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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] if there were a benefit to deforestation...
  • Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:50:58 -0500

Steven & Margaret Eisenhauer wrote:

The claim to be able to burn
wet bio material is especially important given he is condensing the latent
heat of combustion, therefore garnering the lion share of heat in the
material, especially wet material. Most burners - even the rocket design
looses the latent heat of combustion in order to obtain the stack effect for
draft, providing combustion air without a fan driven by electricity. I have
wondered if a condensing gas furnace heat exchanger could be coupled with a
wood stove with similar effect.

That's exactly what came to mind as I read your post. Utilize two units, one to volatilize combustible gases
in the fuel and render it into biochar, deliver those gases through a pipe to a second stove, one used for cooking or heating water.

Sounds like a simple setup. I need a design for the first unit, the biochar cooker. The two units should be combined into one somehow,
and designed to prevent backfiring into the biochar cooker causing an explosion (the kind that can happen with an ordinary wood stove with the draft almost closed as fuel burns very slowly and generates lots of volatile gases.

The bio char movement's thinking is to simply make the char without using
the resulting BTUs produced which I think is a terrible waste of good wood
when most of the world relies on wood for cooking. Given that 75% if the
heat in wood is released during the gasification phase there is a desire to
make the char while cooking or heating water with the resulting char sold to
buy food in the third world.

Maybe we can come up with a good design for such a super efficient multipurpose cooker-heater.

When I have a working prototype I will share it with you. I build with
recycled from the bone yard when ever possible but am conflicted regarding
the big industrial thing although I have certainly been a student of its
tenets.

You should see my steel scrap yard, all sorts of stuff, plate, I beam, tubing, farm equipment parts, springs, drive shafts, axles, torsion,
bars, bar stock and mystery stuff from commercial scrapyards.

Concrete is conductive and not site specific requiring a lot of energy and
high technology tooling to get at it so I am conflicted regarding its use
though I must say I have built oodles of structures with steel reinforced
concrete and also block. The foamed stuff definitely is an improvement over
solid for conductivity but I does it reflect radiant effectively? Concrete

It is a chalky white block with very high R value; is OK fo load bearing walls with poured steel reinforced concrete beam at wall top. Best used a insulation in a concrete block cavity wall rather than as a structural element. It should reflect radiant heat OK, it will not absorb water or moisture/humidity/condensation, it will float in water! Simply add reflective material (foil backed foam insulation, maybe, for better reflectivity.

is used as a thermal transmission mass in radiant floors as I have in my
shop - very warm and conductive.

How lucky you are.

Glad to hear someone out there talking back!

Makes a big difference, I agree. Where in the USA are you located? Or Canada?

LL




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