Thursday, April 25, 2024

The synthesis of wood stoves, biochar, and market gardening

I make my biochar during the winter near the arctic circle by heating my home with firewood. About 5 cubic meters per winter for a 100m3 house.

My log burner is a Pönttöuuni RMH batch box with waterback that has no grate or under air, the fire burns flat on firebricks. I burn about 1 to 1.5 buckets per day. I usually burn 1 batch log stuffed firebox morning and evening, mid day when it is real cold.

I clean the firebox between each firing to harvest the char. It is then sifted to separate the ash, crushed in a low speed chipper and fed into the basement rotating vermicomposter. 

With this procedure I get a warm home and hot showers from the char flair and about 1m3 of rich biochar vermicompost every winter for my garden.

During the winter I use this charpost in trays with professional LED grow lamps in a ladybug infested mylar tent to grow fresh herbs and salad all winter long. The maths show my salad doing this is about 5x cheaper than the store accounting for the lamps, with flavor and nutrients no store sells.

Come spring I tip out the trays into my hugel raised garden beds making a very instant summer garden for our short growing season.

The sifted ash fraction is mixed into the garden watering jugs periodically over the summer to water in phosphorus, calcium, and it's other minerals to boost my fruit production and prevent blossom end rot.

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Flue gas precipitates and condensation within combustion systems

Wood and most all biomass are hydrocarbons, that is why they make good fuel sources. The hydrogen fraction of their complex molecules when burned will create a significant commensurate percentage of water vapor that is in addition to the water entrained in the biomass feedstock. 15% moisture firewood plus the hydrogen from it's hydrocarbon can produce flue gasses of about 30% water vapor. Additionally there are many other atomized effluents in the flue gasses of a burner that will begin to condense within the flue once the heat is extracted below 300c. Ideally your setup should extract the heat of combustion all the way down to ambient. So it is very important for us at hastyheat.com to bear in mind and engineer for these condensates within the flue gasses of our wood stoves at the points along the flow where the temperature drops below the dew point of those elements contained in all flue gasses. The more automated the better, but clean out will always be necessary. These condensates are usefu distilled resources that can be harvested for other uses. 

Friday, March 22, 2024

Fireplace Poetry

 Warmth and coziness fill the air,
As embers dance and sparks fly there.
The crackle of flames, a soothing sound,
Creates a sense of peace profound.

A haven from the world outside,
Where worries fade and stress reside.
The fireplace, a place to unwind,
And let the cares of life decline.

The light flickers, casting shades,
Of golden hues that fill the space.
Reflections dance upon the wall,
As the fire's warmth takes its call.

So let us gather 'round and bask,
In the ambiance of this place of rest.
For here, in front of the fireplace,
We find solace and a peaceful space.




Monday, March 11, 2024

The fire triangle

How to make a ideal wood stove 

Insulate your combustion chamber with as many firebricks as you can to get maximum heat from your fuel with minimum energy wasted as emissions of unburned pollutants. 

Cold is not part of the fire triangle; Heat, fuel, and oxygen are.

Scavenge the heat after ideal combustion from the flue gasses down as close as possible to ambient.

Monday, February 5, 2024

The magic of applied physics and engineering



The use of TEG thermal electric generators are more invisible, common, and useful for converting heat into electricity than you might think.

Has several 50 - 500 watt TEG thermal electric generators available.

https://www.motonet.fi/tuote/klimacom-kamiinapuhallin-4-lapainen?product=95-01141 this

Even in high power pellet portable tent wood stoves that cook, heat, boil, and charge....

https://youtu.be/IZ03ogCxcks?si=pySDJ7rcJ0BJwMDJ this 

BBQ on the white house USA lawn..

Making Carne asada tacos to share while keeping burners warm. While heating coffee water, and charging cellphones using liquid cooled thermal electric stators TEG...

This folded up and  Fit in a large check-in flight bag.

On arrival the 2018 green heat wood stove competition was crashed...

https://youtu.be/WolPvzwVUd4?si=BqhGTBpWRwPMvPl8 this

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ILV_yvqUUf4&si=MKmv2wcPWUMhpbjA this

It then flew home and heated a village school house in Toikkala Finland through couple of winters, all whilst charging a sähköauto for a Free enough to make the commute trip daily, providing hot showers, soup and sauna!

On just 1-2 bags per day of compressed biomass pellets.

Now in coalesceing at hastyheat.com is:

https://youtu.be/9C1xZ-a8tgE?si=b_Hgd_lPBTE6NGlx this

Wood pellet stoves that are a mastery of solid state engineering and physics with no moving parts to provide 6kw continuous clean heat output burning 1 bag of compressed biomass every 12 hrs on high...

Presently rounding up is the production line engineering of a HastyHeat version of a wood stove based on RMH, rocket mass heaters, masonry heaters,  Finnish style Pönttöuuni, and other styles of thermal mass and wood rocket stoves.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOw5D2kxI37SH63maX__zn2yfmn5qFfyp&si=Quozv8ru3TvvzRgB this

Based on a Finnish Pönttöuuni design. That is easy to make and ship.

Applied science in Reinforced Geo polymer ceramic engineering since no metal lasts in a clean efficient hot coal bed.

Monday, January 8, 2024

how to get 115% efficiency from burning wood

If you employ a condensate trap, you can significantly increase combustion efficiency even beyond 100% to near 115% by retrieving the latent heat energy of vaporization from the woods moisture content AND HYDROGEN content (wood is a HYDROcarbon!).

If you condense it to the maximum by preheating cold outdoor intake air.

But you have to collect the acidic condensation in a drip bucket.

The condensate can be sold as real liquid smoke! Or dried to tar and used for a fire starter!

However you may need to force induce the flue gasses up the chimney stack!

A small air cooled TEG thermal electric generator fan can take care of this.