Syngas

Syngas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen produced when biomass is heated with limited oxygen. It burns like natural gas, at a lower energy density, and can run an engine, a burner, or a generator. The technology is old — it powered vehicles during the Second World War when petrol was rationed — and it is unforgiving in ways that made it fall out of favour.

The reason to be interested is that it converts low-grade woody biomass into a fuel that can be stored, piped, and used on demand, rather than burned in a stove when the heat is not wanted.

We are not building a gasifier yet. We are testing whether the wood we thin from the parcel — small diameter, mixed species, currently burned in piles — could be converted to a fuel that runs a greenhouse heater in February. That is a modest and specific question, and it has a measurable answer.

The hazards are real: carbon monoxide is odourless and lethal, tar fouls everything downstream, and a badly run gasifier produces more pollution than the open burning it replaces. Any installation here will be outdoors, monitored, and never used inside a structure.

For this to be worth doing, three things need to hold: the feedstock has to be genuinely waste, the conversion has to be cleaner than the alternative, and the operator has to be present and attentive. If any of those fails, a woodstove and a well-insulated greenhouse are the better answer.