C4 - Wednesday, April 6, 1983 - North Shore News Woodstoves fire up scientists By LAWRENCE BRUNER Wood-burning stoves are reemerging as popular tools for home heating - and physics, chemistry and computers are helping to pave the way for their comeback. Stoves that burn wood, coal and = other = solid materials have been in existence for hundreds of years, but have = always suffered from two problems — they pollute the air with toxic gases and they fail to make full use of the energy locked in the fuel. But that’s all changing, thanks to a research team at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, where modern laboratory techniques are being used to help manufacturers build the cleanest and most efficient wood stoves tn history. The lab, designed by physicist and research team leader Dr. Erwin Fernbach, contaims a stove for burning solid fuels, instruments for measuring gases emitted by the stove, and a chamber that simulates a room being heated. The chamber's mitral temperature and humidity can be controlled to simulate the effect of different weather conditions on the “room”. A desktop computer records and compiles the experimental data. The complex of equip- ment allows Dr. Fernbach and his) colleagues to determine the stove's ef- ficiency by measuring the gases produced as its fuel burns. The researchers are parucularly interested in the poisonous gas carbon monoxide, which forms when the fuel is exposed to fire. Carbon monoxide is combustible and burns, forming carbon dioxide. 4 non-potsonous gas which 1s released into the at mosphere. The problem is that not all the carbon monoxide is converted to carbon dioxide. Some escapes into the at- mosphere and some tums mto other noxious gases or solid partucles which also escape. As much as one- third of the’ carbon monoxide can escape without being burned. The Ryerson lab= can measure the amount of carbon monoxide escaping and thereby gauge the ef- ficiency of the fuel-burning process. With this in- formaton Dr. Fernbach can modify the experimental stove to determine the design changes necessary to reduce carbon monoxide levels. One of the best methods of getting carbon monoxide to burn more effectively 1s to ~ add a catalyst - an agent that enhances the chemical reacuion. The catalyst used by Dr. Fernbach 1s the rare metal, plaunum. He has found that when a small amount of the metal is coated on a ceramic base and placed in the stove. the carbon monoxide escaping decreases by as much as 60 per cent. No one knows how the catalyst works, says Dr Fernbach, but a popular theory holds that the metal collects hydrogen molecules which help the conversion of carbon) monoxide = into carbon dioxide. This allows a given amount of fuel to produce more heat and less noxious gas” Dr. Fernbach ts using the experimental slove = to determine which type of catalyst works most ef- ficiently under what con ditions. But he admits the possibility that catalysts may not be the ultimate answer for stoves because the rare metals are expensive and more efficient methods may be discovered (Canadian Science News! 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