Sales hot for corn stoves

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette ^ | Mon, Jan. 31, 2005 | Jenni Glenn

[Malsua]

We have an Earth stove that we bought in 1986. It's still working great and it's saved us thousands over the years. We have electric as backup, but it's a good feeling to know that if the power goes out, we can still heat the house and cook if necessary.

We heat primarily with our "Earth Stove". Purchased Circa 1992. The Earth Stove

Rated at 72,500BTU, it'll cook you out if it's warm out. For power failures, I bought a Deep Cycle Marine Battery and a power inverter and it'll keep the fans going for quite some time(at least 3 hours, never had a outage longer than that). I recharge the battery when low with a trickle charger, and if power outage goes too long, I'll put it in my truck and drive around for 45 minutes.

I've burnt 5 Cords this year so far, prolly 2 more to go. It's been pretty cold. It's definately a good insert.

[FrogInABlender]

Yeah, probably so, but they make smaller models. I've thought about building one myself, but I'm not all that wild about all that wood on the walls.

[IslandJeff]

Bookmark

[diamond6]

bttt

[o_zarkman44]

Most Pellet stoves and many wood stoves have an EPA rating that allows the units to be burned in areas subject to air quality issues. Wood burning creates no more carbon dioxide and ozone than the natural decomposition of dead wood laying around. But anything with a smokestack has the finger of blame pointed in it's direction first.
By far, automobiles produce the majority of pollutants where air quality is the issue. But regulators have found it easier to regulate from the bottom upwards. Ban the wood stoves, but drive drive drive them cars!

[bad company]

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/monroe42.html

Here's a really good article on burning corn. I've been pondering it for a while.

[CDHart]

Thanks for the idea re the deep cycle battery. I'll pass it on to my husband.

Carolyn

[chimera]

It may be a rate effect. If it is true that the stoves emit no more pollution than natural decay, on balance, they may emit more, per unit time during, for example, an air quality alert, than natural processes. Natural decay seems to have a longer time constant than most combustion processes.

One of my first jobs when I went back to grad school the second time was to look at the effects on grid stability of pollution dispatching. In this scenario, during times of poor air quality, you load up the plants that have least emissions, while throttling back those that emit more. Then when things ease up a bit, you re-load the higher emitters (which may cost less to run), but, on balance, your yearly totals don't change. Again, a rate effect.

But the bottom line is that any kind of combustion process is going to have effluents, be they CO2 or SO2, or nitrous oxides, as well as particulates. You can do what you can to minimize those, either at the point of emission or by fuel switching, but you'll still have something. Regulators will focus on those, starting, as you say, with what they thing are most visible and easiest to nail.

[Malsua]

Thanks for the idea re the deep cycle battery. I'll pass it on to my husband

Welcome :).

I bought this one: MaxxSST 700-Watt Power Inverter VEC062 a while back for $70, now it's $54. Got a Deep Cycle battery at local automotive for $60 and bought a new generation trickle charger for $20. It's Important that the charger switches to Float when battery is full otherwise you will damage the battery. Just make sure it's reasonably ventilated(Don't put it in a small 2x2 closet or something)and there's no issue at all. A discharging battery will produce some gases just be aware even though it's a minor issue.

[o_zarkman44]

My belief is that small emission appliances spread out over a large area would have less impact than one large emission. Air flow characteristics are not generally the same from one side of a five mile area to the other side because of topographic variance. Differences in thermal inversions and temperature are hard to chart however.

If the small volume emittors are shut down, that places more burden on the large emitter to increase output to the grid to compensate for thermostats being activated.

In areas like Denver, temperature inversions are created by cold air moving off the mountains. The cold air creates a dome over the valleys and along the front range that comprise much of the region. The cold air dome traps greenhouse emissions which in turn increase temperatures under the cold air inversion. A major byproduct of combustion is moisture. The H2O molecules collect particulates that discolor the air (The Brown Cloud), but the ozone is mostly created by hydrocarbons from automobile exhaust combining with the H2O.

Catalytic converters help to burn unburnt fuel, but for the catalyst to operate most effectively, the automobile has to run for a few minutes before the optimum temperature activates the catalyst. So much of the unburnt hydrocarbons are created at start up.

So in theory shutting down a wood stove to reduce emissions may actually create more emissions. A stove operates the most efficiently from mid range output on up. A cold wood stove, like a cold car, requires time to reach optimum operating effiency. The start up cycle and the shut down cycle create the most pollution.

[BurbankKarl]

bump

I was just reading that The Gas Company rates for natural gas are now 74% higher than this time last year. These have to be illegal in SoCal right?

[Brad’s Gramma]

http://www.burncorn.com/

[Brad’s Gramma]

http://www.amaizablaze.com/dealers/


I don't know, Karl...I Googled it, and it LOOKS like they're available. But, I also saw a site that says sales NOT available for CA.