Backyard Gassifiers Turn Wood into Hydrogen

Here at EcoGeek, we love to see what sustainable technologies average folks can get working in their backyard. Whilst we also marvel at the advances in cutting edge high-technology, it's refreshing to see "hands-on" technology, which you can build at home.

One response to peak oil and fossil fuel shortage has come from three members of Sustain Jefferson, a Natural Step community, who have built this downdraft gasifier, to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide (also called syngas) from ordinary wood pellets.

With hydrogen production currently dominated by the petrochemical industry, it's nice to see some simple carbon-neutral solutions to producing hydrogen, which you can make yourself.

This gassification process is an extremely simple version of Coskata's plasma gassification, which should soon be producting large quantities of cellulosic ethanol. Coskata has a microorganism that can convert syngas into ethanol at extremely high efficiencies.

Kick up a footstool, lay back, and enjoy - the video is also accompanied by a fairly smooth piano soundtrack!

And if you want to build one yoursef, the plans are open source and available here.