> During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.
How is this the first time me (or anyone else in this comment section) is hearing about this? It seems like a pretty major deal.
> During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.
How is this the first time me (or anyone else in this comment section) is hearing about this? It seems like a pretty major deal.
From what I gather the conversion wasn't a big deal. The engines of the time weren't picky about fuel, so you just have to find space to mount the wood gas generator (a very simple if bulky device) and pipe the wood gas into the fuel system. And once gasoline was available again those vehicles were easily converted back
If everything is operating correctly then yes it's wonderful. If conditions are poor then you are in for a bad time. There are a lot of things that can cause poor gas quality, often having to do with things like biomass moisture content, mineral content, and material feed. You can get into regimes where pyrolysis and reduction are incomplete and the tar content of the gas is high enough to stick valves and acidify the oil. Gasification is a fickle lover.
Part of the problems with it is likely long term usage because wood is not an entirely predictable fuel. All sorts of hydrocarbon oils and tars can come out of it and the moisture content of wood can be all over the place.
Possibly modern wood pellets would eliminate many of these problems, but if you aren't getting a really good burn, which takes some skill to setup with just random chopped wood pieces, you may end up gunking the engine all up and filling the oil with crap and possibly having some not so great exhaust coming out.
Otherwise you need the skills and an engine simple enough to be worth semi regularly opening it up to clean all the carbon and crap out of it. Something that might not seem like too big of a deal when people already use 1930s cars, but would become a much bigger and bigger deal in the decades after WWII when cars and engines become increasingly complex and people don't expect to be removing major engine components after 5,000 miles.
Some of us had the honor of learning about it from WWII vets... But, to your point, everyone in Europe was busy fighting the war, and there was very little 'driving around'. So not much talk about it.
Called "generatorgas" or "gengas" for short in Sweden. Almost all cars in pictures from the early forties had a little cart behind them. That was the generator.
I had heard stories of these from my Dad. He lived in country Australia (SA) during WWII, and the long-distance buses had been converted over to this.
With germanys lack of petrol, they relied heavily on alternative fuel sources.
trivia: The US had plenty of gasoline during the war, but they had to ration gasoline because they were short of rubber for tires. So it goes.