Gasifier Experimenters Kit

About

The Gasifier Experimenters Kit (GEK) offers beginners through experts an easy way build and customize a wide variety of gasifier types and run configurations. Whether you’re a DIY power enthusiast, university researcher, or industrial engineer, the GEK will get you quickly over the starting hurdles of gasification, and on to the more rewarding work of making power and making biochar.

The GEK is designed in a modular fashion for easy switch out between common reactor types and operating regimes. You can use the GEK to run an expertly configured downdraft gasifier for running engines and generating electricity. Or you can use the same base to create a pyrolysis retort for biochar making and soil studies. Each reactor is a separate assembly that bolts into a common gas cowling and ash handling base. Within each reactor type, all variables are easily adjusted and sub-assemblies are simply replaced via standardized “bolt to” flanges.

This modular design makes it easy to add performance parts and process elaborations as your needs require. Gasifiers are seldom “one design fits all”. Different fuels and different uses require different solutions. Thus the GEK is designed for easy integration of add-ons and customizations such as: auger fuel feed, in-situ fuel drying, IC exhaust gas heat recovery, active tar recycling systems, electronic instrumentation and control, and automated ash removal systems.

The result of is a uniquely powerful “LEGO system” of biomass thermal conversion. The GEK gives you access to all the commonly discussed, but rarely implemented “expert solutions”, and does so at the smaller-scale and lesser price relevant for personal energy projects.

The GEK project is solving the longstanding problems of small-scale gasification and pyrolysis. We invite you to join us on the cutting edge of the adventure– or least follow the derivatives via one of our growing number of imitators . . .

Getting Started

Gasification Basics: How it works and why it matters

Reactor Options: Running engines, generating power, and making Biochar.

Add-ons and Customizations: Expert solutions for improved thermal, chemical and mechanical control

Community: Join the GEK experiment in “collaborative science” and “open source engineering”.

Build it or Buy it: Getting your own GEK.