasi­fi­ca­tion to pro­duce a flam­ma­ble gas that, when piped to the engine, acts much as nat­ural gas or propane would to power a vehi­cle.
“The wood gas gen­er­a­tor, also known as a gasi­fier, is in the bed of my truck and pro­duces this fuel in real time on demand,” said the 35-year-old. “My fuel is chunks of wood about the size of a base­ball. So, my truck dri­ves on wood.”
Cleve­land said he has worked on this project since about March of the year and finally drove it for the first time about two months ago.
“I now have more than 700 miles under my belt dri­ving this truck using wood as my fuel source,” he said. “To my knowl­edge, I am one of about 30 or 40 peo­ple nation­wide that have con­verted a vehi­cle to run on wood. I am the only in in Ohio that I know of.”
He said he learned about the gasi­fi­ca­tion process about a year ago, hav­ing found infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net.
“I didn’t know what it was until I did a Google search,” he said. “I’m always a tin­kerer, so a year ago I bought five-gallon wood buck­ets and built a wood gas gen­er­a­tor, hooked it up to a push mower to see if it would run. On the third pull, it started. It ran for 45 min­utes, using wood chips for a pel­let stove. I thought that was cool, and that I’d take it to the next level for dri­ving around.”
Cleve­land said the gasi­fi­ca­tion process has been around since before World War II.
“In Europe, over a mil­lion vehi­cles were con­verted to it because fuel con­sump­tion was a war effort,” he said. “It’s not a new tech­nol­ogy, but a for­got­ten tech­nol­ogy.”
He said he didn’t invent or engi­neer the design he has.
“I took another’s man idea and imple­mented it,” he said. “Wayne Keith, a cat­tle farmer from Alabama, has dri­ven over a quar­ter of a mil­lion miles since 2005. I just found the web­site dur­ing my research. I met him last spring in Argos, Ind., south of South Bend at a wood gas con­ven­tion. There were eight gas-powered engines there, but mine was don’t yet.”
Keith, Cleve­land said, was “quite a gen­tle­man.”
“I used his design and I built it,” Cleve­land remarked. “I learned how to weld and vis­ited some scrap yards. I esti­mate I have $1,000, aside from the truck, in it. And, I don’t know how many hours I’ve invested in it, maybe 400 hours, in build­ing this.”
Can this sys­tem work on an auto­mo­bile?
“I met a gen­tle­man from Wis­con­sin who had a Chevy Cav­a­lier at the Argos show,” Cleve­land responded. “He hauls his around on a util­ity trailer pulled by a hitch on the car. But, I’m not going to do it.”
Cleve­land admit­ted there is a horse­power loss when wood gas is used in a vehi­cle.
“You’re look­ing for a big motor in a lit­tle vehi­cle,” he said. “I have a 1980 Ford F-150. It’s a light vehi­cle and a good can­di­date for wood gas.”
He said his goal, how­ever, is to go with a more mod­ern truck and gasify that. His dream vehi­cle would be a late 1990s Dodge Dakota with a 318, V-8 engine.
He went on, “My only goal in this is to show peo­ple that there are other alter­na­tive ener­gies avail­able beyond expen­sive hybrid or elec­tric vehi­cles for those who are a lit­tle bit handy and have access to a sup­ply of wood.”
Cleve­land and wife Sara live in a wooded area sur­round­ing the home it took him three years to build, so wood is no prob­lem for him
Instead of fig­ur­ing how many miles he gets to the gal­lon, he uses 1 pound or 1 1/2 pounds of wood per mile, mea­sur­ing his effi­ciency with miles per pound.
He keeps the wood chunks in a chicken feed sack. Shav­ings and chips don’t work well, accord­ing to him.
“It takes a lit­tle time to cut up the wood, but I enjoy it on week­ends,” he said. “I love the out­doors.”
Cleve­land said his truck is not 100 per­cent wood gas-powered, only 90 per­cent. He still keeps gaso­line in it.
And, he built another pedal for the wood gas
“I kept the abil­ity to keep two gas ped­als at will,” he said. “I installed another gas pedal to the left of the brake for the wood gas. If I need extra get-up, I use the other pedal. I always start it on gaso­line, but use the wood gas 90 per­cent of the time.”
He works for Shook Con­struc­tion out of Day­ton, and holds a bachelor’s degree in con­struc­tion man­age­ment from Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­sity.
Tak­ing a look at his truck, the wood gas gen­er­a­tor he built and mounted is there along with other appa­ra­tus, includ­ing a con­den­sa­tion col­lec­tion tank, racks from he got from field gates on both sides to also serve as a radi­a­tor, a fil­ter as well as another col­lec­tion tank under­neath the vehi­cle.
Under­neath the hood of the tuck is a lot of PVC pipe lead­ing to var­i­ous items under­neath.
“I’m not a mechanic, but I did this all by myself with no help except for online cor­re­spon­dence to do the mod­i­fi­ca­tions,” he said. “Wood gas is flam­ma­ble. Gas extends from the wood when it is heated. I’m starv­ing the fire of oxy­gen so there is an incom­plete com­bus­tion. Gases are released from the wood when heated.”
The three gases he said he har­nesses are hydro­gen, car­bon monox­ide and methane to run the truck. Two other gases are car­bon diox­ide and nitro­gen.’
He lights the gen­er­a­tor with a propane torch when he’s ready to go for a ride, and some­times even to church at St. Paul’s Evan­gel­i­cal and Reformed Church in Piqua.
“The beauty of the sys­tem is the gas is gen­er­ated on the bed of the truck,” said Cleve­land, who attended Troy Chris­t­ian School through eighth grade and grad­u­ated from Troy High School, in 1997.
The Cleve­lands, who are expect­ing their first child at the end of Jan­u­ary, burn wood in their house to sup­ple­ment the elec­tri­cal heat they have.
“This hobby has evolved into more than that,” he said. “It’s between a hobby and every­day life.”
Those want­ing to con­tact him can do so at his email address jcleveland78@hotmail.com, and those who want to learn more about the process can go to driveonwood.com

Linda Moody is a staff writer at The Daily Advo­cate in Greenville.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.