Waterwide Burner

[ben]

Check out how it burns the gas by forcing the heavy particles to the outside until they are consumed.

[Larry Dobson]

I met the founders of this company at the 1986 International Conference on Residential Wood Energy, where I gave a presentation on "High-Tech Non-catalytic Woodstove Design Considerations". They took me to lunch and were eager to learn whatever I could tell them. At the time, they were using the innovative hopper seal technique using sand instead of water, and they had a rather ordinary combustion configuration, not the swirling vortex design. They must have worked out lots of bugs in the 23 years in between! It would certainly be interesting to see their hearth design now!
LAD

[Steve Unruh]

Interesting design. The secondary cyclonic swirl burner is the key to the completely combusted clean output exhaust heat. The dirtier the primary output gas probably the denser the energy per cubic volume into the secondary burner. The optional supplementary cyclone that was used only for the high volume fly ash carry through removal. Frustrating not to know
the internal air distribution in the primary chamber and grate set ups. Sawdust burning was inferred with the conveyer BUT never shown - only chipped, shredded and bulk wood.
Best thing I got from this was the combination moister condensation/collector ring/water seal under the edge of the domed top lid. Neat idea.
Thanks SteveU.

[ben]

Yeah it looks like a 1980's advertisement. The cyclone burner is the cool part.

Yeah I have been doing alot of research on ORC and came across this that way. The cost of a unit from Infinity is considerably more, but it is a great technology that bridges biomass and solar. Do a search on "Solar Turbine Group" and see how a MIT team built an ORC from car parts for an African Village.

Mark it as one more thing on the to do list. I will try to blog about it later.

[Radam]

It surely is an advertisement, but the unit itself seems low tech and sturdy. Minus the cyclone burner, it is just like any modern firewood furnace which utilizes secondary chamber for combustion and fuel is gasified above.

The temperature at the outer walls of the burner are about 800C°, isnt that the temperature of the gas in most cyclone filters you are using? It probably already does the same thing.

I see a reference to an Infinity Turbine. I saw that once when I was studying rankine cycle. Basically its a turbine working on waste heat at the temperature of 100 to 150C°. The cost for a 30kw turbine system appears to be about 20k$, but the details are somewhat vague. Efficiency is not referenced but I suspect it to be in the range of 10 to 20%.