Wood Heater Design Challenge - 2022

[webbie]

Hello all!

I am one of the judges for this years Wood Heater Design Challenge - a competition for cleaner wood burners which is a joint effort between Brookhaven National Laboratory (Energy!) and Alliance for Green Heat.

Here is a page on the nine entries into the final round. You (anyone) can actually register as there will be audience participation and some awards/prizes for same!

https://www.bnl.gov/woodheater/teams.php

The Judges page is at:

Wood Heater Design Challenge | Committee

www.bnl.gov

The winners (3) get to bring their designs into the National Lab for more testing and development.

The basic idea here is to advance the science around biomass burning. It turns out that most of the clean wood stoves on the market end up losing a lot of efficiency (and producing pollution) due to operator differences. I noticed that some of these new units attempt to fix that problem in various ways.

 

[old_]

Cool! Glad this is going again.

 

[Rearscreen]

Very interesting, keep us posted.

 

[semipro]

Info on registering for the Wood Heater Design Challenge Technology Slam happening this Thursday.

Wood Heat Design Challenge | Fifth Challenge: Technology SLAM

www.bnl.gov

Its really good to see Craig back here again BTW.

 

[begreen]

I like that they are pushing the envelope with emissions reduction and improving efficiency. In addition, reliability + cost should be considered too. If a design is maintenance intensive and costly to maintain, it will likely fail in real-world usage. This should be another judging criterion. Noise might be another one. We had a pellet stove in the living room and sold it. Having the noise of a small furnace with 2 blowers running killed the desirability of the pellet stove.

 

[begreen]

Info on registering for the Wood Heater Design Challenge Technology Slam happening this Thursday.

Wood Heat Design Challenge | Fifth Challenge: Technology SLAM

www.bnl.gov

Its really good to see Craig back here again BTW.

Sorry I was out hiking and missed the registration. Hope to get some good reports from those who can attend.

 

[semipro]

Sorry I was out hiking and missed the registration. Hope to get some good reports from those who can attend.

I missed it also. I'm hoping there's a recording out there.

 

[ABMax24]

Definitely interesting to see many teams pushing electronic controls in this challenge. I've always been a supporter of electronic controls on wood stoves, cool to see others believe the same.

 

[Tar12]

Very interesting! One of the designs is within 20 minutes of where I live...I will have to check it out!

 

[SpaceBus]

I like that they are pushing the envelope with emissions reduction and improving efficiency. In addition, reliability + cost should be considered too. If a design is maintenance intensive and costly to maintain, it will likely fail in real-world usage. This should be another judging criterion. Noise might be another one. We had a pellet stove in the living room and sold it. Having the noise of a small furnace with 2 blowers running killed the desirability of the pellet stove.

The "Chimney Cherry" in particular is very interesting. To me it sounds like a maintenance free DPF style exhaust filter for wood stoves. It could give older stoves a new lease on life even if the device does not improve efficiency. Perhaps there is a way to relocate the device inside the heated space to increase efficiency as well.

 

[peakbagger]

Someone should drag out one of Dick Hills boilers and enter it, Hard to beat the 40 year old design

 

[Ashful]

Interesting to see some younger faces on the marketing image. If the aim is furthering the science, money and time would be well spent on developing a college or tech school curriculum toward churning out some smart engineers well-armed for a career in biomass burner design. Whether more hands-on (eg. woodburner's equivalent to https://www.nwswb.edu/), or an actual BS in Engineering, I have no doubt that a few dozen young graduates of a legitimate program and subsequently groomed by the Blaze Kings, Woodstocks, and Pacific Energy's of the world, will run miles beyond all the amateurs we could throw at such a problem.

@BKVP, is there any such program in the US, to which you and your competition can look, when shopping for technical staff?

 

[stoveliker]

@Ashful
that program is called (certain threads on) hearth.com
Everybody here is young, right? We're online after all.

🤣

 

[BKVP]

Interesting to see some younger faces on the marketing image. If the aim is furthering the science, money and time would be well spent on developing a college or tech school curriculum toward churning out some smart engineers well-armed for a career in biomass burner design. Whether more hands-on (eg. woodburner's equivalent to https://www.nwswb.edu/), or an actual BS in Engineering, I have no doubt that a few dozen young graduates of a legitimate program and subsequently groomed by the Blaze Kings, Woodstocks, and Pacific Energy's of the world, will run miles beyond all the amateurs we could throw at such a problem.

@BKVP, is there any such program in the US, to which you and your competition can look, when shopping for technical staff?

When this first started my suggestion was mfgs should be required to team up with university students. The industry sorely needs combustion, mechanical and chemical engineers.

 

[Ashful]

@Ashful
that program is called (certain threads on) hearth.com
Everybody here is young, right? We're online after all.

🤣

Perspective is everything. The former queen would have called me young, as would old man @begreen, but I have t-shirts older than the guy who asks me for ID at the liquor store.

Spending time around recent engineering graduates has a way of making me realize how long it really has been, since I was so young and wide-eyed. While most people my age write them off as lazy or naive, I'm almost always impressed by their ingenuity in areas different from what was important, when I was that age. There are some very smart young folk out there, who may no know how to change a flat tire, but could code circles around most of us, and who are very quick and adaptive at problem solving and operating in a team environment.

 

[BKVP]

Speaking of Queen. In 1983, I worked with a very gracious man named Phillip. I worked at Santa Anita Park, which had been selected by the Olympic Organizing Committee to host the 1984 Olympic Equestrian events.

Phillip was from England. Very proper, totally committed to putting on a superb event. He was older than I was and was the President of Equestrian Federation at the time.

Recently my wife and I were watching the events surrounding the passing of the Queen. When an image popped up of her previously deceased husband, I realized that was the same Phillip.

Of course we were instructed initially to reference him as "Prince", but I was very naive and he insisted he be called by his first name.

Never made the connection until recently. He was very humble, direct and more than pleasant. Listening to him speak forced me to focus on my listening skills.

 

[begreen]

When this first started my suggestion was mfgs should be required to team up with university students. The industry sorely needs combustion, mechanical and chemical engineers.

There were several young developers at the first Wood Stove Decathalon that we went to in DC. Matt Walker is a local boy and Hearth.com member, the MF Fire team was still in college, and Jason had a great conversion device for existing old stoves.

Greenheat in DC

Hard to post from the phone but the heat is on here. Woodstock is holding first place for clean burning. The twin-fire for efficiency. I can tell you that you want to be careful where you place that stove. For a small stove it is hugely radiant. More later.

www.hearth.com

 

[stoveliker]

Perspective is everything. The former queen would have called me young, as would old man @begreen, but I have t-shirts older than the guy who asks me for ID at the liquor store.

Spending time around recent engineering graduates has a way of making me realize how long it really has been, since I was so young and wide-eyed. While most people my age write them off as lazy or naive, I'm almost always impressed by their ingenuity in areas different from what was important, when I was that age. There are some very smart young folk out there, who may no know how to change a flat tire, but could code circles around most of us, and who are very quick and adaptive at problem solving and operating in a team environment.

I agree. I was only having fun.

I've been surprised that my white facial hair makes the youngster behind the counter does not make things clear when I buy my bourbon...

Back to the subject, I think chemical technology curricula come closest. Combustion (=chemistry!) and heat and mass flow are covered in such curricula (much different from chemistry). But most of these are educated into large-scale and strictly controlled processes, rather than small-scale and variable as a wood stove.

The manufacturing requires some mechanical skill and insight but is (from my limited perspective) not very demanding. (I always had to laugh at students designing a mold on the computer to cast iron into, but could not figure out how to make the design such that one can actually get the piece out of it without breaking the parts of the mold.) The material science for the stove itself (mechanical properties at operating temperature and large temperature gradients in space and time) is known.

So what one needs is a chemical engineer to design the combustion (cleanliness). Another one (different specialty) to look into how to extract the heat (efficiency). And a materials engineer to select the materials to make the stove. Finally, if the stove gets complicated (electronic controls...? ) an industrial (or machine-human interface) person to make sure granny understands it - noting that we're on our way to become grannies (don't know the male word) ourselves.

But again, most of these have been educated into strictly controlled large scale processes.

 

[Hogwildz]

This still in DC?

 

[BKVP]

I agree. I was only having fun.

I've been surprised that my white facial hair makes the youngster behind the counter does not make things clear when I buy my bourbon...

Back to the subject, I think chemical technology curricula come closest. Combustion (=chemistry!) and heat and mass flow are covered in such curricula (much different from chemistry). But most of these are educated into large-scale and strictly controlled processes, rather than small-scale and variable as a wood stove.

The manufacturing requires some mechanical skill and insight but is (from my limited perspective) not very demanding. (I always had to laugh at students designing a mold on the computer to cast iron into, but could not figure out how to make the design such that one can actually get the piece out of it without breaking the parts of the mold.) The material science for the stove itself (mechanical properties at operating temperature and large temperature gradients in space and time) is known.

So what one needs is a chemical engineer to design the combustion (cleanliness). Another one (different specialty) to look into how to extract the heat (efficiency). And a materials engineer to select the materials to make the stove. Finally, if the stove gets complicated (electronic controls...? ) an industrial (or machine-human interface) person to make sure granny understands it - noting that we're on our way to become grannies (don't know the male word) ourselves.

But again, most of these have been educated into strictly controlled large scale processes.

But the angle at which a component is affixed can change airflow in a firebox. All the more reason to have a Cadre of engineers with areas of expertise.

 

[stoveliker]

Sure.
That's why I said students of chemical technology, and not chemistry. BIG difference - at least where I come from these are waaaay better educated in heat and mass flow than a (mechanical) engineer. See any big chemical factory? Everything goes by pipe (gas or liquid). Heat and mass flow is the most important thing there - get the reactants where they need to be, at the turbulence/mixing they need to have, and the energy provided to them that they need to have to react. That's what they do. They design such things.
This is their bread and butter.

(My undergrad in mat. sci. engineering was in a department combined with chemical technology.)

 

[Ashful]

So what one needs is a chemical engineer to design the combustion (cleanliness). Another one (different specialty) to look into how to extract the heat (efficiency). And a materials engineer to select the materials to make the stove. Finally, if the stove gets complicated (electronic controls...? ) an industrial (or machine-human interface) person to make sure granny understands it - noting that we're on our way to become grannies (don't know the male word) ourselves.

I'd include fluid dynamics or aeronautics in the mix. It's a true multi-disciplinary problem, hence the suggestion a program should be tailored toward it. My father went from designing jet engines for Pratt and Whitney to designing boilers and furnaces for chemical processing plants, as a young engineer. His degrees were aeronautical and mechanical, which seemed to be the right mix for that discipline, although I'm sure there were times he wished he had some chem.E, too.

 

[begreen]

Corie is a stove engineer. He is an early Hearth.com member. After graduating, he started off at Englander designing the 17-VL from scratch. It would be good to hear what he learned in school and what has proven most valuable.

 

[stoveliker]

Evidently educational boundaries are different here.
Fluid dynamics is a major part of chemical engineering where I'm from.
That's what I mean with mass and heat transport.


Chemical engineers design reactors. That is what a stove is.

 

[Ashful]

Evidently educational boundaries are different here.
Fluid dynamics is a major part of chemical engineering where I'm from.
That's what I mean with mass and heat transport.


Chemical engineers design reactors. That is what a stove is.

So... that's what those guys do! I've known a few chemical engineers, but each went into materials processing equipment (eg. Dupont) or pharma, so I had a blind spot there. Good to know.