Brief overview of the process of converting solid biomass (think the stuff that goes in the green trash bin) to a form of natural gas called syn gas.This is a carbon-neutral to carbon-negative way of reclaiming energy from solid biomass in a manner that can easily be used in a standard internal combustion engine.

Unlike bio-diesel or ethanol which uses only a portion of the planet, the gasification process makes full use of the entire plant. On scales beyond DIY, it can be used to convert municipal waste to energy. We’ll be focusing on DIY scale to run engines or generators.

Lecture comes from work done on The Mechabolic, a project at 2007 Burning Man and the continuing DIY research being conducted at The Shipyard in Berkeley CA.While we will not build a working gasifier in class, simple plans will be presented for those interested in pursuing it further.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification