EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Power/Renewable Energy/EV's => Topic started by: peteb2 on July 30, 2017, 08:48:36 am
-
Ok just shooting this past everyone but anyone heard of these? I have a mate who has everything and come gift time he's next to impossible to buy something for because he'll already have it. Although this unit is available in NZ at the pristine end of $220 Kiwi Dollars i was just wonder how does the unit really work?
You apparently burn little chips of wood in it to cook on but attached to the body is some 'magic' and a fan that can in-turn charge a mobile phone from the USB socket....
I'm thinking Peltier device or the air draft as the woodchips draw in air that spins a fan and therefore a very low compliance (easy to rotate) generator?
Apologies if this unit has already been torn to bits here... i did a search and found no reference to it....
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1382110895 (http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1382110895)
-
It does more or less what it says on the label. There's nothing revolutionary about it. For example, there's this IEEE paper: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7165445/ (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7165445/)
An online search for "thermoelectric generator" will bring plenty of hits.
It's quite an old idea, for example TEGs were used in Russia back in the 50s, with TEG modules mounted on the "chimney" of a kerosene lamp to run a valve radio. Search for "kerosene thermoelectric lamp."
-
The biolite stove is amazing. Ended up getting one myself and yes, it works awesome as a charger. I can litterally turn pinecones and sticks into usable electricity. Did some real quick digging around and landed upon a review that does a pretty good job of explaining how it works.
http://thesurvivaljournal.com/biolite-campstove-review/
This is probably one of the coolest things I've bought to be honest.
Sent from my Z981 using Tapatalk
-
I got one of the first Biolite stoves from their initial crowdfund. It works great for efficient cooking with small pieces of wood - it's essentially a rocket stove. It works well to charge small low amp devices like phones as long as you keep feeding it wood.
I also have their larger basecamp stove which also works well.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCLqqYgwAU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCLqqYgwAU)
check this out!
-
AVE has just done a tear down of a biolite.
https://youtu.be/PYYw1cYS8o8
-
And he also posted a follow-up, once he figured out what he did wrong putting it back together :)
I was given one of these as a gift back when I was tinkering a lot with gasifying wood stoves. It seems to work pretty well, but I've only used mine a bit.