All Power Labs Tour

On Monday 10/24 our Biochar Working Group, consisting of SBI members and Sonoma County agencies, traveled to All Power Labs in Berkeley to review their famous gasifier-generators. I attended a workshop there a year ago, and was impressed then with their new Power Pallet, a computer controlled gasifier tied to a 10 KW generator. An elegance of positive feedback, once fully cycling the 700C exhaust from the engine heats the pyrolysis chamber, heating the biomass and rending the carbon from the energy gasses, which are then filtered and cycled back across the hot char, both cleaning the gas and adding carbon, for cycling as fuel to the engine. A very small amount of char and ash remains. The ultimate sense of system efficiency is reflected in the total exhaust, being what appears to be only warm water vapor. APL is also known for the base unit of this, the GEK, or Gasifier Experimenters Kit. Up until the popularity of the Power Pallet focused their energies, they also had the BEK, or Biochar Experimenters Kit. They are down to their last, in house, BEK, somewhat dusty from inattention.