The Modern Portable Gas Producer, 1939

Introduction by Pete and Table of Contents (Links to the individual pages of the Report)


French Creek Valley Home                    Back to Our JXQ-10A Main Page

Contact Us

British Article from 1939, "THE MODERN PORTABLE GAS-PRODUCER"
Theory, Design, Fuels, Performance, Utilisation and Economics

This page Created: April 17, 2009
Last Revised: April 17, 2020

Here's why this article is here:

Back in the mid 1970's, when THAT energy cirisis hit I looked into alternate energy possibilities as everybody else did at the time. One document that I found was a 30 page paper published in February of 1939 detailing a December 8,1938 conference on the subject of gasification for transportation use. It was put out by the (British) Institute of Fuels. It starts out being rather general, but then becomes very specific, covering every type of gas producer known to (European) man at the time. The writers describe, with text, pictures and drawings the 4 basic types and give examples from the many manufactures who were making them.

There are lots of data, including gas analyses, reliability, testing, road rally results, etc.. There are a couple of large tables comparing various vehicles, by weight class, against many criteria that all gasification enthusiasts would recognize.
For example, there's a table on cylinder bore wear vs fuel type. Then there's data comparing the "Methods of Gasification" for 16 different manufacturers on 10 different attributes. Another table lists fuel usage for 6 "lorries" and a bus, weighing from 1.45 tons to 6.9 tons.
There is a rather detailed section wholly devoted to gas purification. 71 references are sited.

My copy is getting pretty yellowed, being a photocopy from microfilm, so I finally, just yesterday (2009) scanned it in to my computer, a half page at a time since it's in 9 1/2" X 13" format. I have now spent about 20 hours cleaning it up. The various pages "cleaned up" at several different levels, as will become immediately apparent when you begin to view them. In some cases I had to leave a lot of junk in the background to avoid loosing the text.
The originals, except for a few of the photographs, are quite readable by humans, but I doubt if there's any OCR software in the range of my pocket book that could decode the yellows, organges, purples etc. that have bloomed thereon over the last 30+ years. I tell you this so, in case there's some very imprtant piece of text that didn't survive my clean up, you can contact me and I will try the get it for you.

So, I have turned the whole thing into a number of huge .jpgs, and that's what you will see below.
Also----!!!See the pdf link at bottom of page!!!

Pete Stanaitis
Summary
P103
Importance of Gas Producers
P104
Past Developments
P105
Theory
P106
Producer Gas Plants
P107
P108
Designs of Genrators
P109
P110
P111
P112
P113
P114
P115
Gas Purification
P116
Table P117 Methods of Gas Purification
Fuels: Characteristics and Distribution
P118
P119
P120
P121
Gas Produced
P122
Engine Design
P123
Performance and Utilisation
P124
P125
P126
Taxation and Encouragement
P127
Comparative Operating Costs
TableP128, Comparative Operating Costs
Lines of Development
P129
References
P130
P131
TableP132, Performance Data Concerning Various Types of Gas Producers

Here's my link to Robert Gersch's pdf version:

The Modern Portable Gas Producer in pdf:
Thank you Robert, for taking the time to make this conversion.