Quote:
Originally Posted by diesel_john
Legislation is already starting against wood burning in some states. You need to invent a way to extract the energy without creating smoke. Any ideas? This is a big one. Did you know you can heat wood in a chamber and burn the gas in an engine?
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Outdoor boilers are being banned in many states that I know of, but don't confuse an outdoor boiler with a modern indoor woodstove. Catalytic or not, the new EPA woodstoves burn very efficiently and cleanly if used properly.
Nearly all outdoor boilers seem to be designed with a grade 2 knowledge the combustion process, therefore they are about 1/3 as efficient as an indoor woodstove and pollute around 100 times as much.
The major problem with indoor woodstoves is the lack of automated fire management, we run ours very hot and therefore burn as much "smoke" as we can but this requires supervision until the fire stabilizes. We aim for a stove top temp of 800F so combustion temps must be 1400F or more. I should try to record a video of adding a single peice of paper into the stove at these temps. It takes about 45 seconds to a minute for it to slowly be reduced to ash, you can see everybit of energy being pulled out of it. Many people still run their indoor stoves to cold in an attempt to burn overnight, and they produce lots of smoke. With an automated draft control, woodstoves could be very efficient even for those that don't have the knowledge or time to monitor and control them properly.
I have read that a company is thinking of developing one as a retrofit so hopefully they will become common soon.
Woodstove are also carbon neutral, and for us, we are people most effected by the pollution that is emitted. Obviously they aren't so great for an urban environment if everyone has one but I imagine they could added at a density of 1 per block without a major air quality reduction.
Ian