Justin Ferro, of Tunbridge, peered into his rural clean energy future, and it smelled like a campfire. White smoke puffed from the hood of Ferro's 1997 Dodge Ram pickup truck and mixed with an overhead fog the morning of Dec. 28.
Mounted on the front of his truck were metal pipes, bars and boiler-like barrels in what looked like a Frankenstein monster of scrap metal.
The contraption, called a "wood gasifier," growled and burped like an antique radiator as it warmed.
With temperatures that can top 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the machine's function suits its name. It converts wood into charcoal, then charcoal into gas and creates enough energy to run Ferro's truck.
He paid $200 for pipe fittings and visited a few local dumps to assemble the pieces for the monster.
"It looks a little menacing driving down the road," said Emily Ferro, his wife of 10 years. "When he was first going out, I was sure the police would pull him over because it looks like he has a bomb on the front of his truck."
Justin Ferro, a 31-year-old carpenter and South Royalton High graduate, first devised the idea earlier this year while trying to rock his 1-year-old son, Ira, to sleep one morning."What do you do when you only have one arm free and nothing to do?" said Ferro, who has long brown hair and a thin beard and was dressed in a winter flap cap and work jeans. "Search the Internet for hours at a time."
The Tunbridge resident and his wife are passionate about anything that saves energy or makes the world cleaner. Recently, they bought a 1993 Honda Civic VX, adorned with a peace-symbol bumper sticker, that gets 55 miles to the gallon.
The couple also has a "no plastic" rule for their house, though one forgetful relative bought Eli, their 4-year-old son, a toy first-aid kit made of plastic this Christmas. Ferro usually just builds toys for his sons, such as a miniature two-piece wooden house that can also serve as a toy pirate ship, submarine or fire station.
So, when the longtime Upper Valley resident discovered a Web site detailing the wood-born fuel source, Ferro couldn't resist investigating.
"I saw a reference to someone driving on wood, and I just thought, no way," he said. "That's the craziest thing ever."
Ferro took about 40 hours to slice, bolt and weld together a host of assorted piping, a hot-water heater, a fire extinguisher, four bed springs, a set of rusty wrenches meant for handles and a red helium tank once used to fill balloons, now stuffed with fiberglass insulation.
He lights the wood with a propane torch that he slides down a tube in the center tank, then, through a series of compartments, the wood converts into gas and merges with the air intake inside the engine.
The truck – which runs either on conventional gasoline or, somewhat more sluggishly, on the wood gas – feels and sounds the same when charged by either energy source. Its cabin appears untouched other than a switch that turns the gasoline on and off and a lever that controls the mixture of the two fuels. Also, because Ferro built the mount to mimic a snowplow, it doesn't obstruct the view out of the front window.
The wood gas, Ferro said, produces about 75 percent of the power created with conventional gasoline, although during an uphill trek yesterday he to sputter.
"One of the things I'm psyched about is that I don't have to worry about it quitting on me," he said.
Even if the truck can't run solely on the wood gas, it can act as a sort of hybrid and still conserve fuel. Over time, though, Ferro hopes to tweak the system enough that he can drive to and from job sites, usually about 20 to 25 miles away, without burning a drop of gasoline.
"People who have been doing this for a while just turn on and go," he said. "I'm still on the learning side of it."
With gasoline, his truck gets about 15 miles to the gallon, while two or three pounds of wood equate to about one mile on the road, Ferro said.
Also, hardwoods produce more fuel because they're denser than trees like pines, but Ferro, owner of Ferro Construction, usually just uses whatever leftover scrap he can find at job sites.
In all, he's located six other people nationwide, mostly through a Yahoo chat group, who have constructed similar gasifiers for their vehicles.
Ferro corresponds online with another builder in Denmark when he runs into problems.
Ferro said he has discovered uses of wood-fueled military tank engines dating back to World War II, and although almost no one knows of them today, he said their applications could be widespread.
He admits that everyday use on the road probably isn't practical, but for tractors or generators, they might make sense because a person could power them with anything from grass pellets to dry leaves to cow manure.
"It makes huge sense for farming," he said. "If you're on a farm, you've got the waste."
His eight chickens, and their droppings, will provide the next experimental source of energy for the gasifier.
Ferro uses the alternate system for two reasons: He wants to lessen his impact on the earth and draw more attention to "greener" practices. He wants people to notice and ask him about it, which they often do.
"Most people are putting gas in every day without a clue of what other options are out there," he said.
Emily Ferro said her husband's many hours of fiddling in the driveway are sometimes frustrating, but she supports his cause and hopes to see larger things come of the device.
"We're very proud of Justin," she said. "He's quite the crazy inventor."
Justin's sentiment is perhaps best expressed on the rear bumper of his truck, opposite the gasifier mounted on the front.
A sticker shows a gas tank with a red slash through it next to text that reads – "Think outside the barrel."
John Woodrow Cox can be reached at 603-727-3305 or jcox@vnews.com.
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