High Performance Non-Contaminant Stove Designed in Argentina
by Paula Alvarado, Buenos Aires on 08. 7.06
In order to attend the poor heating conditions of southern Argentina (since because of the raise in the gas price, locals were using wood in poor conditions, which translated in forest depredation and lung diseases in children for the smoke), the National Industrial Technology Institute supported the development and production of a multifunction stove. The artifact, which is also an oven and possibly a thermotank, was developed by Francisco Borrazás and Jorge Dartiguelongue and works with firewood, but releases four times less carbon dioxide than the minimum demanded by Canadian norms. It’s also three times more efficient than a salamander heater and eight times more than a fire. Among other things, it has a special air injection and tiles, which retain smoke and burn the tar, poisonous gases and carbon dioxide. Although using wood to heat a place might seem anti-ecologic, Barrazás says the stove works with sustainable wood such as eucaliptus, and that they’re working to make artificial trunks with loose wood pieces. “On the other hand, the wood is never enough because regular stoves consume it very fast. But a cubic meter of wood, which usually lasts four or five days in a regular stove, takes fifteen days to consume in one of ours”, adds Dartiguelongue...
The small model of the stove proved to heat a 45 square meters house and the biggest one can take on a 100 square meters one. Close to 300 stoves were delivered to natives communities in Neuquen province, and they will be incorporated to another 4000 rural homes in Chubut province. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurs continue to work with the Institute to design a model that can burn biodiesel or vegetables oil. More info and sales at MMJSRL.
Through La Nacion newspaper.
"Among other things, it has a special air injection and tiles, which retain smoke and burn the tar, poisonous gases and carbon dioxide."
I sincerely doubt it gets hot enough to "burn" the C02.
That said, high efficiency wood stoves are great things. I assume this one is fairly low-cost.
We use to have one that was our primary furnace, made by Honywell. It injected air and automatically adjusted the dampers to optimize the burn and when necessary, slow the burn when the thermostat reading matched the desired setting. We could load the furnance with 3 or 4 quarters of wood and not have to do anything again for 24 hours.
A cord of wood would last all season in our zone 6 climate.
If you have your own woodlot these are really the way to go.
Chemistry is definitely not my area. I had translated that info from the original article, but now I managed to translate the complete stove's mechanism, and I think I've mistaken carbon dioxide by carbon monoxide. For those interested here's a complete explanation:
"The stove’s operation is based in the following principles: it has two independent combustion chambers with internal refractory material coating and multiple air injection for combustion. In the primary combustion chamber -with refractory material- there’s a frontal door with a ceramic glass viewer and adjustable air entrances for primary combustion. Other multiple air ejectors located in the sidewalls of this chamber prevent the formation of carbon monoxide over the fire (the emissions of carbon monoxide are four times less that required by Canadian norm CAN/CSA B415.1-92). The smoke produced by the firewood in this chamber receives, when it passes to the next, by means of another injector located in a narrowing, the necessary air for its complete burn up, which takes place in the second chamber. The separation of the chambers is made from refractory material and the walls of both also are had with this material. The provision of the necessary air in suitable places, with the appropriated turbulence for its mixture with the firewood combustion gases, plus the heat concentration produced by the refractory material coating, and the route that gives time for a complete ignition, manage to burn totally these gases, releasing all their caloric energy and avoiding environmental contamination. The burned gases are evacuated to the outside by a smoke conduit with a release regulator."