Photo Essay of the 2016 Pellet Stove Design Challenge

Patricia Fritz of the NY Department of Health and
Dr. Barbara Panessa-Warren, a nano particle expert
from Brookhaven.  Their panel was one of the most appreciated!

Dave Atkins, moderator of the wood stove retrofit panel,
introducing Jeff Hollowell, a retrofit builder.

Stove installation and set-up prior to the event. (Norbert Senf)

Marius Wöhler came from Germany to share experiences of BeReal, a
European round robin testing project and a multi-year European
 Union funded survey of how people actually use their stoves at home. (AGH) 

Geoffrey Johnson and the Torrefire Pellet Stove. (BNL)

SUNY Buffalo students (from left: Kevan Darmawan, Kyle Hinman,
and Steven Widdis) using the Testo 320. (BNL)

The VibraStove, invented and
 designed by Stephen Spevak. 

A drawing of what the PELLWOOD, first place winner, by Wittus,
may look like when it goes to market. (Wittus)

Geoffrey Johnson, inventor of the Torrefire stove, with Jytte
 Illerup, a Danish researcher and Ricardo Caravahlo, a
Portugese Ph.D. student from Denmark. (AGH)

Mark Knaebe, from the US Forest Service and John Crouch, from
HPBA at the automated cord wood stove panel. Ben Myren
 was presenting the VcV valve technology via telephone. (AGH) 

The Alliance for Green Heat team: Board members Dave Atkins,
Jonathan Kays, and Norbert Senf with AGH President John
Ackerly in blue and staff member Gabriella McConnel. (AGH)

René Bindig, a member of the first
place team,Wittus - Fire by Design.

Craig McKim of Testo,  discussing
  testing procedures with the SUNY Buffalo team. (AGH)

Tom Butcher and Rebecca Trojanowski, biomass testing
 experts from Brookhaven National Laboratory. (AGH)

John Ackerly and Gabriella McConnel, of the Alliance for
 Green Heat, presenting two of the commercial
demonstration stoves. (Norbert Senf)

Bill Clark of the Osprey Foundation (right) shows off the
Mimi Moto, an ultra clean pellet fired cook stove
that he distributes in Africa. (AGH)

Norbert Senf of the Masonry Heater
Association presenting findings on PM
 repeatability testing. (AGH)

Judges meeting before the Closing Ceremony.  From the left:
 Rebecca Trojanowski, Mark Knaebe, Tom Butcher, Ray
Albrecht, Ellen Burkhard and Phil Hopke. (Norbert Senf) 

Stephen Spevak, inventor of the VibraStove, explaining
 his design to the students of SUNY Buffalo.  (AGH)

Team Wittus - Fire by Design, seconds after hearing
the news that they received first place. (AGH)

Rebecca Trojanowski, Craig McKim, Geoffrey Johnson,
and Mark Knaebe admiring the testo model capable of
measuring PM. (Norbert Senf)

Scott Williamson, Pelletstoveservice.com,
touching on the best and worst of
 innovation in the pellet stove market. (AGH)

Jock Gill, representing Jerry Whitfield,
speaking about the history of pellet stoves
and the potential of biochar. (AGH)

Dr. Joseph Mollendorf, advisor to the SUNY Buffalo team,
 speaking on the automation and controls
 his students are working on. (Norbert Senf)

Adam Baumgart-Getz of EPA with Geoffrey
Johnson and the Torrefire stove, which
 burns torrefied wood pellets. (AGH)

Second and first place teams congratulating each other
(From left: Vance Hirst Sr., Vance Hirst Jr., and
Vance Hirst III of Team Seraph and Niels Wittus and
 René Bindig of Team Wittus - Fire by Design) (AGH)

Alliance for Green Heat staff (right) congratulating Niels Wittus and
 René Bindig, who won first place at the 2016 Pellet Stove Design Challenge.

Flurry of Lobbying on Furnaces and Test Methods on Eve of New Stove Rules

The Office of Management and Budget
is in the Old Executive Office Building
next the White House.

Sources confirmed that the EPA is set to announce the new wood heater rules on Tuesday, February 3rd, the court ordered date.  After years of debate and anticipation about cost impacts and emission standards for stoves and outdoor boilers, the issue that has become the most contested on the eve of the announcement is warm air furnaces.

The Office of Management & Budget (OMB) cleared the rule on Feb. 1 "with changes" setting the stage for it to be signed by Administrator McCarthy and publicly released.  (Rules often take 2 - 4 weeks to appear in the Federal Register after they are publicly released by an agency.)

Even though the big decisions were all supposed to be made last fall, there has been intensive lobbying by stakeholders right up until Friday afternoon, January 30th - one business day ahead of the expected announcement. At least 2 groups met with the Obama Administration through the Office of Management & Budget on Friday, January 30th. During January, interest groups had at least six other meetings with OMB, lobbying for last minute changes to the proposed rule.

The patterns, attendees and paperwork left behind at OMB meetings this month offer a unique glimpse into some of the most contested areas of the rule. Thanks to sunshine laws that make records of meetings with government agencies public, the public can see a list of who met with the OMB in the weeks leading up to the announcement of the rule.

The short term fate of warm air furnaces (WAF) appears to be the top priority of the hearth industry because they represent the only product category where most existing models cannot be made or sold for a period of time after the rule becomes law and before they become certified. HPBA participated in two meetings in January along with their legal counsel and consultant, Jack Ferguson, and various of their member companies, including US Stove, Central Boiler, Hardy, Heatmor and Hawken Energy.

Jack Goldman, CEO of the Hearth Patio & Barbecue Association, said in a letter to EPA that this is "clearly a death sentence" to most of the companies making warm air furnaces. The EPA says that they do not have the legal authority under the Clean Air Act to delay implementation of emissions standards. Warm air furnaces are the only class of wood heaters that will be required to meet emission standards, but are still unregulated and have little ability to be tested and certified until the rule is announced.  US Stove Co may be the leading manufacturer of warm air furnaces in the U.S. and they often sell for less than $2,000 - less than most wood stoves.

Another hot topic that emerged in recent months is a dispute over the opposite end of the spectrum from unregulated hot air furnaces - high performance indoor boilers, often made in Europe, but now being made in the US. The EPA certified test labs refuse to use a test method for these appliances developed by DOE's Brookhaven National Lab and funded by NYSERDA, which captures some start-up emissions and uses cord wood instead of cribs. This is emblematic of a long simmering rift between test methods for outdoor wood boilers and European style indoor boilers with thermal storage, which offer the potential for cleaner combustion. NYSERDA and Econoburn, a NY manufacturer who makes these furnaces ask, "Who should really benefit? Those who innovate or those who refuse to?"

Other meetings in January with OMB and key stakeholders include one with about a dozen air quality agencies and states; with representatives of the Pellet Fuels Institute and a pellet testing facility; and with Intertek Test labs. Attendees in meeting between OMB and indoor and outdoor boilers and furnace manufacturers, and with NYSERDA and New York manufacturers are also in the public record.

If participants of the meetings provided OMB with documents, those documents are also public. Three key documents were provided this month, two from HPBA on a their legal argument (PDF) to delay compliance for hot air furnaces and a survey (PDF) commissioned by HPBA of HPBA member retailers on sell through trends. Four of the groups that met with OMB did not leave materials and there is as of now no record of the topics raised at those meeting. The only other document from the final month of intensive lobbying was from NYSERDA, NESCAUM and New York based companies (powerpoint).

Old-timey wood stoves need to get new-timey if we really want to make use of them

Monday, December 8, 2014
Nashua Telegraph
by David Brooks

Tom Butcher from Brookhaven Lab,
second from right, tests an automated
stove from New Zealand. Ben Myren,
left, did R&D work on it.

I don’t think very hard when I light up the old wood-burning stove in my basement. Turns out, that might be a problem.

“Combustion technology is incredibly complex. Numerous chemical engineers, combustion engineers, mechanical engineers around the world are constantly trying to understand the intricacies associated with combustion. It is absolutely not what you and I would think – just light a match ... especially when you want to get clean combustion and use wood efficiently,” said Rob Rizzo, manager of the Renewable Thermal Program for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.

Rizzo was among the organizers of the 2014 Stove Design Workshop held in November at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, the latest in a number of attempts to add some high-tech wizardry to that staple of New England life, the wood stove. (For details, see forgreenheat.blogspot.com/2014/11/rookie-wood-stove-makers-get-highest.html)

Why tinker with something as well-established as wood stoves?

Because, like me, most people don’t think too hard when using them, which makes them inefficient and polluting.

We use green wood or wet wood, and we fiddle with the damper in the wrong way, causing partial combustion and thus more pollution.

The Stove Design Workshop, like a national Stove Design Challenge in 2013 that featured two New Hampshire entries, wants to find technology that can better cope with our stupidity.

The five finalists in the design workshop used a variety of techniques to work around people, including oxygen sensors that control fuel-to-air ratio, a common emission-control technique in cars, and a New Zealand stove that has a “barometrically operated variable choke venturi tube” to control the amount of combustion air entering a stove, particularly at lower burn rates.

“The whole concept with the design challenge is to come up with solid-wood stove that eliminates the human interface. Basically hit a start button and walk away; that is the concept we’re aiming at,” he said.

This already happens with pellet stoves, of course, which is why pellets has led a wood-burning renaissance for building heat.

The drawback is that they burn pellets made of compressed sawdust rather than the wood I can snag for free off my property, especially after the Thanksgiving snowstorm knocked down so many big limbs.

The lure of free fuel means that a lot of people still burn non-pelletized wood for some or all of their heat, although it’s not clear how many.

I have never been able to find good data about people who use cordwood (a.k.a. “roundwood”) as their principal heat source, partly because it’s hard to pin down. I, for example, use it only as a minor supplement of the pellet stove in the living room and our oil-fired furnace.

Rizzo said he didn’t know any data either, but he said that wood stoves remain important, especially in western Massachusetts.

Just as important as convenience is cleanliness. Wood stoves can produce a lot of pollution, particularly fine-particle soot, that is a health hazard. This is particularly a problem around Keene, which has a lot of wood-burning stoves and a geography that traps air in certain weather conditions.

New Hampshire has used rebates to get people to turn in their old stoves for cleaner versions, although with limited success.

But those cleaner stoves aren’t all that great; they’re little more than old stoves with catalytic converters in the stovepipe. Hence the push to build a better mousetrap, so to speak.

“It’s exciting to see new ideas coming forward. We have some educated guesses but we need to do better,” Rizzo said.

“We need to collect more data, about efficiency, emissions, consumption volumes, and also source of wood, sustainability of wood source, quality of wood source. Because rural America is always going to be burning round wood.”

More info:

Test results, presentations and photos

Announcement and background

Automated Wood Stoves Line Up to Prove their Value

Seven companies with automated wood stoves have been selected to be part of a collaborative workshop at Brookhaven National Lab this November. The goal of the workshop is to explore how automation can be both affordable and effective.

See photos, diagrams and short descriptions of each of the 7 stoves here.

Stove emissions are the result of three equally important factors: the stove, the operator and the fuel.  EPA testing and the NSPS focuses mainly on the stove, but excessive emissions also result from poor operation and unseasoned fuel. Automated stoves can tackle all three of these factors, resulting in emission improvements beyond what the EPA can currently assess.

The seven automated stoves are made by ClearStak, Kleiss Engineering, MF Fire, Flamekeeper, Wittus, Hwam and Aprovecho Research Lab. Some need an electric outlet, some make electricity, some use oxygen sensors and all are unique and innovative.

“This workshop is designed to enable participants to study affordable automation techniques and see which work best,” said John Ackerly, President of the Alliance for Green Heat. “If the EPA settles on a number at 2.5 grams or less in the NSPS, these technologies may also offer affordable and reliable solutions,” Ackerly added.

The Organizing Committee includes John Ackerly-AGH, Ellen Burkhard-NYSERDA, Tom Butcher-BNL, Prof. Phil Hopke - Clarkson University, Craig Issod-founder of Hearth.com, Mark Knaebe-Forest Service, Ben Myren-Myren Consulting, Rob Rizzo- Mass. Dept. of Energy, Norbert Senf - Masonry Heater Association, Dean Still-Aprovecho, Rod Tinnemore-WA Dept. of Ecology and Rebecca Trojanowski-BNL.

Because of space limitations, only about 50 people will be accepted to participate in the workshop.   Participants will be selected based on experience, not on a first come, first serve basis. The workshop is from November 4 – 7th and held at Brookhaven National Lab in Upton New York, about an hour and a half east of New City on Long Island.

The Workshop is the second chapter of the Wood Stove Design Challenge that kicked off last year on the National Mall with the Wood Stove Decathlon.  An updated version of one of the stoves, the MF Fire designed by University of Maryland graduate students, competed in the 2013 Wood Stove Decathlon.  Wittus and Hwam also competed in the Decathlon and are bring updated versions of their stove. ClearStak consulted with a number of teams at the Decathlon.

As of December 2016, a number of automated stoves have entered the market place, including one that competed in this challenge.

Preliminary Ranking of Stoves at Wood Stove Decathlon as of Sunday, Nov. 17

The Wood Stove Decathlon judges and technicians have completed one round of emissions and efficiency on 8 out of 12 of the stoves in the competition. Each stove will have at least two tests and the results will be averaged. (See our previous post explaining how the stoves in the competition are scored.) If time permits, the judges may decide to do a different type of test using a cold start to measure start-up emissions on the stoves in contention for first place.

As of 4:00 PM Sunday 11/17, the number one stove for low emissions is the Mulciber stove by the University of Maryland.  The number one stove for high efficiency is the Wittus Twinfire.  The full rankings are:

Emissions                               
1. Un. of Maryland      
2. Woodstock Soapstone              
3. Intercontinental      
4. Wittus Twinfire          
5. Travis Cape Cod                
6. Ecolabel Tile Stove              
7. Hwam
8. SmartStove
9. Tulikivi
10. Kimberly
11. Intensifire
12. Walker

Efficiency
1. Wittus Twinfire
2. Ecolabel Tile Stove
3. University of Maryland
4. Tulikivi
5. Woodstock Soapstone
6. Travis Cape Cod
7. Intercontinental
8. Hwam
9. Intensifire
10. Walker
11. SmartStove
12. Kimberly