HI TECH IN A WOOD STOVE

Most people take it for granted  that a wood stove is simply a wood stove but  even here  high tech has crept in.

The latest  buzz word is wood gasification. Put in a nut shell it is a combustion chamber  designed to  cause wood to char  while emitting  gases that burn.  What you  see is simply a pale flame  little or no smoke and   when the fire is finally done very little ash compared to  what you are used to .  The secret is in the dimension of  the shell of the combustion chamber or pot. It causes air flow around the burning  wood fuel that  encourages  gasification of the wood  leading to a hotter flame and more complete combustion of the available fuel.  Some 20 years ago a German friend casually told me he really like his new fireplace because it  left hardly any ash to clean up.  Nothing  much was said  about the  whole  ceramic  fireplace  which had a very modern look to it.   He did say he had imported  this fireplace from Europe.

Now I realize this was an example of wood gasification technology at work. 

Since that time  many more  products have  appeared on the market.  Some  wood stoves talk about including a catalytic  after burner stage in the design resulting  in cleaner emissions.

The World Health Organization (WHO)  determined  that over a million deaths per year resulted  from poor air quality inside many third world  huts  as a result of smoky cooking  fires.  It was also noted that poverty prevented these same people from buying better  quality  cook stoves that burned  cleaner  and  did not contribute  smoky emissions  to the interior of the living quarters.

WHO  announced a contest for someone to come out with a new design for a cook stove that was inexpensive to make ( under USD $10) and  which used less fuel and produced  less  emissions.

The winning  submission was described as a top lit up draft stove  (TLUD) that consisted  of  several concentric  cans  with holes punched in them around the  circumference.

This innocuous stove  is deceptively simple looking. It just looks like a can with holes in it. However  by actual tests  it  burns far less fuel  and  does so  smoke free. A common  test measure is  to see how fast it will heat up a quart or gallon of water. This is an unequivocal indication of BTU output .  The original  stove  was  just a pot but since then people have  experimented  and  found the addition of a small computer fan greatly enhances the heat output of the fire and  increases the gasification process.

The fan can easily be powered by a pair of penlight batteries  or a small solar panel.

This makes it ideal for off grid use.

If you could  combine  this  kind of  stove with a suitably sized  Stirling engine you could  generate  electricity  while burning wood  for heat. And also be completely independent on  fossil fuel supplies.  EPA and other  experts  have determined that burning wood is carbon neutral so the  environmental  concerns about  global warming due to green house gasses are also addressed.

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