| Author | Message | ||
     Boogiman1981 |
http://biolitestove.com/ looks interesting, thoughts? | ||
| Froggy |
I has liberal hippie tree obama humper written all over it. I want one. | ||
| Boogiman1981 |
the gadget freak in me is dieing over it political agendas aside | ||
| Preybird1 |
That is kind of cool actually. I would buy one if i camped a lot. I wonder how much the battery pack is on it? Like if you go camping and you put it away and forget about it does the battery die? | ||
| Stirz007 |
I have one of these. Bulletproof, well made, but a tad spendy. Lemme tell you though, when you're two days into a two week river trip and the Coleman craps out, this thing will keep kickin' along. http://www.riverconnection.com/kitchen-cooking-sto ves-c-4_74_86.html | ||
| Froggy |
From what I've read on the website, it looks like the battery is used to run a fan that provides optimal airflow for a fire, then the heat from the fire recharges the battery. It looks like you charge the unit initially over USB, and in theory you shouldn't need to charge it ever again. | ||
| Hootowl |
There have been other threads on this topic, if you're interested in reading more about it. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
Reminds me of this old Russian lamp+radio combo: http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/POWER/therm oelectric/thermoelectric.htm#rl | ||
| Aesquire |
It IS the old Russian lamp thermoelectric generator. In a prettier package with more modern electronics. Should work fine. Don't expect miracles. ( pray for them if you wish, hope for them we all will, but don't count on a tinder stove to power a TV ) The 3rd world stove is one of several designed to reduce fuel use and pollution. ( the Asian/Chinese Brown Haze is real, and can be seen from space... or when flying towards China in an Airliner. Millions of coal cooking fires.... ) Looks like it would work just fine, too. The business model is to use the wealthy consumer to help finance the altruistic 3rd world stove. They also are looking for government money, but by actually making a salable product and actually doing good, they beat the daylights out of most idealistic save the world types. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_brown_cloud http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anL633eoCqc ( some real bad science in this vid... but it shows the brown pretty well ) I may have to get one of those... Warning In some US locations gathering firewood is against the rules. Even the branches and twigs this thing is designed for will get you fined and/or arrested if the Enviro/Park/Forestry police catch you using it. Check local rules before use. | ||
| Kenm123t |
Froggy discovers a tech older than carbs Thermo piles have been around since the 1800s | ||
| Froggy |
Electricity was around before oil too. Oh well. I see a nice compact way to make a cooking fire without having to carry around fuel or other supplies, and I can use it to recharge all my other components. Perhaps I should bring one to the WVBR this year? | ||
| Johnnymceldoo |
Cool gadget. | ||
| 86129squids |
Very interesting- set aside the entropy problem and the efficiencies of its design seem sound. For less than a buck fiddy, if I were a regular camper, I'd get one. | ||
| 86129squids |
What WVBR? | ||
| Crusty |
What WVBR? http://www.badweatherbikers.com/buell/messages/37/ 686703.html?1340067728 | ||
| Reepicheep |
I'm guessing it's just a thermocouple run backwards. I'm kicking myself for walking by a big box of them at Mendelsons (local electronics surplus place). They had 15 watt thermoelectric coolers yanked from old DC coolers or something, $25 each or something. I remember thinking "I don't need one, but at that price I should get two" but didn't. You could rig it up to swing both ways... cool drinks (or rider) when on the bike with power, generate electricity at night with a campfire. | ||
| Crusty |
I was at the Moto Guzzi National Rally in Virginia a few weeks ago, when those storms that caused power outages for over 2,000,000 people, and did a lot of other damage came through. We were without power; but a few people had Jet Boil stoves. and four people were able to boil enough water (two also had French Presses)to make coffee for close to 100 people. I was impressed, and I'm thinking about getting one. | ||
| Nukeblue |
yes froggy bring one to w.v.! by buddy will be there and he's really interested in that stove | ||
| Aesquire |
I'm guessing it's just a thermocouple run backwards. Sort of. When you make electricity with a temperature difference it's the Seebeck effect. When you make a temperature difference with electricity, it's the Peltier effect. For best results, the mechanical bits ( heat sinks, radiators, etc. ) would be made differently, if you want to make heat/cool or electricity, but essentially it's a semiconductor deal with 2 materials and a heat difference. There really isn't an entropy problem. Entropy works just fine. If you use a peltier cooler, as on a PC CPU, ( I have, works great....but ) you have to get rid of the heat made by the CPU and the peltier cooler. Just like the heat coming out of an Air Conditioner is both the heat extracted from the air, and the waste heat of the Compressor etc. in the Air Conditioner. Entropy still rules. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect The thermo and thermionic generators have been around a long time. Gone further than any human on the planet... ( like out of this Solar System... ) Since they use them for deep space probes that cannot be dependent on dim sunlight out in the cold and dark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermionic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermionic_converter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoel ectric_generator The Russian Lamp generator mentioned above was used to get radios into the hands of the peasants in the vast areas of the Soviet Union that had no power. ( and still don't, in a lot of cases ) The simple finned cylinder put out enough juice for early transistor radios, and just as certain Evangelical groups give radios away in third world countries to spread their "word", the Soviets needed to get the propaganda out to the boonies. They had ( and have ) a LOT of boonies. Remember, the villages and homesteads in Eurasia seldom get visited by the Princes and Kings, often never knew when the government in far off Moscow/Peking/Rome changed, or had regular contact with any authority. By getting a radio out to the village, the villages got news, and a sense of community in a greater geographic sense. If not for this method, it is likely that the mass army needed to defeat Hitler would never have happened, with it, eager volunteers, ( and desperate conscripts, of course ) rushed to defend the Motherland. Naturally the radios given away by the Soviets got only the proper freqs to get Soviet Radio, not others, just as the radios given today by Evangelicals get only the religious stations. As an idea, and in execution, the Russian lamp-generator is brilliant. No moving parts, you just slide the cylinder over the chimney of a wick lamp, and use the waste heat. Just as the biolitestove does. The brilliance there is seeing the need to charge cell phones, Ipods, etc, PLUS using the thermoelectric parts to run a fan for forced draft efficiency. ( plus the business model to try and get the home version out in the sticks where it is really needed. Even if you couldn't give a darn about your brothers in far off lands, you'll buy the camp stove for the cool factor or bragging rights. Very smart. ) | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Bill, my bet is stacked Peltier junctions. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
Yeah must be peltier junctions. There is one problem with peltier junctions though: they can't take too much heat. I'm not sure how they can have it exposed to an actual fire and not fry it up. I'm almost curious enough to buy one just to take it apart! | ||
| Thumper74 |
I have a jetboil and it's awesome. A hobostove would have been a good thing to have too | ||
| Aesquire |
If you look at the diagram, they suck the combustion air past the cold side heat sink before swirling it into the burn chamber. I learned the heat differential to electricity effect as the Seebeck effect, and the electricity to heat difference as the Peltier effect. But they are, in a sense reversible, so, yeah, it's a stack of "Peltier" junctions... Wiki says Textbooks may refer to it as the Peltier–Seebeck effect. This separation derives from the independent discoveries of French physicist Jean Charles Athanase Peltier and Estonian-German physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck. What heat they can take depends on the materials. More than one material pair exhibits the effect. Some would be fine at the temperatures involved in a cook stove. |
