Interesting Panhard Downdraught Gas Producer
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Exceptional Purity of Gas a Characteristic of Plant Developed as Outcome of Long Experience by Prominent French Concern
I T is more than 12 years since the Panhard and Levassor concern started the production of producer-gas commercial vehicles, and to-day, in addition to machines in private use throughout France and the French Colonial Empire, many hundreds of Panhard units are in regular Army transport service.
The apparatus is designed to operate only on charcoal fuel, either in its natural state or in the form of compressed pellets. An accompanying illustration shows in section the latest model. A reversible grid beneath the
downdraught furnace is operated by an a7Cternal lever, whilst a valve, governing the main air intake, is controlled from the driver's seat.
Gas passes from the producer to the cleaner through the usual cooling pipes. In the cleaner, it rises first through a chamber containing coke and then flows through a filter composed of cotton stretched over metal frames. Finally, at the gas outlet to the engine, there is a safety filter of extremely fine-mesh wire gauze.
The maker claims that the gas, after passing through the cotton filter, is of exceptional purity, containing less than one milligramme of dust per cubic metre, and that the safety filter eliminates even this impurity. That really clean gas is obtained seems to be borne out by the fact that Panhard sleeve-valve engines, suitably modified in design for the purpose, function successfully on gas supplied by the concern's producer plant.
It is stated that the dust in the box at the bottom of the cleaner needs to be removed only once in every 3,000 Idioms. This, in itself, suggests that gas arriving from the generator is not very dirty, to start with.