Adding a Turbine Generator to a Rocket Mass Heater

Ok so take your average rocket mass heater, and take a wind turbine made out of a bicycle wheel, and stick the turbine horizontally over the air intake in the rmh. You get heat and electricity, from just a little bit of wood.

Am I daft, or would this work??

A well designed turbine could probably spin several thousand  RPMs (and turn your RMH into a forge), but once you add the friction of turning a dynamo, I would imagine that it would slow down to the point that it wouldn't create much electricity.  Technology is getting better and better, so there might be some way to at least get it to trickle recharge some batteries or something, but don't count on it to run your fridge.

No, it is not crazy, but do not expect too much power out of waste heat (or energy).  If you can harness anything out of energy already being consumed, you are ahead of the game.

So basically it might be of some use if you are going to use the rmh anyways (and I have a buddy who wants his own forge, would that actually turn the rocket stove into one?), but it would not be useful as any kind of stand-alone wood-burning generator

If you forced air through the heater, it would probably burn hotter, but you would consume more wood, and much of the heat would be lost through the exhaust.  It would kind of defeat the purpose of a RMH

why not just use a set of peltier chips? get enough of them and you very much could run a fridge, especially the right fridge.


I have no previous experience with united nuclear but I do have experience with peltier chips.
here is a 545 watt peltier chip which is more than enough to run your fridge, just make sure not to put it directly in the heat or you will burn out the chip.

http://www.unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=27_37&products_id=455

voila! waste energy is now free power!

you can also do the same thing using cold to generate electricity IE you live in a freezing cold area.

the higher the difference in temperature, the higher electrical output. also if you link two of them together you effectively make a heat pump. Its really a neat chip!

p.s. I found this forum looking for stuff on tiny houses, this place looks pretty cool!

misterinnovation wrote:
why not just use a set of peltier chips? get enough of them and you very much could run a fridge, especially the right fridge.


I have no previous experience with united nuclear but I do have experience with peltier chips.
here is a 545 watt peltier chip which is more than enough to run your fridge, just make sure not to put it directly in the heat or you will burn out the chip.

The 545watts is input power to pump heat... the web page title seems confused... it calls the device both 545 watt and 113 watt... Maybe one is max and the other normal? Anyway, the page says nothing about the amount of power one could expect at the output for some temperature differential. Doesn't tell a part number/manufacture or any way of finding out more info. I would be interested even if it was way less than 500watts. I am thinking backup to my solar panels at night/winter/cloudy....

It's air flow you are trying to harness with this system.  Instead of burning a fuel and constantly gathering/handling the fuel, replace the RMH with a solar chimney and some mirrors.  The fuel and heat adds flow, but air flow can be achieved without combustion.

You would not get a huge amount of energy out of the system, but you could get some.  Bigger setup, more output.  For a backyard scale system, I can see it being able to charge a battery.

More efficiency can be gained by using the solar heated air for cooking/drying.  This sort of thing could be worthwhile as a science project.  If built with off the shelf or salvaged parts, so much the better. 

Measuring the inputs (parts/materials/labor/energy/cost) and the outputs (waste products, energy/environment impact) would be needed to determine if the notion was practical.

Len wrote:
The 545watts is input power to pump heat... the web page title seems confused... it calls the device both 545 watt and 113 watt... Maybe one is max and the other normal? Anyway, the page says nothing about the amount of power one could expect at the output for some temperature differential. Doesn't tell a part number/manufacture or any way of finding out more info. I would be interested even if it was way less than 500watts. I am thinking backup to my solar panels at night/winter/cloudy....

thanks for posting this. Had never heard of the chip you talk about. Would like to hear more about your experiences with it.
I am very interested to see if one could run a household using this ?

Ken Peavey wrote:
It's air flow you are trying to harness with this system.  Instead of burning a fuel and constantly gathering/handling the fuel, replace the RMH with a solar chimney and some mirrors.  The fuel and heat adds flow, but air flow can be achieved without combustion.

I don't know if there's been much success with the solar chimney power generation projects.  Seems like small models must have been built but I'm not sure how to find out how large one needs to be to generate a useful amount of energy.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/green-technology/arizona-getting-colossal-solar-updraft-tower-in-2015/

http://push.pickensplan.com/group/solarupdrafttower

If anyone can link to more info about size and output, etc, that would be great. 

I'd imagine that the velocity of the air isn't high enough to generate a significant amount of power. Maybe 50 watts?

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
I don't know if there's been much success with the solar chimney power generation projects.  Seems like small models must have been built but I'm not sure how to find out how large one needs to be to generate a useful amount of energy.

There is a company that wants to build one in the US. It will take a solar heat collection area of over 4 square miles and a tower close to a kilometre high... The comments seem to indicate a solar panel (PV) farm of much smaller size(10%) could produce more power. Someone did some calculations... it seems to be about .5% ef. (solar power available to area collecting as compared to power out)

http://www.gizmag.com/enviromission-solar-tower-arizona-clean-energy-renewable/19287/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

A big part of this is tower height. It depends on atmospheric temp at the top of the tower being less than ground level.

  Yes you're daft. No it won't work . There are plenty of small steam generators on the market that will produce far more power than whatever contraption you use to block your airflow. It would take a huge out-of-control chimney fire to produce any usable quantity of wind. Of course any stove which draws enough to run a wind turbine would be vacuuming all of the heated air from the building.