Wöhler Brings New Particulate Analyzer to Wood Stove Design Challenge

The German precision test equipment manufacturer, Wöhler, is providing one of its new Wöhler SM 500 particulate analyzers to do accurate PM 2.5 testing in the field. The Wöhler unit is a Suspended Particulate Analyzer for online PM 2.5 mass concentration measurements of small solid fuel appliances. The brand new technology just came out last year to meet requirements under a new German law that requires wood stoves and boilers to be checked in the field for emissions every year. German chimney sweeps play the same role as vehicle emission testing stations in the US. If the emissions are too high, the problem has to be fixed or the system taken out of service.


The Wood Stove Design Challenge will be using the Wöhler equipment at its national exhibition to educate policy makers and the public about modern wood heater emissions. The 10 judges who are preparing for the Challenge are gaining experience in using the new Wöhler technology in anticipation of using on-site testing of emissions. The Wöhler SM 500 is now at the Brookhaven National Laboratory where one of the judges, Dr. Thomas Butcher, is performing trial testing. Other judges will join him in coming months as they test the fueling protocol and compare the Wöhler SM 500 to the traditional, but more cumbersome, dilution tunnel test procedure that is used in wood stoves tests to ensure they meet EPA emissions standards. Dilution tunnels are large, time-consuming and expensive to use and are not an option for testing up to 14 wood stoves on the National Mall over a 5-day period.

Prof. Hopke Becomes Judge of Wood Stove Design Challenge

Professor Philip Hopke, of Clarkson University, has become the 10th judge of the Wood Stove Design Challenge. Dr. Hopke is the Bayard D. Clarkson Distinguished Professor at Clarkson, the Director of the Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science (CARES), and the Director of the Institute for a Sustainable Environment (ISE).

For the past 5 years, he has been actively studying solid fuel combustion systems with an emphasis on emissions and efficiency. “We can take advantage of our large wood resources if it can be burned more cleanly,” Prof. Hopke said. Clarkson University is located in northern New York, surrounded by communities that heavily rely on wood and pellet heating.

As a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State in 2008-09, he advised the Department on strategies to support the development of cleaner wood cook stoves in the developing world. In that capacity, he also worked with Prof. Kirk Smith of University of California Berkeley who is also a judge in the Wood Stove Design Challenge.

Dr. Hopke is also the past Chair of EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), and has served on the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB).

Professor Hopke received his B.S. in Chemistry from Trinity College (Hartford) and his M.A. Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Princeton University and had a post-doctoral appointment at M.I.T

For more information on the Wood Stove Design Challenge and the judges, click here: http://www.forgreenheat.org/stovedesign/judges.html

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.