About Us and our history
First Prototype and Company Launch
The company was originally established as Vulcan Gasifier LLC in 2012. Producing raw wood gasification systems for engine driven applications.
The company launched January 2nd 2012 producing the M-1 gasifier (pictured to the right) The M-Series was a wood chip fuel gasifier for fueling small power generators and was produced from this time until it was officially retired in 2022.
In 2013 the company secured a commercial fabrication shop and has operated at the commercial level ever since. The Micro Series gasifier would under go an extremely rapid develop phase through the coarse of 10 years, with hundreds of them sold. As you can see we are no strangers to raw wood gasification. We are one of two companies in the United States that are the longest standing on market today. That means our development history goes much deeper than newly established companies coming to market. What they are doing today we were already doing years ago. It is through this development that we know what works and what does not. You can not learn that out of a book or research. We are engineers and are experts in this field, we design and develop our own technology. Not out of someone else's book or from plans on the internet.
The Evolution Series Gasifier
The Evolution Series Gasifier systems are what really set us apart from many others.
As mentioned we design and develop our systems in house. The Evolution Series is where we developed our more advanced technologies. Over the coarse of this development we introduced, advanced automation with AFR electronic fuel mixturing systems, electronic self ignition systems along with all support systems controlled through logic, even including the engine starter. This is so that at one point the machine could run autonomously to self charge off grid battery banks without any user intervention. There is no way to overcome the physics to self sustain operation of a small scale stationary wood gasification system without automation period!! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise because if you do buy something like this without it you will be disappointed; that is a promise! A side note; specialized industrial automated equipment is the owner and founders background. Building million dollar machines from the ground up. To include production machines for the big three, the aerospace industry, solar panel production systems just to name a few.
The Evolution Series also featured full modular design concepts, advanced reactor core technologies, with ceramic insulated hearth cores, intake air preheating, anti channeling reduction cores, radial draft grate systems, and then eventually the anti back draft reactor systems. The later eliminated reactor gas back drafting eliminating moisture from getting into the fuel at the hopper level. No need for combating hopper moisture because there was nothing there to combat.
The Evolution Series was developed in many scales and different formats. From running small 12 HP small engine application on up to large General Motors 5.7 ltr and LS based high performance V8 engines. The large power plants featured auger fed hopper systems and were a fully integrated turnkey system.
The DFX Gasifier and VersiFire System
In mid 2020 we introduced a brand new breed of gasifier that would become the DFX Series. Although at that time it would carry on the M-Series badging until it was retired and replaced with the DFX badging. This was due to the further realization you could mix a percentage of dry wood chips with charcoal making them a dual fuel system. So for the 2022 model year; we changed the units to the Dual Fuel Cross Draft Gasifier. (DFX-Series)
From their inception to now, the DFX has undergone once again very rapid development leading to the final 2023 model year designs. The design goal was to produce a machine that is easy to use, has low maintenance, easy to produce fuel, that is consumer grade, that anyone can operate at a low price point. Along with that was to develop simple systems for home brew charcoal creation to support the DFX. For the 2023 model year and beyond; we have achieved this goal and the current design is now commercialized with manufacturing process and infrastructure built around it to mass produce them for years to come. We will now move on to the VersiFire and new controls development.
The VersiFire! Well where to start? Ok well when it comes to heating with biomass this is a heavily regulated industry with very little true innovation as a result. So we are going to change that. The VersiFire will not only serve as a means for heating with biomass, it will also run gas appliances. At least that is our intent at this development stage. Water heaters, gas clothes dryers, gas oven / stove, evaporative refrigeration and gas radiant heaters are what the VersiFire is intended to run. All while reducing your feed stock to engine grade charcoal for solar back up.
The VersiFire will be an outdoor system that will supply gas to the home via an automated self sustaining system. How it will work: The VersiFire will be made up of a large down draft gasifier with self ignition systems and two gas accumulator systems. Now that you know our history then you know building this level of gasifier is no issue for us we have built hundreds of them! The accumulators are otherwise known as gasometers. Once the gas has been charged into the accumulator and has completed the cooling cycle it will be ready to supply the gas to the home. This cooling cycle is how the gas is scrubbed. You can not filter tar, you must condense it out and this cooling cycle under positive presure is how you release this tar along with soot and debris. Once the supply accumulator is exhausted it will trigger a sensor telling the controls to switch to the other accumulator and to recharge this depleted one. The gasifier will run its self ignition process, self light the flare and once it sees a sustaining flare; it will then charge the accumulator until full and then go back into standby mode. While in standby the raw wood fuel will continue to dry and reduce to charcoal. There will be an active grate to harvest this charcoal to fuel the DFX Series Gasifiers and is also a form of carbon capture. Other than the gasifier starting up the VersiFire will not have any emission's. It is the appliance that consumes the gas and is what will have the emission's. Since this will be an outdoor system, UL cert will not be as much of a requirement. Because this will have a full blown 5 stage gasification process the unit over all will be highly eficient and the gas will have extremely clean emissions at the appliance.
Please note the VersiFire will be getting international provisional patent protection. Under law we have one year to complete this stage of patent protection from the date of this reveal. 11/19/2022
You can find additional resources below
You can visit our Youtube channel here; https://www.youtube.com/user/VulcanGasifier/videos
View our Photo Gallery here on facebook; https://www.facebook.com/ThriveOffGrid/photos
See our thread on the DOW forum here; https://forum.driveonwood.com/t/thrive-off-grid/2765