Self Powered Hydronic Heating System for Wood Stoves Generates Power and Runs Your Lights!

Check out this video of a self-powered hydronic heating system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbJ1PlwC-MA

You can heat hot water in a tank, move heat to radiators, radiant tubing & baseboard.

The circulator pumps are run by the Wood Stove heat.

We have pumps and a pump controller available at:

http://www.tegmart.com/thermoelectric-generator-accessories/

The water cooled thermoelectric generators can be purchased at

http://www.tegmart.com/thermoelectric-generator-products/

I wonder how well this system would work with a rocket mass heater?

The biggest system they sell is only 70 watts so it won't power your whole home, but it could handle led lighting and charge your gadgets.

I did some digging and this technology has been around for a while. I found some DIY on how to make your own: just some soldering, add a few heat sinks and you get volts. Now that i think about it the barrel of a Rocket Mass Heater may get too hot for the purpose of these chips, which work on about 100 degree temperature difference to generate power.

I would probably make a heat collector with a separate chimney like in the solar dryer video Paul did https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVTcnCuX2Qc

I would advise anyone considering this product to have a hydronics engineer take a look at the heat transfer from the stove to the heat exchanger. This is going to be a nearly insignificant amount, because of the small space the heat exchanger is gathering heat from and the materials used. I know, because I had this idea and worked it through and after seeing the load calculations, decided that it was not worth doing.

Bill that's interesting... I am building a hydronic system using a re-purposed cast iron radiator for a heat exchanger next to the stove. I've recently bought and plumbed in a 1/25 HP circulating pump. I'm going to try and get up to speed on these products, they may work for me too!