Question: can a diesel engine run on wood gas

Answer: Yes, Wood gasifiers can power either spark ignition engines, where 100% of the normal fuel can be replaced with little change to the carburation, or in a Diesel engine, feeding the gas into the air inlet that is modified to have a throttle valve, if it didn't have it already. On Diesel engines the Diesel fuel is still needed to ignite the gas mixture, so a mechanically regulated Diesel engine's ``stop'' linkage and probably ``throttle'' linkage must be modified to always give the engine a little bit of injected fuel, often under the standard idle per-injection volume. Wood can be used to power cars with ordinary internal combustion engines if a wood gasifier is attached. This was quite popular during World War II in several European, African and Asian countries, because the war prevented easy and cost-effective access to oil. In more recent times, wood gas has been suggested as a clean and efficient method to heat and cook in developing countries, or even to produce electricity when combined with an internal combustion engine. Compared to World War II technology, gasifiers have become less dependent on constant attention due to the use of sophisticated electronic control systems, but it remains difficult to get clean gas from them. Purification of the gas and feeding it into natural gas pipelines is one variant to link it to the existing refueling infrastructure. Liquefaction by the Fischer--Tropsch process is another possibility.