Heat Fins for wood stove surface?

[DouglasB12]

This is *not* about fins that you can attach to the stove pipe. I have a Vogelzang TR007 wood stove that has a roughly 24 inch by 30 inch flat surface on the top and this seems to be the area that most of the heat radiates off of. Have you ever seen the thermal/heat transfer blocks inside your computer? Basically blocks of aluminum that have fins milled into the top side to rapidly dissipate heat from your components. Is there anything similar (on a much larger scale) that I could set on top of my wood stove? It seems like this would be a killer way to transfer more heat into my living space without cooling the flue gasses excessively.

Has anyone seen something along these lines? I've tried searching for this type of product and have found nothing but the stove pipe mounted fins. Is there a reason why these are unworkable?

 

[Mech e]

Thermal radiation and convection, the two types of heat transfer getting heat from your stove to the room, are both highly dependent on surface area. This is why heat sinks are used on the microprocessor and other components in a computer; they increase available surface area for heat transfer. These parts are not milled, but typically extruded or forged. Milling an aluminum heat sink would be very expensive.
Adding more surface area to the top of a stove would definitely transfer more heat to the surroundings. You would also need very good thermal contact between the heat sink and stove top to minimize/eliminate air gaps. Keep in mind, however, AL alloys can melt as low as about 850 degrees F.

 

[Woody Stover]

I would just try a small 8" fan that will tilt up or down, somewhere around the stove, to move air past the box and remove heat faster.
I guess you could even use a couple of computer fans if you could mount them at the level of the stove top. Some of those babies move a lot of air.

 

[DouglasB12]

I would just try a small 8" fan that will tilt up or down, .......

I do have a 42 inch tower fan behind the wood stove. It moves considerably more air, more quietly, than the attached blower. I'm just looking for a way to increase the surface area of the top of the stove so that I can recover more heat from it.

 

[David.Ervin]

Heat sinks in a computer have the kind of surface area they do to keep the overall temperature of the component they're attached to low. Heat is the enemy of electronics. At some point, you reach an equilibrium between how hot something is and how fast you're removing heat from it. You don't really want the top of your wood stove to get cool because then you're making tons of creosote in there. If the top is hot, but steadily so, you're removing just as much heat from the stove into the room as you would be if the top were cooler but with a larger surface area.

I suppose if you artificially increased the surface area of the top of the stove with fins, you could increase the total possible heat you get out of the stove before the temperature got out of hand, but I'd think the inner components of the stove wouldn't tolerate the kind of temperatures they would be running at.

 

[EbS-P]

1-2” angle iron laid across the top front to backcould work to increase surface area, could Almost triple it. I think convection(a blower) is a much more efficient. I have a pellet stove convention blower on t he floor bevy the stove and it really can drop the temps quickly.

we are probably taking about 10% or less increase in heat output I’m just guessing. That an extra load of wood every other day for my stove.

 

[NE_Chris]

This is *not* about fins that you can attach to the stove pipe. I have a Vogelzang TR007 wood stove that has a roughly 24 inch by 30 inch flat surface on the top and this seems to be the area that most of the heat radiates off of. Have you ever seen the thermal/heat transfer blocks inside your computer? Basically blocks of aluminum that have fins milled into the top side to rapidly dissipate heat from your components. Is there anything similar (on a much larger scale) that I could set on top of my wood stove? It seems like this would be a killer way to transfer more heat into my living space without cooling the flue gasses excessively.

Has anyone seen something along these lines? I've tried searching for this type of product and have found nothing but the stove pipe mounted fins. Is there a reason why these are unworkable?

This is an old post, but I've been thinking of doing the same thing. I did find that there are companies that make larger-scale heat sinks, and I'm thinking of getting one that's just the right size to do this. Would be a more efficient way of dissipating heat than trying to blow air against the smaller surface area of the top of the stove. Here's one site: https://www.heatsinkusa.com/3-500-wide-extruded-aluminum-heatsink/

I also found some less expensive ones on Amazon, like this: https://amzn.to/3WFOx9d
And a larger one: https://amzn.to/3R7TJBE

I'd be so curious to know how well something like this would work. If it did, for $50, you could potentially substantially increase your heat output, and it would be well worth it. I know in my case, my flue temp is really high, so potentially reducing it slightly would not be an issue--and besides, it would only reduce it in a way that's similar to installing a blower (which on my Jotul would cost about $700+ and be noisy).

 

[rwhite]

I'm trying to puzzle this out in my head. I understand the concept of finned surfaces to dissipate heat. These are normally used in area to prevent damage to internals that are being feed a constant steady fuel supply whether that be gasoline, refrigerant or electric. Just seems that dissipating heat to quickly would have a negative impact on stove performance. In order to keep the temps adequate to overcome the heat loss on the stove top you'd have to increase the air or fuel. Everytime you increase fuel in a stove you pretty much have to increase air as well which would increase stack temps substantially. It would also seem as the stove does down you would lose a lot of residual heat very quickly. Basically anything that dissipates heat quickly also cools very quickly.