[Stoves] Lanny Henson's Center Fire Stove 01

[Lanny Henson]

Stove Friends,

The conversation about co and co2 has filled in a few blanks for me.

I am playing with fire this week end, hide the children!

I have been experimenting with a center fired burner module, burning pine
chips.
I have had a lot of failures but a few successes.

I burned some 27% wet chips and virtually had to build a fire under it.
There was a white cloud floating over the chips and a clear hole with flame
in the center. The cloud flowed toward he center and disappeared. At one
point the wind blew the flame to one side and I could see the white vapors
falling into the hole almost like a black hole. That probably does not mean
any thing but it looked interesting.
Well after the vapors were driven off the chips gave up their volatiles too
quickly and the  fire could not be controlled.

Next I tried oven dried chips. Lit from the bottom, it burned to fast and
the flames were to tall.

Top lighting the oven dried pine chips seemed to burn a lot better.

So I fit a center fire burner into a bucket to make a burner module. It has
secondary air at the top.
I also built a heat utilizing module, a sunken 8 liter Bain Marie pot (hotel
pot, insert pot).
500 grams of oven dry pine chips boiled 6.5 liters. I started with 5 liters
and when that boiled in about 25 min then I continued to add water until the
flames went out about 10 min later.
The exhaust was clear most of the time but there were to many whiffs of dark
smoke.

Sun dried pine chips burned more cleanly with only short period of a few
whiffs.
It boiled 6 liters in 35 min. At this point there was only char and I shut
the air intakes and capped the system with a chip drying module.
(I know what you are thinking, that is no a chip drying module that is just
a stinking bucket. Hey! it is my most simple design :-)
This cap will extinguish the char and hay box the pot. I will check the
water temp over time to see how long it will hold safe temps.
I will also recover the char and weigh it.

I am pleased with this stove system but the burner needs further development
of its secondary air supply.
Also I need to test fuels other than pine chips,
And develop more heat utilizing modules.

the photos are about 75 kb each is that too large?

Photos Lanny Henson's Center Fire Stove 01 burning high moisture pine chips:
Burner Module, Sunken Pot Module
Lanny Henson's Center Fire Stove 01
Outer shell, inner shell, burner, pine chips, paper in hole.
Fire battles cloud/high moisture
Pot module increases draft fire shoots out of cloud
After moisture is driven off the fire burns too fast
Burner, pot and chip drying/top cap modules

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Lanny Henson