Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Wood Stove Turbocharger

Everything's better with boost.
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The internal combustion engine in a car may be fitted with a turbocharger. This is a relatively simple device in concept: the exhaust gasses power the rotation of a turbine, this turbine is linked to a compressor which forces air into the engine at above the ambient pressure. This can make a small engine have the output of a much larger one. The role of the internal combustion engine in this scenario is to simply provide the conditions for combustion and to extract the energy in mechanical form.

A simplification of this concept is the jet engine, no chains, cranks cams etc. Just compressor, fire, turbine. Turbine powers compressor, compressor feeds fire, fire powers turbine on and on until you run out of fuel or materials science.

Why not turbocharge the humble camp stove? I propose something similar to the rocket-mass heaters <link>. Place the turbine on the chimney, run the compressor into the air inlet and seal everything up tight inbetweeen adding fuel. We can include an intercooler (providing heat for the tent etc.) and other features like a manual blow-off valve to prevent runaway boost blowing the whole thing up.

The turbine will of course get quickly gummed up with wood combustion products like creosotes, but this isn't a problem in the enthusiast market. The target market is largely Scandinavian motorsport fans who seem to enjoy wood, alcohol, fires, turbochargers and alcohol, so they can drink beer while tending the turbo stove waiting for the next sideways car to slide into their nearest ditch.

bs0u0155, Dec 20 2021

Rocket Mass Heater https://en.wikipedi.../Rocket_mass_heater
[bs0u0155, Dec 20 2021]

BioLite Stove 2 https://www.biolite...ts/campstove-2-plus
Fire powers the fan, which helps the fire, and extra juice goes to a USB charger [sophocles, Dec 21 2021]

It turns out this works extraordinarily well https://www.youtube...watch?v=ByuCdCo9-XI
[bs0u0155, Apr 06 2023]

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       it seems your link has combusted itself!?
xandram, Dec 20 2021
  

       oops. Fixed.
bs0u0155, Dec 20 2021
  

       I like it.
doctorremulac3, Dec 20 2021
  

       Nice idea.   

       You can actually get something quiet similar today (see the Biolite link.)   

       The fire provides energy that's captured by a thermoelectric device, that then powers an electric fan. Excess energy trickles to a USB port which can charge phones.   

       I got a BioLite stove >5 years ago, and it still works, still creates a hot little fire from a few sticks, burns quite clean (very little ash or smoke) and charges a phone (slowly).
sophocles, Dec 21 2021
  

       Your wood would burn up more quickly, instead of lasting longer. You might get more heat, but at the cost of longevity.
sanman, Dec 24 2021
  

       Add a generator to the shaft to extract power: kind of like a gas turbine generator, but wood powered.
scad mientist, Dec 25 2021
  

       Power take off from turbochargers does exist. They currently do it in F1, but it's fiendishly difficult... which is why they're dropping it from F1. Turbos spin VERY fast and operate at extreme temperatures. I suspect the way to go would be to have magnetic tips on the intake compressor wheel and have generator coils on the housing. Hopefully you can use the intake air to keep the temps below the Curie limit.
bs0u0155, Dec 27 2021
  

       When I was at Ricardo we would get all sorts of half-baked engine inventions thrown at us from various sources. I recall one proposal that wanted to use the turbos to turn the accessory drive. We never pursued it due to reasons of practical physics.
RayfordSteele, Dec 27 2021
  

       //I recall one proposal that wanted to use the turbos to turn the accessory drive. We never pursued it due to reasons of practical physics.//   

       I mean, if you go the full F1 route, you can get a lot of function out of putting a generator on the turbo shaft. You can use excess exhaust energy to generate electrical power. If you're in the business of doing that, you may as well make the generator a BLDC motor, and then you can spin up the turbo. But if it's being dropped from F1, then that means it is staggeringly expensive/difficult or useless.   

       I'll bet it's related to the RPM & temperature. You can't spin at turbo speeds without significant eddy current losses (&heat), so you gear it, and get gearing losses (&heat), or you make a large, low RPM turbo and get losses there (& heat, probably). Then you have to try and keep the motor/generator cool a few mm from an exhaust manifold.   

       In a car it makes less sense, super expensive and it doesn't work at low RPM. It may be workable in aviation, but probably not, because they don't like new things. The best application is likely long-distance trucks - lots of constant RPM work, fuel cost a real factor.   

       All this is predicated on turbos extracting "free" energy, which was received wisdom even among the educated for years. Absolutely not true of course. The only thing you get "free" with a turbo is the fact that it acts as a partial muffler for both the intake and exhaust.   

       If you want more efficiency out of the accessory drive, probably a good idea to manipulate the alternator field strength based on engine load - do your generating on braking/overrun and during the more efficient parts of the engines BMFC map. Complex, but it's mostly just code & a new output for the ECU.
bs0u0155, Dec 27 2021
  

       Now accomplished by the perhaps inevitably Australian, "Bobby McBoost" <link>
bs0u0155, Apr 07 2023
  


 

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