Has anybody seen this? -BioLite Wood-Burning Stove

What? no link?

http://www.biolitestove.com/BioLite.html

Coming March 2012

Thanks! I had put in the url, but it was hard to spot and incomplete. I just fixed it. Carlos

Bad design in that you cannot reload the firebox with the pot on the stove. Also the website is not too telling if the recharging capabilities are there only when the stove is burning. I assume there is no storage battery. So how long would you have to burn to charge your phone?

More info

http://www.fastcompany.com/1659001/microgrid-energy-rules-the-sustainable-brands-10-innovation-open

Expected price $100-150

I agree about the top loading. As to the charging capability, It would probably be good to give a few minutes of talk time for a dead phone, but that might be enough in an emergency. Also, since you would not use phone to walk and talk, a few minutes each day would be enough to "top" it off, especially if you're using the phone as a camera or GPS device. Also, Duracell makes a very light LiIon battery you can charge from a USB port (which this stove supposedly has), so you could use this to store power for when needed.

I'm not a great fan of bringing too much "civilization" with me into the woods- part of the allure is that NOBODY can call, text or otherwise bother me, and don't use an MP3 in the woods, but it would be unfair to impose that philosophy on others, as I believe everyone should be free to hike their own hike. But anyway, the charger is just a side benefit. I'm more interested in long-distance, self-sufficient hiking, where you have to carry all your supplies with you (no mail drops). I like to hike into wilderness such as the Wind Rivers, hiking and fishing, so the weight of fuel can be an issue. Also, since it uses twigs, you don't chop wood or damage trees (the only other drawback would be the banning of open fires due to wildfires, or extended hiking above treeline where fuel is scarce). BPL just published a review of Jetboil stoves, and they weigh about the same as this, after you factor in the fuel.

Since this stove was developed as a humanitarian aid for third-world countries, I would imagine it would have to be both simple and rugged for daily use by technically-unsophisticated users. I filled out the contact info request, so I hope to get more information on this.

Since I too am a non gadgety guy the charging aspect doesn't do it for me. Interesting concept for 3rd world though. I'm waiting for my Backcountry Boiler to show. The no fuel to carry allure is too strong.

This stove needs to be made of titanium to have any hopes of becoming a true backpacking stove. As it is it's way too heavy.

I'll stick with my CC Sidewinder Inferno. Light, packs small, burns very efficiently.

And BTW, just one more reason to have a wood burning stove "Burn-Off".

From the looks of it, the thermocouple and fan is a separate module. It shouldn't be too hard to make a titanium version and just hang the module on. As a kid, I remember a simple thermocouple DIY project in a magazine- it shouldn't be too hard to google- and then just get a toy fan. With the ingenuity of the U/L community, I'm sure someone can make one. If there is enough of an interest, maybe BioLite might consider making an U/L version, as well.

Wonder how much the fan and charger weigh and how well would the stove work without it hung on the side?

@Eric. I knew you would check in here.

As I have an unnatural attraction to fire, a "Burn-Off" sounds great!

Carlos,

It looks like an interesting stove. They've been trying to bring it to market for a couple of years now. I think they're saying 1Q 2012 now, about 2 years after they initially targeted. The TEG's may be the sticking point. A TEG can be very fragile from what I've read.

However, THIS time, I notice that they're doing a lot of publicity things like showing it to TV stations and such. Maybe this time they've really got something ready to go to market. Not exactly ultralight, but ultra-interesting for sure!

HJ

"Bad design in that you cannot reload the firebox with the pot on the stove."

That's a common design characteristic of batch fed, inverted down draft, wood gassifier stoves. And in reality, it's not a lot different than the operational characteristics of pop can alky stoves. Aside from the more complicated designs, you load in your fuel, you light it, and just let it run until it burns out…

I still wondering how long until someone makes a decent backpacking ul rocket stove…

BM

Edit- I just looked at their other products and they do have a "magazine" fed rocket style stove… They just need to scale it down to a backpacker size, and that'd be it. Durability aside, that is…

Ultra Magnus said:
"I still wondering how long until someone makes a decent backpacking ul rocket stove… "

Not exactly a rocket stove, but solves the issue of continually feeding small sticks. Check out Emberlit.com. Being produced by a gent from hammockforums.net. Stainless version available now, but first batch of Ti expected to be completed by the end of the week. Packs flat. 5.45oz. Taking preorders for $55.

I do not have any affiliation with this vendor other than having a Ti version on order.

I'm new around here, but FWIW: I have the Ti version of the Emberlit, the Emberlit UL. It weighs in at 5.4 oz. and seems to be a versatile stove. It stores flat, maybe 1/8" thick all five pieces combined (four sides, bottom).

The Biolight stove looks great and like a product that will enable NGO's to put it to very good use. I'd love to see how they work out once released. The video link on their site was useful to understand size and function of the camp stove.

That Emberlit is so light and packs down so small…

A friend of mine is beta-testing one of these stoves and I got to play with it yesterday. I'll try to answer some of the questions that have come up in this thread. Feel free to ask more.

It's an impressive little piece of hardware. The stove body looks sturdy enough to last a long time. I don't know how sturdy the little electronic gizmo will be.

The two pieces do come apart. It would be quite reasonable to make a lighter stove and attach the electric device to it. I didn't have a scale handy but I'd say that the two pieces were each about the same weight, so the thermo-electric module probably weights a little under a pound.

The module has a thermo-electric generator, a fan, and a battery of some sort. You light the stove and than turn on the fan. The fan has two speeds. It goes from a dramatic smoke signal to a blowtorch in about ten seconds when you turn on the fan. It runs until the electricity generated exceeds that used by the fan/battery, than sends the rest to the USB. There is an indicator LED that changes color when it has power to charge stuff. My friend had used it to charge his phone and IPOD, and found it effective, although I don't think he had measured it's output.

We took our big pot of soup off of the campfire (hence it was already hot) and balanced it on the Biolite, the 1.5 gallons or so of soup boiled madly for ten minutes or so on one load of fuel.

Interestingly you could pick up the stove while it was running, the outside and bottom did not get hot at all.

It looks like a well-made device. It would need to be lighter for a lot of backpackers, but I think that would be feasable. I'm excited about the thermoelectric technology, and would like to see it incorporated into other platforms.

It looks like they've put some serious effort into this. The design looks high quality.

It's a bit heavy for our purposes, but non-UL'ers who like fire and phones should snap this up…especially at $129.

It's a bit heavy for our purposes

This is the prototype for BPL.
bio Lite realised that weight is more important than function to this community (apart from Ryan Jordan in these Latter Days) so they have stripped down the stove to the bare minimum .
You can all thank me later for this.
Franco

Haha thats hilarious! Did you make that? I think its a cool concept, especially for car camping. The process of turning heat into electricity is a very cool idea, especially if you can run a small generator with under 2 lbs of tools. Could you not put some sort of generator similar to this rigged next to a fireplace and be able to supplement wind, solar, or another biomass power source? That would be cool.

-Conner

Look at this article, it looks like a potentially lighter solution, although not on the market today.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109093555.htm

I doubt that thermocouples (like Peltier thermoelectric generators) will ever outperform stirling engines. Some small stirling engines are very mechanically simple (some are complex), and some will run on very small temperature gradients:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxlRZd65RXQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYKED36lfko

The "free piston" and Ringbom stirling engines will run in a cool room on the heat of a person's palm or a cup of coffee. They will also run, in a warm room, on an ice cube. They are heavier and more complex than a thermocouple, but a good engineer and machinist could probably make one, with an electric generator, about the size of a puck-style soda-can alcohol stove. From the steep temperature gradient produced by a wood stove, a small stirling engine could produce three or four times the energy obtained from currently available Peltier thermocouples.

Colin
Please let us know when there is a product that uses the stirling engine to heat a a meal and charge an ipod.
Franco