New wood stove / gassifier

Hello

I'm a mechanical engineer that has designed a product that uses cut wood to provide hot water for space heat, hot potable water, cooking fuel and electricity. It requires very little work to use unlike wood stoves and boilers/hydronic heaters. The operation is simple, put wood in, close the door and leave it alone for days at a time. It will provide the right amount of energy to meet demand automatically. It is high efficiency under all operating conditions and loads unlike wood stoves which tend to either run inefficiently or too hot. It enables a home to go off the grid with minimal work and super high reliability using the least expensive energy source available, cut wood. However, it is expensive but the cost will be very dependent on the number of sales so I'm trying to get an idea of how much people would be willing to spend for such an appliance. Keep in mind this is really only economical for someone that is off the grid and paying a lot for fuels like diesel, propane, and fuel oil.

Please let me know what you think and how much it would be worth to you.

Tim Burke : Welcome to Permies, and a Big Welcome to the Permies Rocket and Wood Stoves Forum Threads ! With ~25,000~ Fellow Members Your Contribution
to the Heating field will be carefully examined, Due to the Range of experiences and expertise brought to these pages, and the thinking processes of a world wide
community, expect a Widely and Even wildly different range of Responses to your Announcement ! You will be able to come here 24 / 7 and engage them with
conversation on this and other topics !

By choosing to post your thread in the Wood Burning Stoves Form Threads, you have picked a large Audience that will seek further clarification of your design
ONLY as it compares to Wood Stoves, Fire box size, Maximum BTUs and Exhaust Gas Discharge Temperatures, also expect requests for CAD drawings
(Or Sketch-up) And Pictures.

Just Recently the 12 Best Wood Stoves (some Gasifying) met in competition in Washington D.C., and a winter was picked, it is a matter of public record the areas
that these Units were Tested in. I believe the October Issue of Popular Science covered the Testing rather well and could be a resource for you to find out the
information your fellow members would like to receive from you.

My questions would tend to be more along the lines of how you intend to clean and store The "Cooking Fuel", And What you have done to Provide for a Heat
Exchanger that will Last At Least As long as A RMH's or any Commercial Fossil Fuel Fired Furnace, universally 20 years, this is difficult for a new product but if apples
are compared to apples, You should be be able to make realistic comparisons !

I am making a note to the moderators that this topic should ALSO be shared under The Alternate Energy section where ongoing Threads continue to discuss
research by some of your fellow members into Gasifying units !

For the Good of the Crafts ! Big AL

Hi Allen.

Thanks for the welcome and information. I will be looking at all of that. The unit I have designed is very proprietary, sorry but I won't be providing any information on how it works. My plan is to have any major servicing paid for in advance and for the product to have a 40 year warranty, but be designed to operate for more than 70 years. This is a critical aspect of a unit that is designed to enable reliable off the grid living. The owner/operator would need to do minor maintenance which would be dumping ash that collects in a bucket, cleaning fire tubes out once a month and cleaning air filters once every six months. Other than that the unit would require no maintenance. It would provide the things I already posted. The gas would be "wood gas" and would be stored in a conventional way under low pressure. It should be noted that using wood gas for cooking is more dangerous than using methane (aka natural gas), or biogas and precautions would have to be taken, most notably carbon monoxide detectors and ventilation during cooking. Also the unit is extremely different than other units on the market. It is a pure gassifier with new gas cleanup technology. It also enables the production of biochar if wanted for soil amendments among other things. Another benefit is that the unit is capable for running for weeks at a time without any additional fuel input. So if someone was sick or left for a few weeks it would provide everything they needed without any work. The unit could be integrated with solar hot water and other electricity generation as well as well systems integration. The idea setup would integrate all these systems and be custom engineered for the home size, climate, etc. This unit is designed for climates like alaska, canada, etc. It would not be competitive in sunny climates where there is little heat demand and where heat demand can be met primarily with solar hot water and passive solar.

Please let me know how much you think something like this would be worth.

Thanks for your time.

Tim Burke wrote:Hi Allen.

Thanks for the welcome and information. I will be looking at all of that. The unit I have designed is very proprietary, sorry but I won't be providing any information on how it works. My plan is to have any major servicing paid for in advance and for the product to have a 40 year warranty, but be designed to operate for more than 70 years. This is a critical aspect of a unit that is designed to enable reliable off the grid living. The owner/operator would need to do minor maintenance which would be dumping ash that collects in a bucket, cleaning fire tubes out once a month and cleaning air filters once every six months. Other than that the unit would require no maintenance. It would provide the things I already posted. The gas would be "wood gas" and would be stored in a conventional way under low pressure. It should be noted that using wood gas for cooking is more dangerous than using methane (aka natural gas), or biogas and precautions would have to be taken, most notably carbon monoxide detectors and ventilation during cooking. Also the unit is extremely different than other units on the market. It is a pure gassifier with new gas cleanup technology. It also enables the production of biochar if wanted for soil amendments among other things. Another benefit is that the unit is capable for running for weeks at a time without any additional fuel input. So if someone was sick or left for a few weeks it would provide everything they needed without any work. The unit could be integrated with solar hot water and other electricity generation as well as well systems integration. The idea setup would integrate all these systems and be custom engineered for the home size, climate, etc. This unit is designed for climates like alaska, canada, etc. It would not be competitive in sunny climates where there is little heat demand and where heat demand can be met primarily with solar hot water and passive solar.

Please let me know how much you think something like this would be worth.

Thanks for your time.

A 40 year service contract on an unusual and expensive/critical product, from a small company?? Not this guy...

Get a patent and sell plans.

Hi Bob

Thanks for the feedback. You make an excellent point. A contract is only as good as the company and if the company went under the contract would go away (at least I suspect that's how it works). Also it is new technology but none of the components are especially new or unreliable. Do you have any suggestions other than sell the plans? How would i get much money from the plans? I'm not doing this to get rich but I would at least like to make enough to pay for my work.

Thanks

Tim

Tim, I have been selling plans for my wood gasifier stoves since the early 70's. (based upon Ben Franklin's work which he always GAVE to the public BTW) Getting UL approval and patents that are only as good as your pocket book is deep is horrendous and rarely worth it. I have sold plans all over the world and my most recent design is heating the air and water in our 2000 gal aquaponics GH system. I have never built 2 the same as I learn a new tweak with every model and the one in the pipeline right now will be even more efficient and I simply add each new design to the plans. If you have the big bucks, go for it. But it might just eat you alive. Now next years competition, which I would love to have this one ready for, could put you on the map and get you funding so I would do a poorman's patent (send yourself a set of sealed plans thru the USPS with clear date stamp) and consider entering that comp which I believe was mentioned above. Best of luck.