Wood gas wizard! (sorry, there aren't any guys with pointy hats in this article

[dm1333]

http://www.motherearthnews.com/green-transportation/wood-gas-zm0z12amzroc.aspx

This is a pretty cool article about a guy who is powering his vehicles using wood gas.  The thing I like best is that you can still run the vehicle on regular gas if you need it and more modern engines, with TPI and computer controlled ignitions, work best with this conversion. 

[MillCreek]

That was really interesting.  I remember reading some articles about the use of wood gas in WWII in military vehicles.

[Ben]

I saw a vehicle like this on that Doomsday Preppers show. That one needed a good portion of the truck bed for the equipment. I wonder if this one is more "streamlined"? I didn't see any pictures of the entire truck. Interesting "retro" tech though.

[White Horseradish]

These were common in the Soviet Union during the war when gas was prioritized for the front lines and everybody else had to make do.

[Nick1911]

That guy is going to get arrested in short order for tax evasion.

Alabama takes 16 cents a gallon.  A 4 cylinder early 90's Dodge Dakota gets a combind 22 MPG.  He states he's driven 250,000 miles on woodgas.  That's about 11,300 gallons of gasoline.  Which means he has evaded about $2100 in taxes.  Plus that amount again to the feds.

[Ben]

That guy is going to get arrested in short order for tax evasion.

Wouldn't that apply to electric cars as well? Or if they have an exemption, he should have a pretty good case for one as well.

[RoadKingLarry]

I don't see where he has a tax liability. The fuel tax is on fuel purchased, not fuel made by yourself.
He isn't making alcohol or extracting petroleum products so I don't see how .gov can get a hook in him. Not any different than me heating my house with wood and not having to buy NG or electricity to heat with.

[Nick1911]

Because roads are paid for with fuel tax.  Same reason that you can get in trouble for running low-taxed agricultural diesel on a public road.  It is my understanding that if you are on a public road, and buring fuel that hasn't been taxes as such, you are in violation.

[RoadKingLarry]

I see where you are coming from but how are they to tax him? Per cord of wood? Yes the fuel taxes are supposed to pay for roads but as mentioned all electric vehicles suffer no tax penalty when they use the road,no substantial difference in a wood gas powered vehicle, so I don't think the Fed would have a leg to stand on.

[Nick1911]

That's true, there doesn't seem to be a mechanism in place for it.  It will be interesting to see what happens with taxes as more and more cars are electric.

How about ethanol?  Is the per gallon tax on gasoline also applied to the 10% ethanol in it?  What if one produces their own ethanol - is any fuel tax imposed with the registration of the distallation equiptment?  (Honest question, I have no clue)

[AJ Dual]

That's true, there doesn't seem to be a mechanism in place for it.  It will be interesting to see what happens with taxes as more and more cars are electric.

How about ethanol?  Is the per gallon tax on gasoline also applied to the 10% ethanol in it?  What if one produces their own ethanol - is any fuel tax imposed with the registration of the distallation equiptment?  (Honest question, I have no clue)

There's taxes and ATF permits up the wazoo on distilling your own ethanol for fuel purposes, even if it's denatured to deny (safe) human consumption. And the ATF's own FAQ page states a gradeschool kid can't ferment potato peels and dinner scraps, and run a little tabletop steam engine off of the alcohol for a science fair project legally w/o the proper permits.  

They regulate the hell out of any ethanol used in any industry, even if it's not intended for human consumption. At least at the manufacturing and distribution level. There's even permits for places that make flavoring syrups and extracts that use large volumes of alcohol as the carrier, like for vanilla extract etc.

If it's not denatured with methanol or isopropyl alcohol, they regulate it.   http://www.ttb.gov/industrial/forms.shtml

And they regulate, and require you to report the denaturing was done first. Only then is it sold in a non-regulated manner (from their standpoint) as industrial solvent or fuel. Then I'm sure state DOT's or the EPA have something else to say about it all after that...

As to woodgas on public roads, I don't think fuel tax would be the main issue. As stated, 100% EV's don't have legal issues (yet) with that.

State vehicle safety, registration, and emissions laws would probably be the main laws that might bar the legal use of a woodgas vehicle on public roads. Some states it might be easier than others to "just do it" assuming the truck or car body's VIN was intact and had a current license plate and you weren't in a region that requires emission testing to get renewals. Although you might still be running afoul of regulations that require you to use all your vehicle's emission control systems as designed originally, or DOT approved aftermarket equivalents, if you were a DIY hot-rodder type etc.

However, perhaps a vehicle that's old enough to be grandfathered out of those regs would do. Dunno.

I think largely, the number of folks running woodgas vehicles is low enough, and they tend to be rural enough it's just a non-issue for now.

[dm1333]

In the article it states that he drove one of the little Dodge pick ups in a cross country race, and that the vehicle would pass the California smog test.  That makes me think that it is registered and all of the smog equipment is still intact.

[drewtam]

Fuel tax will be an issue. There was a guy in Indiana recently in the news for making his own biodiesel for years. The bureuacratic system is not designed for the self sufficient...

They wanted this guy to pay back taxes for all the bioD he produced and used in the vehicle. He was also required to apply for manufacturers and distributor permits. It was an utter joke.

[Northwoods]

There's taxes and ATF permits up the wazoo on distilling your own ethanol for fuel anypurposes,

FTFY.

Were that not the case I'd be making my own Single Malt whisky and cognac style brandy.

[RoadKingLarry]

The bureaucratic system is not designed for the to oppose the  self sufficient...

FTFY

[CNYCacher]

It only passes emissions because the idea is so rare that they don't have a mechanism to include the emissions of the fire in the truck bed.

[HankB]

I suspect there are a lot of folks running their own vehicles on homebrew biodiesel or natural gas and just keeping quiet about it; all the folks I've heard about who ran into tax issues publically bragged about their cleverness first.

Ditto for distilling their own booze . . . I've never heard of a private distiller getting busted unless his operation was big enough to be commercial, i.e., running moonshine. (Though I wonder how many of the "personal use only" guys will age their stuff in oak kegs for a decade or more so they end up with something better than rotgut.)

[brimic]

There's taxes and ATF permits up the wazoo on distilling your own ethanol for fuel purposes, even if it's denatured to deny (safe) human consumption. And the ATF's own FAQ page states a gradeschool kid can't ferment potato peels and dinner scraps, and run a little tabletop steam engine off of the alcohol for a science fair project legally w/o the proper permits.

That is not surprising at all. The JBTs are petty tyrants over ethanol- I guess they never got over that whole prohibition thing.
When I worked in pharma, the DEA auditors were a whole lot less concerned about a few grams of narcotics that were scrapped here and there than the BATFE was worried about tracking and verifying where every ounce of our ethanol went.

[RoadKingLarry]

I used to work on some Fujitsu tape drives that required pure ethanol for cleaning, we really had to jump through hoops to get the stuff and management still acted like we wanted it for drinking.
Cripes, if I was gonna drink on the job I'd at least drink good stuff.