The Alliance for Green Heat is an organization that supports burning wood for, as you might suspect, heat. Among other things, it sponsors an annual competition to build a better wood stove.
This year’s competition, the fourth, has an added wrinkle: Part of it “will focus on thermoelectric wood stoves that generate electricity to power lights, cell phones, and WiFi-enabled controls.”
“This is the first Wood Stove Challenge to promote wood stoves that generate electricity to power everything from a cell phone to an entire home. Thermoelectric wood stoves, when integrated with solar PV systems and home batteries like the TESLA Powerwall, have the potential to make solar energy more affordable, reduce air pollution, and pave the way for a more sustainable energy future, ” according to Ken Adler, Senior Technology Advisor at the Alliance for Green Heat and formerly with the U.S. EPA.
Interesting idea. Whether it’s feasible is another matter, of course.
Details of the contest can be found here.
Return to the Concord Monitor
Sounds pretty crummy. First, burning wood is dirty. CO2 emissions and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons make for a lousy carbon footprint. The efficiency of most thermoelectric generators I have ever heard of are in the range of 5-8%, so you’re either going to be burning a lot more wood if you are using it as any kind of significant contributor to your electric demand. Or, if you’re just tagging it on as a secondary system to capture whatever heat you’re not using from the wood burning, your payback period is going to challenge the economics of such a thing, unless you can (literally) get a TEG for dirt cheap.
Burning wood is carbon neutral. Burning wood vs. decomposition emits the same about of carbon.
It takes years for wood to biodegrade. Cellulose, lignin etc are very resistant and take decades. Even then the resultant humus then takes more time to be consumed. In contrast burning releases all that carbon, collected over many decades in one go. So there is a net increase in atmospheric ghg and net loss of soil carbon.
The lower levels of soil organic matter means lower nutrient and water retention, reduced growth rates and maybe even a degradation to a lower biomass ecosystem.
On the other hand harvesting periodically can maximise photosynthesis r rates. But current commercial roof burning depends on deforestation of primary forest with great ecological harm. There just isn’t enough land for widespread biomass use.
There’s a real need for small on site electric generation, the market will be huge. This would be a great boon to our environment much better than commercial wind. A growing forest captures and stores CO2. Proper management of our forests including harvest insures growing and healthy trees.
I agree with you James the efficiency of thermoelectric generator is low and a poor source of electricity. Even a small solar panel is a better bet. There is a lot of talk about cleaner wood stoves but I receive some heart-wrenching stories from residents with a wood burning neighbor even if the neighbor has an EPA approved stove.
I am sitting in a small off grid cabin in the north maine woods during late November. My woodstove is hot 24 hours a day, while at best I get 5 hours of strong sunlight on a great day. A 30 watt TEG system would let me watch TV and charge my phone much better than solar, about 5 months a year.
the amount of biomass that degrades naturally in the forest creates a bigger carbon footprint than a million wood stoves . i see no problem with gathering dead trees to burn for heat or electric production
This makes no sense, you quantify the number of woodstoves, but not the area of the decomposition. If you are saying that the same amount of wood releases more carbon when decomposing then that is false. Decomposition takes decades, meanwhile new wood grows so the carbon reservoir remains stable. With burning it is immediately destrabilised then possibly restored slowly over decades. But if the wood is then burned again you instead maintain the higher carbon levels in the atmosphere.
To me it makes sense to use wood if you live in the woods and need to drive to get fossil gas as an alternative.
Dead wood is vital for wildlife however. Especially large standing wood. So one could use only a hand saw and use small wood without damaging wildlife much. It is a question of degree however.
Obviously a mature forest is more productive and can stand more extraction.