When you have a major disaster like the one in Haiti, whether it comes from an earthquake, flood, tsunami, hurricane, or some other calamity, two of the biggest challenges are cleaning up and providing power.

Enter the DIY gasifier. Gasification is an old technology that is coming back into vogue again thanks to high energy prices. The simplest explanation is that a gasifier takes any dry, carbon-based material (usually wood chips, but often things like walnut shells, dried sewage sludge, etc.) and applies high heat in an oxygen-limited environment. The heat causes the wood or walnut shells to vaporize (i.e., gasify) and leaves behind two products: a bunch of gas, mostly hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide; and a small amount of ash or slag.

The gas--usually called synthesis gas (or syngas for short) but also sometimes woodgas if the fuel is wood--is energy rich and can be used just as you would use natural gas. Through a catalytic process called Fischer-Tropsch, the gas can also be refined into a synthetic diesel fuel.

Gasification is extremely well understood and dates back to the mid-1800's when almost every town in the industrialized US had a coal gasification plant which produced "town gas" that fired the municipal gaslamps for street lighting. Cheap oil pushed it out of fashion, but at various times governments have turned to it as an alternative to oil when necessary. In 1940's Germany, as many as one million cars ran on small wood gasifiers during the war. Embargoes against South Africa in the early 1980's led to the government building large coal gasification plants to produce gas as a flexible fuel source.

In the 1980's, FEMA put together a manual for building gasifiers for just such emergencies as this. Although those plans are still a valuable resource there are more current designs.

Recently, an open source movement led by a Berkeley group called AllPower Labs has been having great success with a DIY "gasification experimenter's kit" (aka the GEK). As an open-source, low-cost, low-tech solution the GEK provides a perfect platform for people in Haiti and other disaster relief situations to both dispose of the masses of waste wood, coconut husks, bagasse, etc., that they have nearby and to provide power. All that is needed is some simple metal working tools including a welding kit, some training that most mechanically-inclined folks could easily understand, and a generator (perhaps fashioned from a car engine) to turn the syngas into energy for electricity or transportation.

There is another group called Victory Gasworks that is working on a parallel track with a less decentralized model as well. Both the GEK and the Victory Gasworks model would be fine for a situation like Haiti.

A trailer full of startup equipment would be useful, but even more useful would be for us to develop super-simple training videos on how to build and use gasifiers and then work with US-based Haitian groups to develop web-based training videos. They'll have limited internet access down there soon enough and if there is even one good welding setup and metal shop in Haiti this is very achievable. Anyone game?

Links:

Gasification Experimenter's Kit (open source): http://www.gekgasifier.com/
Victory Gasworks (mix of open source and commercial): http://victorygasworks.ning.com/
FEMA gasifier: http://wood-gas.com/wood-gasifier-plans-fema-gasifier/
Wikipedia wood gas page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas
gasification 101 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PZr9uXegZw

Blog by Jason Turgeon