Wood Stove Design Challenge Judges Test Equipment, Select Finalists

Alliance for Green Heat, January 24, 2013 - The past two days have been exciting ones for the Alliance for Green Heat and the rest of the Wood Stove Design Challenge team, as eight of the judges met at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory to prepare for the Wood Stove Decathlon set for later this year. 

Judges examine testing equipment in the lab

Many of the Design Challenge judges met in person for the first time at the government laboratory on Long Island, New York. While many of them had different personal and institutional reasons for participating in the Challenge, they all agree with a basic premise: that wood stoves need to operate cleaner in the real world and design changes can make that happen.

During the two day meeting, judges reviewed scores of innovative designs from 32 applications and examined a piece of brand new German wood appliance testing equipment that will likely be used to judge entries at the Wood Stove Decathlon to be held this November in Washington DC. The DOE Brookhaven Lab also hosted a webinar to review this new product, the Wohler SM 500 particle analyzer, with members of NYSERDA, the Environmental Protection Agency and key industry leaders.

More information on testing at the Decathlon will be forthcoming, and the 14 finalists for the competition will be released next week. As discussed in our latest Challenge blogpost, this competition may be a battle between 16th and 21st century designs, with no clear idea about who the winners will be.

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More information on the Challenge is available at http://www.forgreenheat.org/stovedesign.html.