Showing posts with label fire bricks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fire bricks. Show all posts

Friday, June 22, 2007

Ben Franklin

Talking about the carbonization and incineration system this past week, reminded me of Ben Franklin's development of the pot bellied stove in the late eighteenth century. Anyone who has tried to heat a house with a fireplace can appreciate what a revolution that was.

Amazingly, it used tools and techniques that had been available for thousands of years. Yet people were so used to been half frozen in their homes that they never thought that there must be a better way. Ben simply chose to think outside the box and he lived in a world were that was encouraged.

And it facilitated a revolution in house design that evolved over the next one hundred years.

Our incinerator cum carbonizer could have also been built and operated during the past thousands of years. The only difference today is that we can stick in temperature sensors and use a variable forced air fan for ease of control.

And fundamental to its future success is the simplicity of its design. It is pretty hard to beat a walk-in steel container box lined with fire bricks and a couple of box beams on the floor acting as a bearing rail for rolling in and out and serving also as the injection point for air and hot gases.

It will also be as easy to operate as a barbecue. A typical load might burn or roast out over twelve hours and then cool out over eight hours. In any configuration, it is going to be possible to establish a set time for operating the burn and to control the air input to controll the temperature.