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Biolite: Wood-burning backpacking stove also provides USB power

43 points by dctoedt 12y ago

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Cool, I'd buy one. But the 'green' argument doesn't hold water? Doesn't matter what you burn; its all carbon.
- JshWright 12y ago
  Plant a couple trees and over the next decade you'll sink more carbon than you'll ever release with this thing (not considering the carbon emitted when the thing was built and shipped to you...)
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Apples/oranges. Compare burning regular stove fuel vs sticks. Same btu - same carbon footprint.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - hollerith 12y ago
      When we get our fuel from trees, we've created space for new trees to grow. In contrast, when our fuel is coal, gas or oil, eventually we run of of places to plant trees (or we run out of the whatever is the scarcest nutrient for the trees). This is the basis for the claim that burning trees is friendlier to the environment than burning fossil fuels is. I am NOT pushing the claim, just pointing out that you have not yet successfully refuted the claim.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Ok, continue the chase through cause and effect. That stove consumes many precious and rare components (thermocouples, conductors, computer chips!) Its manufacture totally blows any comforting thoughts about carbon footprint savings. "Green" arguments like this product are marketing and 1st-world-consumer foolishness. Build a campfire and cook in an iron pot - that might save some carbon. This thing? No.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        stcredzero 12y ago
        The problem with arguments like this, is that it only takes into account costs for today's industrial infrastructure. If everyone thought like this, there would be less innovation. (No domestic solar panels, for one thing.) That said, there are probably smaller carbon footprint items that will accomplish the same thing. Bulk D Cells, some D-cell holders and a USB charger would be what I'd use for extended emergency preparedness.
      - dublinben 12y ago
        Most serious backpackers use alcohol stoves, which burn a renewable fuel that's more efficient than wood.
        sitkack 12y ago
        Most serious backpackers aren't concerned with nursing portable electronics with a low efficiency TEC. People who actually need to use electronics in remote locations bring a LiPo battery and a solar charger.
        personZ 12y ago
        You seem really passionately against this. This is a camp stove. You cook things on it. It has a fan to provide a very efficient, very clean burn. It happens to have a charger on it as a side effect of being a fan driven burner. I guarantee that "getting power for free while cooking breakfast" is dramatically more efficient than a solar panel. Add that hiking I'm going to cook multiple times. Number of times I'm in open sunlight, at a fixed location for a period of time -- approximately zero. Not sure what you have against this, but it seems to be founded in the notion that you think this is a wood-powered USB charger, when it's a camp stove that also provides USB charging.
        Turing_Machine 12y ago
        Wood is free and available on the trail. You have to buy (and carry!) alcohol.
        dublinben 12y ago
        You could buy a lifetime supply of alcohol for the price of this stove, and carry a month's worth of it for the weight of this stove. This is a gimmick for people who can't go camping without their electronic gadgets. It's a bad stove and a bad charger put together.
        Turing_Machine 12y ago
        This stove weighs 33 ounces. The Trangia backpacking alcohol stove sold by REI weighs 5.75 ounces. 1 quart of denatured ethanol weighs about 28 ounces (varies slightly depending on denaturant, but not by much). 28 + 5.75 = 33.75 > 33. Next.
    - hyperbovine 12y ago
      What are you talking about? I have a solo stove (same idea but without the USB gimmick). These things burn twigs that you find the the forest floor. An entirely carbon neutral and renewable resource. They are the total opposite of burning fossil fuels, that is why we use them.
      - sitkack 12y ago
        Right, putting that carbon back into the atmosphere instead on the forest floor where it started is carbon neutral. Just because it is "part o the carbon cycle" doesn't make it neutral.
        Turing_Machine 12y ago
        The forest floor decomposes and releases just as much CO2 as burning it would.
        sitkack 12y ago
        This is a ridiculous statement.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Actually it was a correct statement. Decomposition is a sort of 'slow burn'.
        KC8ZKF 12y ago
        Yes it does. Learn and read about photosynthesis. Plants get carbon from the atmosphere.
    - KC8ZKF 12y ago
      What happens to the wood you don't burn? It decomposes letting CO2 into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels release carbon captured millions of years ago, over millions of years, in a very short time. That's the difference.
- byerley 12y ago
  Wood is worse than other fuels by most accounts, but I guess if you were planning to build a fire for warmth anyway it's not so bad. Thermoelectric generators are something like 200yrs old though and this isn't even the first hiking oriented variant (http://www.powerpractical.com/ http://www.powerpractical.com/ - not obvious on the front page, but it also works fine with a wood fire). Historically I think hikers considered this a non-issue because of better battery life and/or keeping your phone off except in emergencies. It's a little ironic that people are staying tied to their smart-phone even during long camping trips. These really aren't good for much else because they only keep a good heat difference for a short time and have to be used with a battery.
  - personZ 12y ago
    Wood is worse than other fuels by most accounts Wood is carbon neutral (trees are, of course, very efficient solar energy plants), and backpackers burning scrub branches are not diminishing nature. Further the fan leads to an extremely clean burn, which was the original intention of these various designs. Quite a few people throughout this thread seem to be under the assumption that the intention of this device is purely as a charger. It is instead a camp stove that incidentally can charge as a side effect of having a powered fan. Instead of a propane stove or the like, the idea is that this makes it easy to use small branches to cook breakfast or whatever. The biggest criticism I've heard of this device is that it's a pain and highly inconvenient to constantly feed it twigs when you try to heat anything of consequence (e.g. pot of water).
    - byerley 12y ago
      I don't know where you're getting that information. Burning wood produces significantly more CO2 than coal or oil regardless of your air flow; not to mention CO, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides. If you've ever had the displeasure of being within a few miles of a forest fire, it's really rough on the lungs. You can argue that by growing the tree specifically to burn and then being careful how you harvest it, the wood burning ends up being carbon neutral. That's obviously not the case here, and it doesn't scale in general.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  On the contrary. Burning (current) biomass is essentially carbon neutral. It's burning fossil fuel that causes the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere to increase.
- DanBC 12y ago
  They're also talking about stuff other than CO2. Burning hotter means better combustion and more efficient use of fuel. There are less particulates released. Having said that, I tend to agree with you that this is green-wash and the stove is using a gimmick as a sales feature.
K2h 12y ago
This has looked cool, ever since I saw it announced, a peltier in a stove - how awesome! i just can bring myself to pony up the cash as I fear it would fall short of my expectations. kind of like this real world test. http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/adventure-tested-biolite-campstove-review-1601840438 http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/adventure-tested-biolite...
- nwh 12y ago
  Just to nitpick: it's using the seebeck effect not the peltier effect, they're the reverse of one another.
  - K2h 12y ago
    good point, should have said TE or thermoelectric, i just learned of the device as a peltier junction even though it has 3 different names depending on the mode. at work we call it a TEC based on how we use it, but the best most generic name is TE.
mmgutz 12y ago
Green? Solar is much easier to charge your USB devices. I attach one to the top of my backpack. Seems pretty expensive for a wood burner.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  I'd prefer a charger than can run overnight or in cloudy weather.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    You have to constantly feed this thing fuel in order to 'charge' anything. It's an overpriced, overweight gimmick. You'd be better off bringing a stack of extra batteries than this poor excuse for a stove/charger.
SamWhited 12y ago
I'm currently on the Appalachian Trail and have seen a few of these... They're neat, but dont work very well. Maybe for a weekend trip. Not for serious distance hikers.
- mattgrice 12y ago
  For a few days, you can just bring a battery. They are much cheaper and more convenient. It is an interesting novelty, but it is just so heavy, bulky, and slow that I am having trouble understanding who this would work for.
  - swalberg 12y ago
    I could see this being handy on larger group camps. I'm a Scout leader and for a weekend camp will take a battery pack that will keep all our leader's phones charged for the weekend, but if it were any longer or wanted to give the neighbouring camps a charge, would need something solar or fuelled. From what I've seen of the solar stuff out there, most can't keep up with constant charging.
    - mattgrice 12y ago
      All the reviews I have seen seem to agree that it takes around 4 hours to for the BioLite fully charge an iPhone. For the same amount of weight you could carry 3 Anker 12,000 mAh batteries, which I believe would provide on the order of 15 charges, at a cost of $150. Unless you have scouts tending the BioLite constantly, I think it is definitely not a solution for groups.
      - thret 12y ago
        Fortunately scout labour is free :)
      - hrjet 12y ago
        But can the batteries cook your dinner?
aiaf 12y ago
Neat gizmo. But seems you have to be constantly worrying about the power module: - Adjust the unit's placement so flames don't melt the power module - Make sure it doesn't overheat - Re-charge it when not in constant use Also I can see myself burning my hands trying to wiggle USB plugs in. Could've used more work in the product design department.
cstross 12y ago
We've got one. My wife's used it on a weekend camping trip; I haven't had the opportunity so far, so this is her second-hand report ... It works as described. However, you need to charge the power module before the first time you use it! The Biolite stove relies on fan assistance, so if there's no juice the stove won't work. Once it's working, it works fine and charges the power module (via the built-in thermocouple). The stove is designed to fold down and fit inside the optional kettle, so what superficially looks like a bulky kit is rather less so in practice. However, the stove+kettle combination weighs about 1.1Kg. There are lighter camp stoves out there (until you start adding in gas cylinders). The optional grill doesn't seem to fold down/store concentrically with anything, so it adds bulk while costing rather more than rival cheap camping grils.
- sitkack 12y ago
  That sounds like a huge design flaw. It should have a hand crank to start moving air over the TEC so it can create enough power to run the fan motor. It seems kinda wrong to be out in nature, burning wood to charge a device. Why is this better than a small solar panel? A panel wouldn't have the fire danger, could be left out all day and charge its own batteries. Also, the efficiency of a TEC is really low, lower than solar panels by a pretty large margin.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Solar panels require sunlight of sufficient strength, something you can't rely on.
  - mtabini 12y ago
    I reviewed one of these a couple years ago for Macworld, and ended up buying one to take on my camping trips. You don't actually need to charge the power unit in order to use the stove; even if you start with a completely run-down battery, the unit will eventually generate enough electricity to start the fan and achieve maximum efficiency. Also, it's always seemed to me that the Biolite is designed primarily as a reasonably efficient biomass stove—a role that, in my experience, it fulfills really well, even with wet wood. I've cooked plenty of meals on it, and it's much more convenient to carry around than a propane or white gas stove (as a bonus, you also don't walk around with explosives in your backpack). The ability to charge devices is a happy byproduct. It's handy when you're cooking up some food and want to power up your phone or GPS receiver. It's probably not as efficient as a solar charges but (a) a solar charger won't cook food, so the Biolite is a convenient multitasker that requires less backpack room, and (b) the solar charger doesn't work at night, when it's cloudy, and so forth. EDIT: FWIW, I also have a PowerPot, which is mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It's pretty cool, and works well; it's also my preferred charging method when I am not cooking, since I can just fill it with water and leave it on the campfire for as long as I need (the Biolite, on the other hand, needs constant feeding of fuel to continue running).
ams6110 12y ago
Bringing phones on a camping trip seems to me like you're doing it wrong.
- yzzxy 12y ago
  Clearly you don't go camping long enough/far enough away from civilization/in dangerous enough areas to bear judgement on the practice as a whole.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I get pretty awful phone reception when I'm on the number 10 bus travelling between Cheltenham and Gloucester. A phone might provide some safety while camping - but it absolutely would not be part of the safety planning.
    - yzzxy 12y ago
      While it's true that a non satellite phone is never a good panic button, in my experience, [a] danger doesn't always correlate to distance from civilization. [b] cell reception can be astoundingly good in the mountains, probably because of clearer lines of sight.
- hrjet 12y ago
  Cameras can use batteries too. Moreover phones these days have inbuilt cameras. You could also use battery power for torch-lights and music players. Then there are things like GPS trackers, which can be useful after a trip to know where you had been.
fencepost 12y ago
Probably the more significant thing is that it's a self-powered forced-air rocket stove (part of the current generated drives a fan). The self-powering is interesting, but I'm not sure how much it adds or if the forced air just makes up for the energy taken out by the electronics. The rated output (2-4W @ 5V) seems impressive, but I'm not certain I buy it or at least I'd wonder just how much you need to be feeding the fire. I don't see any mention of a battery pack, but I think if I'm charging expensive and sensitive devices I'd rather charge batteries, then charge my devices with a more stable current. Adding your own battery is going to bump the already-considerable weight (> 2lbs). They do present a comparison to the "conventional alternative" of an alcohol stove + fuel + solar, but for some reason it seems designed to make the conventional alternative as unappealing as possible (44 oz & > $200 for a stove plus fuel for 2.5hrs of burn time!). Not included are options such as a simpler rocket stove (easy to make) or a SuperCat alcohol stove (cheap & REALLY easy to make) and options to make those more efficient (shrouds, etc. sized for your cookware). As for charging, there are actually some pretty impressive solar options designed for backpacking - they aren't on-demand like this, but many of them incorporate a battery system and could likely be used on a pack while hiking, so the battery pack is available when you stop, and you can use them in places where you don't really want a fire. I'd have to call this fashionable, but I'm not sure how practical it really is for most people. Edit: forgot to mention, the base unit for this is ~$130, and the kettle/carrying case adds another $50 and 1 lb to the whole thing.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
So there was a competitor to Biolite (PowerPot) on Shark Tank a couple of months ago, they claimed a patent filed in 2010[1] on the technology, Biolite filed in 2012 [2] Grepping around the patent database doesn't turn up anything for the Powerpot, or assigned to Power Practical, or invented by Dave Toledo so I'm at a loss to know where they are on that. That said, the tool, which requires boiling water only so that the correct temperature differential is maintained, seems a bit too specialized for back packing. It raises an interesting question on the weight budget for power though. I am guessing that a white gas fuel cell would be a much better answer from a practical point of view. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ5LAZJU2t0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ5LAZJU2t0 [2] http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Biolite.AS.&OS=AN/Biolite&RS=AN/Biolite http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...
gnicholas 12y ago
Does anyone know how these compare to FlameStower? Their tech looks pretty cool because you can use it with any heat source (campfire, camp stove, etc.), but I don't know how the efficiency stacks up against these standalone devices.
anon4 12y ago
Burning wood releases a lot of carcinogenic microparticles that enter your blood directly from your lungs and is even worse for you than smoking. I'd rather just carry some gas around and use solar power to charge my gadgets.
- pudquick 12y ago
  You're not the intended market. The people likely to be buying this are those who would have had a wood-based camping stove / sat around a campfire anyways.
thekevan 12y ago
This gets posted here and there every couple months. Each time someone talks about how it charges things well enough but you do have to keep an eye on the fire and feed it rather constantly, plus it's heavy. However it seems that few people ever acknowledge that you basically have an at-will generator that you can carry in a pocket--albeit as long as it's a big pocket. So theoretically if you have this and a GPS unit, it's almost impossible to get lost, no matter how long you are out in the wild. It may seem a bit bulky and there are lighter and more efficient ways to cook on the trail, but for the right sort of traveler, this stove is also bundled with some potentially life saving abilities.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I'm not terribly adventurous in real life, but I think if you are planning on getting that lost a GPS probably isn't the right sort of fallback (I'm thinking a waterproof map and a good understanding of how to get un-lost in the region you are in...).
  - drakeandrews 12y ago
    You ideally need both. A good GPS to tell you where you are, and a good map (and the sense and skill to read it) to tell you how to get somewhere else. My father once said a GPS is just a device to remind you how lost you are.
    - cuu508 12y ago
      In 2008 some friends and I went on adventurous trip through Russia and Kazakhstan. Some of it was through steppe with rough roads/tracks/drivable surfaces that are not on the maps. They were visible on satellite imagery though. Our navigation "solution" was a laptop and Garmin GPS attached via USB. Laptop would be powered from car battery with power converter. For software, we were going to use OziExplorer, which could display raster maps, and show current GPS location on them. Ozi maps are simply big raster images and there is limit of how big they can be. Before the trip I found a tool that can scrape Google Maps satellite imagery and generate Ozi-compatible maps. So I ran it on the parts of Russia and Kazakhstan we expected to visit and got many gigabytes of cached satellite imagery. During the trip as we moved along, I would use the tool to generate Ozi map for next area we were visiting. I got pretty handy at doing latitude and longitude bounding box calculations "in head" :-) To give idea of working conditions: http://i.imgur.com/0k7AEE5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0k7AEE5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/X01vuNZ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/X01vuNZ.jpg There were various "oh shit" moments along the trip, one of which was when the power converter stopped working (and laptop's battery was empty because its charging circuit got fried earlier, guess because of the unstable power or overheating). GPS was still running on its internal battery so we did know our latitude and longitude and bearing. But our paper maps were not much use. The population density in steppe was so low, we could just drive until we'd run out of gas and water, and not meet anybody. I think we were shorter on water, as we had to use some of it to top up leaky radiators. Anyway, all ended well when our mechanic-guy found and fixed a simple wiring issue with the power converter, and we got the laptop back on! So yes, you need GPS and maps.
DanBC 12y ago
This youtube channel has some homemade tin can stoves. They are light and efficient and would allow the camper space to carry alternative chargers. https://youtube.com/user/tetkoba https://youtube.com/user/tetkoba I'm more interested in these designs.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Battery free wood burners seem to work well enough too: http://www.silverfire.us/scout-backpack-bug-out-stove http://www.silverfire.us/scout-backpack-bug-out-stove (No idea about that one in particular, just the first one I found when I went looking)
zackmorris 12y ago
Since it’s Sunday and I love guestimation: To put this in perspective compared to the new 1.2 V, 3500 mAh NiMH batteries (available for ~$1 each on eBay), let’s say we need 5 of them to go from 6 V to 5 V as they discharge. That’s a total of 17500 mAh (17.5 Ah). 5 V at 4 W is a current of 0.8 A by P = IV, so the batteries could run for just under 17.5/0.8 = 22 hours (slightly longer, since V > 5 which means I < 0.8). They don’t say how much thermal wattage the stove puts out, but 1000 W electric camp stoves are readily available so I will go with that. 2-4 W of electric power translates to about 2-4% thermocouple efficiency which is pretty good. I think perhaps in the near future we’ll see some innovations in heat engines like Stirlings which easily reach 50% of Carnot efficiency. They have a reputation for low power to size ratios, but that’s due to lack of compression (easily remedied if anyone, well, tried): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs The Carnot formula is: Carnot efficiency = (T high - T low)/(T high) So to boil water at 212 F (100 C or 373 K) at an ambient temperature of 72 F (22 C or 295 K): Carnot efficiency = (373 - 295)/(373) ~= 21% So a Stirling engine would achieve 10.5% at the heating surface, or about 2.6 times better than a thermocouple. However, if we put the Stirling engine within the flame with modern ceramics and, say, graphite lubricant which can go to 842 F (450 C or 723 K), we could run at say 500 F (260 C or 533 K): Carnot efficiency = (533 - 295)/(533) ~= 45% So a Stirling engine would achieve 22.5% in the flame, or about 5.6 times better than a thermocouple. Of course then you are dealing with moving parts and it would probably be unreliable. But the whole engine could be made airtight with the generator enclosed inside, so it might be possible to build one with a service interval of tens of thousands of hours or more. Also I’m probably being too conservative on Stirling engine efficiency and too optimistic about thermocouple efficiency, so a Stirling engine is probably more like 5 to 10 times more efficient than a thermocouple. I’ve often wondered if it’s possible to build a solid state device that raises the frequency of infrared radiation to the visible range so that it could be converted to electricity by a high efficiency photovoltaic cell. It can’t be done by concentration alone because the laws of thermodynamics state that concentrators can’t reach a temperature hotter than the source (5300 C for the surface of the sun), although using multiple cells optimized for specific frequency ranges seems promising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Effic... I see that as perhaps one of the great engineering challenges of our time, because low temperature gradient free energy is all around us (orders of magnitude more than we could ever use) but we have no way to gather and concentrate it cheaply. So far this is the most promising method I’ve found for visible light: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescent_solar_concentrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescent_solar_concentrator

43 points by dctoedt 12y ago

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

Cool, I'd buy one. But the 'green' argument doesn't hold water? Doesn't matter what you burn; its all carbon.

JshWright 12y ago
Plant a couple trees and over the next decade you'll sink more carbon than you'll ever release with this thing (not considering the carbon emitted when the thing was built and shipped to you...)
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Apples/oranges. Compare burning regular stove fuel vs sticks. Same btu - same carbon footprint.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - hollerith 12y ago
    When we get our fuel from trees, we've created space for new trees to grow. In contrast, when our fuel is coal, gas or oil, eventually we run of of places to plant trees (or we run out of the whatever is the scarcest nutrient for the trees). This is the basis for the claim that burning trees is friendlier to the environment than burning fossil fuels is. I am NOT pushing the claim, just pointing out that you have not yet successfully refuted the claim.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Ok, continue the chase through cause and effect. That stove consumes many precious and rare components (thermocouples, conductors, computer chips!) Its manufacture totally blows any comforting thoughts about carbon footprint savings. "Green" arguments like this product are marketing and 1st-world-consumer foolishness. Build a campfire and cook in an iron pot - that might save some carbon. This thing? No.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - stcredzero 12y ago
        The problem with arguments like this, is that it only takes into account costs for today's industrial infrastructure. If everyone thought like this, there would be less innovation. (No domestic solar panels, for one thing.) That said, there are probably smaller carbon footprint items that will accomplish the same thing. Bulk D Cells, some D-cell holders and a USB charger would be what I'd use for extended emergency preparedness.
    - dublinben 12y ago
      Most serious backpackers use alcohol stoves, which burn a renewable fuel that's more efficient than wood.
      - sitkack 12y ago
        Most serious backpackers aren't concerned with nursing portable electronics with a low efficiency TEC. People who actually need to use electronics in remote locations bring a LiPo battery and a solar charger.
        personZ 12y ago
        You seem really passionately against this. This is a camp stove. You cook things on it. It has a fan to provide a very efficient, very clean burn. It happens to have a charger on it as a side effect of being a fan driven burner. I guarantee that "getting power for free while cooking breakfast" is dramatically more efficient than a solar panel. Add that hiking I'm going to cook multiple times. Number of times I'm in open sunlight, at a fixed location for a period of time -- approximately zero. Not sure what you have against this, but it seems to be founded in the notion that you think this is a wood-powered USB charger, when it's a camp stove that also provides USB charging.
      - Turing_Machine 12y ago
        Wood is free and available on the trail. You have to buy (and carry!) alcohol.
        dublinben 12y ago
        You could buy a lifetime supply of alcohol for the price of this stove, and carry a month's worth of it for the weight of this stove. This is a gimmick for people who can't go camping without their electronic gadgets. It's a bad stove and a bad charger put together.
        Turing_Machine 12y ago
        This stove weighs 33 ounces. The Trangia backpacking alcohol stove sold by REI weighs 5.75 ounces. 1 quart of denatured ethanol weighs about 28 ounces (varies slightly depending on denaturant, but not by much). 28 + 5.75 = 33.75 > 33. Next.
  - hyperbovine 12y ago
    What are you talking about? I have a solo stove (same idea but without the USB gimmick). These things burn twigs that you find the the forest floor. An entirely carbon neutral and renewable resource. They are the total opposite of burning fossil fuels, that is why we use them.
    - sitkack 12y ago
      Right, putting that carbon back into the atmosphere instead on the forest floor where it started is carbon neutral. Just because it is "part o the carbon cycle" doesn't make it neutral.
      - Turing_Machine 12y ago
        The forest floor decomposes and releases just as much CO2 as burning it would.
        sitkack 12y ago
        This is a ridiculous statement.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Actually it was a correct statement. Decomposition is a sort of 'slow burn'.
      - KC8ZKF 12y ago
        Yes it does. Learn and read about photosynthesis. Plants get carbon from the atmosphere.
  - KC8ZKF 12y ago
    What happens to the wood you don't burn? It decomposes letting CO2 into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels release carbon captured millions of years ago, over millions of years, in a very short time. That's the difference.
byerley 12y ago
Wood is worse than other fuels by most accounts, but I guess if you were planning to build a fire for warmth anyway it's not so bad. Thermoelectric generators are something like 200yrs old though and this isn't even the first hiking oriented variant (http://www.powerpractical.com/ http://www.powerpractical.com/ - not obvious on the front page, but it also works fine with a wood fire). Historically I think hikers considered this a non-issue because of better battery life and/or keeping your phone off except in emergencies. It's a little ironic that people are staying tied to their smart-phone even during long camping trips. These really aren't good for much else because they only keep a good heat difference for a short time and have to be used with a battery.
- personZ 12y ago
  Wood is worse than other fuels by most accounts Wood is carbon neutral (trees are, of course, very efficient solar energy plants), and backpackers burning scrub branches are not diminishing nature. Further the fan leads to an extremely clean burn, which was the original intention of these various designs. Quite a few people throughout this thread seem to be under the assumption that the intention of this device is purely as a charger. It is instead a camp stove that incidentally can charge as a side effect of having a powered fan. Instead of a propane stove or the like, the idea is that this makes it easy to use small branches to cook breakfast or whatever. The biggest criticism I've heard of this device is that it's a pain and highly inconvenient to constantly feed it twigs when you try to heat anything of consequence (e.g. pot of water).
  - byerley 12y ago
    I don't know where you're getting that information. Burning wood produces significantly more CO2 than coal or oil regardless of your air flow; not to mention CO, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides. If you've ever had the displeasure of being within a few miles of a forest fire, it's really rough on the lungs. You can argue that by growing the tree specifically to burn and then being careful how you harvest it, the wood burning ends up being carbon neutral. That's obviously not the case here, and it doesn't scale in general.
Turing_Machine 12y ago
On the contrary. Burning (current) biomass is essentially carbon neutral. It's burning fossil fuel that causes the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere to increase.
DanBC 12y ago
They're also talking about stuff other than CO2. Burning hotter means better combustion and more efficient use of fuel. There are less particulates released. Having said that, I tend to agree with you that this is green-wash and the stove is using a gimmick as a sales feature.

K2h 12y ago

This has looked cool, ever since I saw it announced, a peltier in a stove - how awesome! i just can bring myself to pony up the cash as I fear it would fall short of my expectations. kind of like this real world test. http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/adventure-tested-biolite-campstove-review-1601840438 http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/adventure-tested-biolite...

nwh 12y ago
Just to nitpick: it's using the seebeck effect not the peltier effect, they're the reverse of one another.
- K2h 12y ago
  good point, should have said TE or thermoelectric, i just learned of the device as a peltier junction even though it has 3 different names depending on the mode. at work we call it a TEC based on how we use it, but the best most generic name is TE.

mmgutz 12y ago

Green? Solar is much easier to charge your USB devices. I attach one to the top of my backpack. Seems pretty expensive for a wood burner.

joezydeco 12y ago
I'd prefer a charger than can run overnight or in cloudy weather.
- dublinben 12y ago
  You have to constantly feed this thing fuel in order to 'charge' anything. It's an overpriced, overweight gimmick. You'd be better off bringing a stack of extra batteries than this poor excuse for a stove/charger.

SamWhited 12y ago

I'm currently on the Appalachian Trail and have seen a few of these... They're neat, but dont work very well. Maybe for a weekend trip. Not for serious distance hikers.

mattgrice 12y ago
For a few days, you can just bring a battery. They are much cheaper and more convenient. It is an interesting novelty, but it is just so heavy, bulky, and slow that I am having trouble understanding who this would work for.
- swalberg 12y ago
  I could see this being handy on larger group camps. I'm a Scout leader and for a weekend camp will take a battery pack that will keep all our leader's phones charged for the weekend, but if it were any longer or wanted to give the neighbouring camps a charge, would need something solar or fuelled. From what I've seen of the solar stuff out there, most can't keep up with constant charging.
  - mattgrice 12y ago
    All the reviews I have seen seem to agree that it takes around 4 hours to for the BioLite fully charge an iPhone. For the same amount of weight you could carry 3 Anker 12,000 mAh batteries, which I believe would provide on the order of 15 charges, at a cost of $150. Unless you have scouts tending the BioLite constantly, I think it is definitely not a solution for groups.
    - thret 12y ago
      Fortunately scout labour is free :)
    - hrjet 12y ago
      But can the batteries cook your dinner?

aiaf 12y ago

Neat gizmo. But seems you have to be constantly worrying about the power module: - Adjust the unit's placement so flames don't melt the power module - Make sure it doesn't overheat - Re-charge it when not in constant use Also I can see myself burning my hands trying to wiggle USB plugs in. Could've used more work in the product design department.

cstross 12y ago

We've got one. My wife's used it on a weekend camping trip; I haven't had the opportunity so far, so this is her second-hand report ... It works as described. However, you need to charge the power module before the first time you use it! The Biolite stove relies on fan assistance, so if there's no juice the stove won't work. Once it's working, it works fine and charges the power module (via the built-in thermocouple). The stove is designed to fold down and fit inside the optional kettle, so what superficially looks like a bulky kit is rather less so in practice. However, the stove+kettle combination weighs about 1.1Kg. There are lighter camp stoves out there (until you start adding in gas cylinders). The optional grill doesn't seem to fold down/store concentrically with anything, so it adds bulk while costing rather more than rival cheap camping grils.

sitkack 12y ago
That sounds like a huge design flaw. It should have a hand crank to start moving air over the TEC so it can create enough power to run the fan motor. It seems kinda wrong to be out in nature, burning wood to charge a device. Why is this better than a small solar panel? A panel wouldn't have the fire danger, could be left out all day and charge its own batteries. Also, the efficiency of a TEC is really low, lower than solar panels by a pretty large margin.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Solar panels require sunlight of sufficient strength, something you can't rely on.
- mtabini 12y ago
  I reviewed one of these a couple years ago for Macworld, and ended up buying one to take on my camping trips. You don't actually need to charge the power unit in order to use the stove; even if you start with a completely run-down battery, the unit will eventually generate enough electricity to start the fan and achieve maximum efficiency. Also, it's always seemed to me that the Biolite is designed primarily as a reasonably efficient biomass stove—a role that, in my experience, it fulfills really well, even with wet wood. I've cooked plenty of meals on it, and it's much more convenient to carry around than a propane or white gas stove (as a bonus, you also don't walk around with explosives in your backpack). The ability to charge devices is a happy byproduct. It's handy when you're cooking up some food and want to power up your phone or GPS receiver. It's probably not as efficient as a solar charges but (a) a solar charger won't cook food, so the Biolite is a convenient multitasker that requires less backpack room, and (b) the solar charger doesn't work at night, when it's cloudy, and so forth. EDIT: FWIW, I also have a PowerPot, which is mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It's pretty cool, and works well; it's also my preferred charging method when I am not cooking, since I can just fill it with water and leave it on the campfire for as long as I need (the Biolite, on the other hand, needs constant feeding of fuel to continue running).

ams6110 12y ago

Bringing phones on a camping trip seems to me like you're doing it wrong.

yzzxy 12y ago
Clearly you don't go camping long enough/far enough away from civilization/in dangerous enough areas to bear judgement on the practice as a whole.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I get pretty awful phone reception when I'm on the number 10 bus travelling between Cheltenham and Gloucester. A phone might provide some safety while camping - but it absolutely would not be part of the safety planning.
  - yzzxy 12y ago
    While it's true that a non satellite phone is never a good panic button, in my experience, [a] danger doesn't always correlate to distance from civilization. [b] cell reception can be astoundingly good in the mountains, probably because of clearer lines of sight.
hrjet 12y ago
Cameras can use batteries too. Moreover phones these days have inbuilt cameras. You could also use battery power for torch-lights and music players. Then there are things like GPS trackers, which can be useful after a trip to know where you had been.

fencepost 12y ago

Probably the more significant thing is that it's a self-powered forced-air rocket stove (part of the current generated drives a fan). The self-powering is interesting, but I'm not sure how much it adds or if the forced air just makes up for the energy taken out by the electronics. The rated output (2-4W @ 5V) seems impressive, but I'm not certain I buy it or at least I'd wonder just how much you need to be feeding the fire. I don't see any mention of a battery pack, but I think if I'm charging expensive and sensitive devices I'd rather charge batteries, then charge my devices with a more stable current. Adding your own battery is going to bump the already-considerable weight (> 2lbs). They do present a comparison to the "conventional alternative" of an alcohol stove + fuel + solar, but for some reason it seems designed to make the conventional alternative as unappealing as possible (44 oz & > $200 for a stove plus fuel for 2.5hrs of burn time!). Not included are options such as a simpler rocket stove (easy to make) or a SuperCat alcohol stove (cheap & REALLY easy to make) and options to make those more efficient (shrouds, etc. sized for your cookware). As for charging, there are actually some pretty impressive solar options designed for backpacking - they aren't on-demand like this, but many of them incorporate a battery system and could likely be used on a pack while hiking, so the battery pack is available when you stop, and you can use them in places where you don't really want a fire. I'd have to call this fashionable, but I'm not sure how practical it really is for most people. Edit: forgot to mention, the base unit for this is ~$130, and the kettle/carrying case adds another $50 and 1 lb to the whole thing.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

So there was a competitor to Biolite (PowerPot) on Shark Tank a couple of months ago, they claimed a patent filed in 2010[1] on the technology, Biolite filed in 2012 [2] Grepping around the patent database doesn't turn up anything for the Powerpot, or assigned to Power Practical, or invented by Dave Toledo so I'm at a loss to know where they are on that. That said, the tool, which requires boiling water only so that the correct temperature differential is maintained, seems a bit too specialized for back packing. It raises an interesting question on the weight budget for power though. I am guessing that a white gas fuel cell would be a much better answer from a practical point of view. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ5LAZJU2t0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ5LAZJU2t0 [2] http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Biolite.AS.&OS=AN/Biolite&RS=AN/Biolite http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...

gnicholas 12y ago

Does anyone know how these compare to FlameStower? Their tech looks pretty cool because you can use it with any heat source (campfire, camp stove, etc.), but I don't know how the efficiency stacks up against these standalone devices.

anon4 12y ago

Burning wood releases a lot of carcinogenic microparticles that enter your blood directly from your lungs and is even worse for you than smoking. I'd rather just carry some gas around and use solar power to charge my gadgets.

pudquick 12y ago
You're not the intended market. The people likely to be buying this are those who would have had a wood-based camping stove / sat around a campfire anyways.

thekevan 12y ago

This gets posted here and there every couple months. Each time someone talks about how it charges things well enough but you do have to keep an eye on the fire and feed it rather constantly, plus it's heavy. However it seems that few people ever acknowledge that you basically have an at-will generator that you can carry in a pocket--albeit as long as it's a big pocket. So theoretically if you have this and a GPS unit, it's almost impossible to get lost, no matter how long you are out in the wild. It may seem a bit bulky and there are lighter and more efficient ways to cook on the trail, but for the right sort of traveler, this stove is also bundled with some potentially life saving abilities.

maxerickson 12y ago
I'm not terribly adventurous in real life, but I think if you are planning on getting that lost a GPS probably isn't the right sort of fallback (I'm thinking a waterproof map and a good understanding of how to get un-lost in the region you are in...).
- drakeandrews 12y ago
  You ideally need both. A good GPS to tell you where you are, and a good map (and the sense and skill to read it) to tell you how to get somewhere else. My father once said a GPS is just a device to remind you how lost you are.
  - cuu508 12y ago
    In 2008 some friends and I went on adventurous trip through Russia and Kazakhstan. Some of it was through steppe with rough roads/tracks/drivable surfaces that are not on the maps. They were visible on satellite imagery though. Our navigation "solution" was a laptop and Garmin GPS attached via USB. Laptop would be powered from car battery with power converter. For software, we were going to use OziExplorer, which could display raster maps, and show current GPS location on them. Ozi maps are simply big raster images and there is limit of how big they can be. Before the trip I found a tool that can scrape Google Maps satellite imagery and generate Ozi-compatible maps. So I ran it on the parts of Russia and Kazakhstan we expected to visit and got many gigabytes of cached satellite imagery. During the trip as we moved along, I would use the tool to generate Ozi map for next area we were visiting. I got pretty handy at doing latitude and longitude bounding box calculations "in head" :-) To give idea of working conditions: http://i.imgur.com/0k7AEE5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0k7AEE5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/X01vuNZ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/X01vuNZ.jpg There were various "oh shit" moments along the trip, one of which was when the power converter stopped working (and laptop's battery was empty because its charging circuit got fried earlier, guess because of the unstable power or overheating). GPS was still running on its internal battery so we did know our latitude and longitude and bearing. But our paper maps were not much use. The population density in steppe was so low, we could just drive until we'd run out of gas and water, and not meet anybody. I think we were shorter on water, as we had to use some of it to top up leaky radiators. Anyway, all ended well when our mechanic-guy found and fixed a simple wiring issue with the power converter, and we got the laptop back on! So yes, you need GPS and maps.

DanBC 12y ago

This youtube channel has some homemade tin can stoves. They are light and efficient and would allow the camper space to carry alternative chargers. https://youtube.com/user/tetkoba https://youtube.com/user/tetkoba I'm more interested in these designs.

maxerickson 12y ago
Battery free wood burners seem to work well enough too: http://www.silverfire.us/scout-backpack-bug-out-stove http://www.silverfire.us/scout-backpack-bug-out-stove (No idea about that one in particular, just the first one I found when I went looking)

zackmorris 12y ago

Since it’s Sunday and I love guestimation: To put this in perspective compared to the new 1.2 V, 3500 mAh NiMH batteries (available for ~$1 each on eBay), let’s say we need 5 of them to go from 6 V to 5 V as they discharge. That’s a total of 17500 mAh (17.5 Ah). 5 V at 4 W is a current of 0.8 A by P = IV, so the batteries could run for just under 17.5/0.8 = 22 hours (slightly longer, since V > 5 which means I < 0.8). They don’t say how much thermal wattage the stove puts out, but 1000 W electric camp stoves are readily available so I will go with that. 2-4 W of electric power translates to about 2-4% thermocouple efficiency which is pretty good. I think perhaps in the near future we’ll see some innovations in heat engines like Stirlings which easily reach 50% of Carnot efficiency. They have a reputation for low power to size ratios, but that’s due to lack of compression (easily remedied if anyone, well, tried): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs The Carnot formula is: Carnot efficiency = (T high - T low)/(T high) So to boil water at 212 F (100 C or 373 K) at an ambient temperature of 72 F (22 C or 295 K): Carnot efficiency = (373 - 295)/(373) ~= 21% So a Stirling engine would achieve 10.5% at the heating surface, or about 2.6 times better than a thermocouple. However, if we put the Stirling engine within the flame with modern ceramics and, say, graphite lubricant which can go to 842 F (450 C or 723 K), we could run at say 500 F (260 C or 533 K): Carnot efficiency = (533 - 295)/(533) ~= 45% So a Stirling engine would achieve 22.5% in the flame, or about 5.6 times better than a thermocouple. Of course then you are dealing with moving parts and it would probably be unreliable. But the whole engine could be made airtight with the generator enclosed inside, so it might be possible to build one with a service interval of tens of thousands of hours or more. Also I’m probably being too conservative on Stirling engine efficiency and too optimistic about thermocouple efficiency, so a Stirling engine is probably more like 5 to 10 times more efficient than a thermocouple. I’ve often wondered if it’s possible to build a solid state device that raises the frequency of infrared radiation to the visible range so that it could be converted to electricity by a high efficiency photovoltaic cell. It can’t be done by concentration alone because the laws of thermodynamics state that concentrators can’t reach a temperature hotter than the source (5300 C for the surface of the sun), although using multiple cells optimized for specific frequency ranges seems promising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Effic... I see that as perhaps one of the great engineering challenges of our time, because low temperature gradient free energy is all around us (orders of magnitude more than we could ever use) but we have no way to gather and concentrate it cheaply. So far this is the most promising method I’ve found for visible light: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescent_solar_concentrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescent_solar_concentrator