A DOE program that invests in next generation wood stoves

Prof. Nordica MacCarty, right, from 
Oregon State University, just won
a third round DOE grant.

The DOE just completed its third round of funding for novel and innovative wood heater designs, selecting teams from Oregon State University and the University of Alabama.  To date, the program has now invested about $11 million in the wood and pellet heating sector.  The program seeks to modernize the most common renewable energy technology in American homes – the traditional wood stove – which is in 10% of all households.

Wood stoves are often not included in the vision for clean renewable energy but they have done more than any other technology to reduce fossil fuel use in American homes in recent decades thus far.  The far more modern cousin of the wood stove, the pellet stove, is already automated in many ways and consistently cleaner and more efficient than the wood stove.  The DOE program is investing in novel wood stove technologies to address excessive wood smoke in many communities, particularly in western states where stoves are popular and weather inversions trap smoke near the ground.

Professor Nordica MacCarty, who just won a $2.5 million grant, says her team will make stove “prototypes operationalized with closed-loop sensors and control algorithms. Plans are in place for market transformation with regulatory oversight and open-source knowledge sharing among partner manufacturers and the industry at large.”  The DOE requires that teams work with existing stove manufacturers or develop other plans to get their inventions on the market. 

Taylor Myers, Chief Technical Officer
at MF Fire, doing very early testing on
movement characteristics of fire.

A review of the seven projects funded so far show that the DOE is focusing on automated controls and sensing technologies that mimic the controls in other combustion technologies, from the automobile to power plants. There is little published data to date about the results of the DOE investment and stoves supported by the DOE are just getting to the market.

MF Fire, a Baltimore based start-up company, got 2 awards the first year.  One is a “smart monitoring and real-time guidance” device that can be added to any stove.  The other is a stove with “swirling combustion technology” designed to reduce PM and be a novel, visual focal point in the room, according to Ryan Fisher, the company’s COO.

 

SBI’s grant from DOE is being used to build an automated stove which has been delayed due to Covid. Louis-Pierre Côté, SBI’s Director of Product Development, told AGH that the stove is designed to “burn efficiently even though the user makes operating mistakes, and it should be easier to light the stove and should then reduce the number of misfires.”

The SBI team that designed an early 
prototype of an automated stove that
won awards at the 4th Wood Stove 
Design Challenge in 2018.

The DOE program, part of larger grant cycle run by the Bioenergy Technology Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) complements the efforts of the EPA to regulate the emissions of residential wood stoves.  The EPA has never invested in the R&D of cleaner stoves but its first set of regulations in 1988 resulted in a rapid and universal technology upgrade for all stoves.  Since then, many experts say technology has stalled. While stoves can perform well in the lab, they are all still manually operated so that in the hands of consumers, they can still perform poorly.

“There is a mismatch between the EPA’s regulations and the DOE programs because the EPA is still embroiled in the ongoing clash between industry and air quality agencies over how to test manually operated stoves,” said John Ackerly, President of the Alliance for Green Heat. The DOE is investing in the future - stoves with automated controls - but these stoves may be at a disadvantage using the EPA’s test protocols designed for manually controlled stoves.  Manufacturers have had little incentive to build automated stoves and must design their own alternative test protocols which need to be approved by the EPA.  

Each of the six projects are ambitious and highly innovative and they should start to hit the market in the next few years.  Until they pass EPA certification and are in the marketplace, its hard to prove that they are able to match their vision with a clean stove that consumers will want to buy.  Assuming the DOE maintains the program, over time it is likely to have a major impact on a technology sector that is not known for high-tech innovation.

MF Fire, Swirl Stove

SBI/ISB, Automated stove

Ohio State, Simulation drive automated stove

NTRE Tech, Fluid bed combuster

Oregon State, Forced air and automated controls

University of Alabama, Autonomous Stove 

 

The DOE is expected to announce its next round of wood heater grants early next year.