Permsteading.com

The Bio-Lite unit is only for camping trips or short power outages. It can charge a cell phone, I Pad or maybe a Lap Top. It is not large enough to generate more electric than that. They have said they are coming out with a large unit for the home, but to my knowledge they still do not have that one ready yet. I still like the technology a lot and I still want one. Even though I don't go camping, and don't own a cell phone I think they are the neatest thing. I want one!

TEG(thermo electric generator) stuff is pretty cool to play with, and if you have an application that it fits, like driving a small fan for combustion like the biolite, then it's very useful. That said, the conversion is terribly inefficient, like 10% or something like that, so it's a very poor candidate for any significant power generation in it's current form. The winning stove at the challenge had a TEG unit driving a small reading lamp, and that was way cool. Applications like that are a great use of this tech. It's very easy to implement on a rocket, just put one on the barrel and make sure you pull some cool air past it with a little convective setup pulling cool air off the floor over the fins and it will generate a small amount of juice no problem.

Oh gosh dang it you guys, I just got all excited researching for this post and just spent $25 at Amazon to build a little set up. I'll try to build a little reading light for the stove. I'll keep you posted.

Cool. Please post pics or a video for those of us with a B.A. degree.

Another thought. I'm guessing the electricity could be stored through the TEG in a battery similar to solar power. Not many watts but it would allow for the portability of power for small objects.

FINALLY!!! The temps got up to a toasty 40 today. The tiny gasifier worked great considering the crappy job I did on it. Needs a feed tunnel. Needs to be bigger. Ha!

Cool.

I built one this weekend as well. I find that the ratio of bottom air to top air works best at 4:1 or even 5:1. On my prototype I used 16, 1/4" holes up top on the inner can, and 20, 1/2" holes at the bottom of both cans.

What a mess. Either my skills at drilling holes in metal needs more practice, or my tools are inferior. I'm going with the latter.

So once I worked out the ratios, I built another with the same 1/4" holes at top of the inner can, but this time went with slots cut out with tin snips for the bottom holes. Much cleaner presentation, and works just as well.

These things are kind of fun to play with, in a pyromaniac sort of way. Next I'm going to try 3/8" holes up top to see what kind of difference, if any, it makes.

BTW, I used a 1 quart empty paint container for the outer, and a Progressive Soup can for the inner. Cut out the bottom of the paint can and the soup can is 'press fit' up into the underneath ridges of the lid. Pretty easy build.

I will follow your posts on these stoves, hpmer. I used the bulk food cans from the store. I gave up on my wimpy drill halfway through and started using a hand can opener. The can opener took about 5 secs. Figures. I am in the process of upgrading my tools. The mini stove was ugly but worked wonderfully. I was surprised by the result actually. Now I can't wait to build another one.