Alternate heat/power

[mcmahan]

Ok, my electric rate is easily 2.5 times that as the people who live outside theCity of Hermann. Why? Because they can. People finally quit complaining about it, because otherwise your ears AND your "behind" hurt.
I am constantly on the lookout for cheaper ways of doing....anything. So I started looking into Cornstoves. Yes, its a stove that burns corn to heat your home. They sell them through Orschelyn's and a handful of other dealers, but I want to build my own. Unfortunately, I can't find any information with details about how they work.

Can anyone help out???

[jerry]

Yes, its a stove that buns corn to heat your home.

How do you bun corn?

I would presume that you could use any fireplace type burner... they are likely talking about the corn husks... which are similar to paper or cardboard. They are mostly fibrous material that burns somewhat faster than wood.

Jerry

[WinfieldMike]

The stove my dad had in New Mexico burned wood pellets and/or corn. It was pretty complex....the fuel has to be fed into the chamber at a pretty exact rate to get complete combustion. As a result he only got about a cup of ash per month as waste. The trade-off is those kinds of stoves cost several thousand dollars.

I'm sure that if all you want to do is burn corn and make heat, something as simple as Winston's dad's setup with two 55 gallon drums would work. What do you think Winston?

Mike

[myblack60impala]

....buns corn.....

Dude I have no fricken clue how to BUNS corn.

But I do know that the only way to reduce this type of material is to inject the furnace with steam. Otherwise you'll have charcoal pellets which waste's space and limits heat production.

Over the years we've burned all kinds of things in our stoves. And aside of mummies, wood is the best offset for cost and heat produced.

[myblack60impala]

....maybe when you "buns corn" you claim to be a member of our robotics group, but only come around like once a year!!!

[mcmahan]

The stove my dad had in New Mexico burned wood pellets and/or corn. It was pretty complex....the fuel has to be fed into the chamber at a pretty exact rate to get complete combustion. As a result he only got about a cup of ash per month as waste. The trade-off is those kinds of stoves cost several thousand dollars.

I'm sure that if all you want to do is burn corn and make heat, something as simple as Winston's dad's setup with two 55 gallon drums would work. What do you think Winston?

Mike

Yes Mike, that's the kind of stove the BURNS corn...ahem. And yes, it actually burns the kernels. It has to use a microcontroller and some motors to regulates the speed the corn drops into the burn chamber. Supposedly they only burn a few kernels at a time, and they to the vegetable oil contained in them, they burn pretty slow. Also, yes, the ash is extremely low and the burn is CRAZY clean. I saw one on display at Orschelyn's a few months ago. You could touch the exhaust pipe, and breathe in the exhaust without coughing. It just smellled like a really clean feedstore.

I apologize in advance for any typos or grammatical errors I might have made in advance.

[mcmahan]

....maybe when you "buns corn" you claim to be a member of our robotics group, but only come around like once a year!!!

OUCH!!

[Flip]

I did some research on corn stoves a while back. They use a motor driven auger to push the corn into the burner. The motor is driven by a thermostat, whether it be an electronic or a mechanical one it's just a switch. The one down side to corn stoves is the clinkers that you get along with the ash. Some stoves are better at reducing the size/ amount of them but it has to do with how the burner is constructed. The BTU content for corn is up there with wood but less. Compared to wood, corn is considerably cheaper per BTU and you end up spending half if not a fourth compared to natural gas.

http://burncorn.cas.psu.edu/
http://www.cornflame.net/faqs.html#4
http://www.goldengrainstove.com/fuel.htm

[myblack60impala]

Mizzou semi recently released an article on using corn cobs burnt into charcoal, pressed into a hockey puck shape, to allow for more volume of gas to be safely put into the regular metal gas tanks.

The plan of use was to use this new idea to make it more viable for hydrogen cars.

[myblack60impala]

....maybe when you "buns corn" you claim to be a member of our robotics group, but only come around like once a year!!!

OUCH!!

OH NO HE DIDN'T !!! oh wait it was me......

[tmaiden]

Are the corn burners the same as a "pellet" stove?

The fuel source are these little pellets of standard size so that they fit into the feed mechinism, without it jamming up.

The pellets could be made from corn?, waste wood, coal? , dried plants.

You still have to buy the pellets, since they all have to have consistant dimensions.

The auger / feed / thermostat might just turn on/off based on the amount of heat detected, or it might need to be smart enuf to vary the feed rate based on the type of fuel and its rate of consumption.

I saw a website where a guy was burning old motor oil to melt metal for casting - he had to presurize his fuel so that it would produce a fine spray - so that it burned with less smoke.

[WinfieldMike]

The pellet stoves I have used were compressed pellets of sawdust, about the size of a pea. Corn stoves I have seen use dried corn kernels, which are fairly consistent in size. I would think that wood pellets are the better way to go...made from waste wood/sawdust, not more expensive corn.

[tmaiden]

There are a lot of people saying that corn as a fuel source is a bad idea. Even though it is renewable, and can be burnt for heat or distilled into alcohol for motor fuel, which sounds like a good idea...

The Gov't is still paying farmers NOT to grow corn. Too much corn would cause the price to drop, and use up all the neutriants in the fields.

Anyway, it is our food supply too. We eat corn, we make sweetner from corn and we feed it to chickens and cows to make our meat.

All of the corn currently being diverted to the new alcohol distilleries is causing our food prices to go up.

Corn alcohol is a very inefficient motor fuel. It costs more energy to make the fuel than the energy that you get out of it.

hydrogen is the same - it costs more energy to make hydrogen than you get out of it. ( the expensive way is electrolysis of water, the cheeper way is to crack natural gas ( another limited fuel supply))