Everyone wants to make a dent.

I was approached by an electrical/mechanical engineer and a farmer this afternoon inquiring about my Outdoor Wood Furnace. They have been brain storming over new fuel sources which are abundant on farms ( take a guess what they want to burn ! Yes, that's right. You guessed it ) . They are working on the ratio between sawdust/wood chips and pasture paddies. They are also inquiring what OWF would be a good combination for their experiment.

My feeling is their energy should be spent on designing a clean burning, efficient, Outdoor wood furnace. The fuel source wouldn't matter at that point, accepting fuel that is regionally available at low cost. Farms generally have the same end products (sic), so that is what they are targeting.

I told them I would run the idea across this board to see if there is already a furnace being produced that will give good results and any other thoughts on the technology.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Talk about clean burning farmers. I saw a PBS program about China, The farmer there had crude cement vat full of dung fermenting. He just pipes off the methane produced to cook with.

Thank you. I will pass along the information.

In the mean time, I gave them an old Essex down draft gasification industial type furnace to experiment with. It is a better design by far over the OWB of today. Wood is super heated in a firebox and the gasses pulled down through high temp refractory where it is burned. The heat then pulled down through the heat tubes of the water jacket, extracted and then exhausted through a chimney. The original owner told me that it was a great furnace but I never had a chance to verify that. Control was accomplished though aquastats. The physical design looked like a locomotive engine.

Maybe these guys will strike upon something " new " for us to use in the future.

In India, you have to decide whether to use it for fuel or as a building product.

I have no idea if it makes sense, but I would like to think it's more efficient to put the manure back into the soil and then grow a crop that can be burned for fuel. Although the methane idea has some merit.

I would tend to agree with you on using it for its basic nutrient value. Heck, with only two working dairy farms left near us ,I pay a premium to have it trucked to my garden each year. But I guess the buzz word these days is energy and all the alternatives it conjures up. Ethanol, methane and on and on. Like everything else it's " what's available at reasonable cost in your community ".