Rocket Stoves - Rocket Heaters

[Ken Anderson]

Rocket stoves are designed to be efficient, low-emission stoves that use small-diameter wood or biomass fuel to produce intense heat while minimizing fuel consumption and smoke.

Briefly, they incorporate a combustion chamber with an insulated vertical chimney, which ensures near complete combustion of fuel before the heat reaches the cooking surface. The design draws air into the burn tunnel, creating high temperatures that combusts the volatile materials in the wood, producing more heat and less smoke than traditional stoves. The rising hot gases generate a strong draft that pulls in more oxygen, thus sustaining the combustion process without the need for electricity or fans.

For cooking in a camping environment, temporary rocket stoves can be constructed from material on hand, such as earth, particularly when high in clay content, rocks, and a digging tool.

More permanent rocket stoves can be built from oil drums, bricks, or clay.

Several pre-built rocket stoves are available. For cooking in the woods, I have a Kelly Kettle, which works very well and does indeed produce enough heat for cooking from twigs. It doesn't need a lot of twigs, and it doesn't require constant feeding of twigs.

There are several of these stoves, usually marketed for camping uses, in various sizes and weights, so I don't know if the Kelly Kettle is the best you can get; it's just what I have and it works well. You can find a lot of them in a search on "rocket stoves," and many of them are available from Amazon.

There is also a rocket heater, available from Liberator Rocket Heaters, designed for heating a small home or camp, which, of course, I haven't tried, but which looks interesting. It can burn small-diameter wood of, with an optional chute, it can be used to burn pellets.

The technology has been round for a long time, so it's not new, although it may (or may not) be new to you.

 

[Don Alaska]

I envy your Kelly Kettle @Ken Anderson. I have wanted one for years but just have not gotten around to buying one. I am now too old to have a good use for one. If you remember Wyobuckaroo on the old Backwoods Home forum, he was an expert on Rocket Rtoves. He was an engineer I think, and designed implements and attachments for John Deere during his working life. He had several designs of his own.

My kids had simple stoves that they used on the trail when dog sledding that were #10 can with a roll of toilet paper inside and a ring of holes drilled around the can at thee level of the top of the TP wick. They carried bottles of HEET fuel antifreeze with them and would dump a couple bottles into the can and light the wick. It became something of a blowtorch that they could set their dog kettle upon and cook food for themselves and the dogs. It was quite interesting and worked similarly to a Rocket Stove.

 

[Ken Anderson]

I do, and I really liked that forum. There was a fair amount of fighting going on but, since I wasn't the one responsible for putting out the fires, that didn't bother me so much. Much of that went on when someone pretended to know more than they did, and the regular forum members didn't let them get away with being pseudo experts.

 

[Ken Anderson]

 

[John Brunner]

Have you used any of that stuff, Ken? We always "camped" for vacations, but that meant taking the trailer to a campground and parking it for the season. As an adult I've done some tent camping but it's been where I park the car next to the tent...never really "packing" anything in.

 

[Ken Anderson]

Have you used any of that stuff, Ken? We always "camped" for vacations, but that meant taking the trailer to a campground and parking it for the season. As an adult I've done some tent camping but it's been where I park the car next to the tent...never really "packing" anything in.

Yes, even though we have a camp on our land, since I usually go up there in the spring or summer, it's generally too warm in the camp, so I either use a tent or a hammock in the woods.

 

[Ken Anderson]

I have a couple of camping rocket stoves. They're small, though, intended for heating water or cooking something, not for heating. The idea of using that technology to heat a home is interesting.

 

[John Brunner]

I have a couple of camping rocket stoves. They're small, though, intended for heating water or cooking something, not for heating. The idea of using that technology to heat a home is interesting.

I watched the video of them building a rocket furnace with brick & mortar rather than installing a free-standing unit. The guy put an IR Gun to it and had 900°F at the back of the stove and an Out-Of-Range error (>1,000°F) in the middle of the fire. Those are insane temps. My wood stove will get damaged if it's at 600°F for any length of time (I run it way lower than that.) I didn't see how they control the temps.

They say it's done using a fraction of the wood a regular stove would consume, partly because everything combusts at those temps...and they were shooting for filling the firebox only once every 24 hours. But after it was done, it looked like they're gonna have some service issues behind all that brickwork...partly the layout of recirculating pipes and partly I think that standard flu pipes are not rated for that kind of heat. I don't know if there's a solution to the flu pipes.