Wood-burning cars are no joke. This is the reality of North Korea (7 photos)

The country has a fairly impressive fleet of trucks that run on wood instead of gasoline or diesel fuel. These are military trucks, agricultural trucks, mine transport, and so on.





In Pyongyang and other large cities, such an anachronism is almost impossible to find. But if you go further into the outback, into rural areas, you can often see them on the road: they can be seen from afar by the approaching cloud of smoke, as if a steam locomotive is in front of you.



The reason for such a non-trivial vehicle is the country’s problems with gasoline and diesel fuel due to strict trade sanctions and the lack of its own oil and gas production.

And the active development of electric vehicles around the world is not helping North Korea at all. The same sanctions are getting in the way.

In North Korea itself they really don’t like it when tourists pay attention to these smoking steam locomotives on wheels and start frantically photographing them.





After all, when asked about such cars the day before, the guide personally answered that they were no longer left, although there used to be such cars. Now, they say, the DPRK produces good modern cars. They are indeed released, but the smoking monsters have not disappeared from the villages.

In fact, the scale of distribution of wood-burning trucks can be accurately judged by the presence of such vehicles in the army. If in the DPRK there is not enough fuel for the army, then even more so for the villages.



How did the North Koreans manage to realize the dream of every collective farmer to save on gasoline?

In fact, everything is relatively simple. Initially, the most ordinary truck with a diesel engine. It has a sealed oven installed in the back. And its chimney is connected to the intake manifold instead of the fuel line from the tank.

In general, a stove is a gas generator that is heated with wood chips. Its special stoker constantly cuts here, constantly being in the back next to the stove during the trip.



The wood chips quickly turn into charcoal. It, in turn, when burned, releases carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

Then the gas is supplied under pressure into the cyclone (in the photo above, two cyclones are visible in the place where the fuel tank is usually located on the truck). Primary gas purification occurs in the cyclone. Further, under natural pressure, the smoke enters the cooling radiator, and then through the filter directly into the engine combustion chamber instead of fuel.

Schematically it looks like this:



So to drive a North Korean wood-burning truck, you need not one driver, but two people: one turns the steering wheel and presses the pedals, and the second, like a fireman on a steam locomotive, chops the wood into chips and throws the wood into the firebox.

You need to understand that a wood-burning engine has one big side effect. Quite often it has to be completely rebuilt and repaired. After all, flammable gas (essentially smoke) is so dirty that no filters can save the engine from soot.

In addition, the engine often overheats, especially in summer. Therefore, a picture with a smoking truck standing on the side of the road and a driver chilling next to it is a fairly common occurrence in the DPRK.