Welp, I just received my $1000 from Hackaday for being a finalist in the Open Hardware Challenge, and now I have to figure out what I'm going to build with it! I can't help but turn this machine into an art piece, not just a bit of engineering. I want to build something that will get people's attention and demonstrate what this thing is capable of. 

What better shape than a torus to represent the infinitely reciprocal nature of living systems? The picture below is the concept I'm currently working with- a 4x4 harbor freight trailer carrying an engine, generator, battery bank, charge controller, gear reducer, and shredder, and a biomass reactor that produces the gas that runs the engine. The shredder shreds pre-sorted trash, the trash is fed into the reactor which breaks it down into gaseous fuels, gas is run through the condenser that collects and sorts fuels by their molecular weight, until the gas is clean enough to power and internal combustion engine. The gas powers the engine, then engine turns a common shaft, and off of that shaft rotational power is converted into 12VDC electricity by car alternators, which charge the batteries, which gives the machine the ability to constantly monitor its power output and turn the engine on and off as needed.

The inner torus is a condenser coil that distills out volatile tars and heavy hydrocarbons, and sorts them by their molecular weight, hopefully this will produce fuels that are useful on their own. I'm planning to do this with a series of mason jars (because they are cheap and can handle relatively high temps). They aren't pictured yet in the sketch above, but it would look something like this:

The outer torus is mostly just for show and structure (and to keep folks from getting too close to the reactor), but I'm going to put addressable LEDs along the poles so I can get a nice swirling light effect. I already have this structure from an art project I did for Burning Man in 2016, and it's currently just rusting under my porch, so I'm excited to get to use it again.

The goal is to build a machine that can run all night long on the gas produced from thermally composing shredded burnable trash, including non-PVC plastics, in the absence of oxygen.

It will start on propane, which will produce hot exhaust and electricity to power water heating elements inside the reaction vessel. Once the reaction vessel is warmed up the system will transition over to syngas fuel. New fuel material will be fed via vacuum lines and a cyclone filter to the top of the reactor, where it will fall down into the reaction chamber and turn into ash and gas, and the ash will be removed from the reactor every morning with a shop vac.

That's the plan for now! Stay tuned!