Catalytic Combustors for Wood and Gas Appliances

Updating an Old-Fashioned Idea

As recently as a decade ago, the use of a wood stove for residential heating was considered quaint. It was an activity people might engage in during a weekend visit to a country cottage, but few considered it an alternative to the convenience of a modem furnace. .

But thinking and behavior have changed radically over the past ten years. As the cost of heating with oil, natural gas and electricity increased, so did in­terest in one of our most plentiful and accessible heating resources - wood. Today wood heating is widely popular, not only in rural communities, but in large metropolitan areas as well. In fact, the well stacked woodpile has become as commonplace as the barbeque grill in many suburban backyards. Advances in wood-burning products have accompanied this renewed public interest in wood heating. The old-fashioned wood stove our grandparents may have used probably isn't efficient or safe enough for today's wood burners. They want wood stoves that reflect advances in heating technology.

At SÜD CHEMIE we've been studying the problem of wood heating efficiency and safety for a number of years. These studies have resulted in a product that extracts more heat from burning wood while reduc­ing creosote buildup. The product is called the. SÜD CHEMIE Catalytic Combustor, and what it does is to produce additional heat by "burning" smoke.

More specifically, the SÜD CHEMIE Catalytic Combustor is a honeycombed device coated with a noble metal catalyst. When properly designed into a wood-fueled heating appliance, it ignites and burns the creosote-forming byproducts of incomplete combustion at about half the temperature normally required. As a result, creosote is significantly reduced, combustion efficiency is increased and, as an added benefit, harmful air pollutants are substantially reduced.

Of course, these benefits are all affected by stove design. The extent to which they will be realized in a particular wood-burning appliance depends on a designer's ability to integrate the combustor into a unit's overall design. The purpose of this web site is to help designers as well as stove users achieve the most efficient and effective, as well as safest, use of the combustor.

The design recommendations presented in these pages should help. You maximize the combustor's performance and life expectancy. This, in turn, will improve your product's safety and performance. Conversely, deviations from these recommendations may adversely affect the performance and the life expectancy of the SÜD CHEMIE Combustor. .

If, after reading this web site, you have additional questions about designing for and installing a SÜD CHEMIE Catalytic Combustor, you can talk to one of our product application specialists. Just call us at (781) 444-5188.

Note: This web site describes important characteristics of the SÜD CHEMIE Catalytic Combustor used in wood burning appliances. Manufacturers that use this product, however, are responsible for determining the suitability the use of the combustor. SÜD CHEMIE will assist its customers in avoiding problems that have been identified in the past, but aside from its war­ranty, set forth in the Warranty Information section, SÜD CHEMIE doesn't guarantee the suitability or safety of any stove design or the durability or performance of the combustor used in it.

Why Use A Combustor?

Smoke is wasted energy!

That's right! Between 5% and 30% of the chemical energy content of wood escapes up the chimney as smoke. Wood heating specialists have long realized that this smoke could be burned and the energy, reclaimed. The problem was that under normal conditions it required very high temperatures to do so. To overcome this problem, draft designs, secondary combustion chambers and baffling have been used to improve the combustion efficiency of controlled combustion stoves. Although overall performance of wood-burning devices using these techniques has improved, these methods are inadequate during air-starved conditions. The Süd-Chemie Catalytic Combustor satisfies the need for more complete combustion by acting as a smoke afterburner. .

The use of a conventional afterburner increases the burning of all fuel components of wood, but it does so at a high price. Because afterburners re­quire an outside fuel source, such a system isn't practicable. The catalytic combustor uses the characteristics of a catalyst to initiate and sustain combustion without the need for outside fuel or igniter gadgetry. This is possible because a catalyst is a material that accelerates a chemical process but is not consumed by that process. In the case of wood smoke, the catalyst causes burning to take place at half the temperature normally required (about 500° For 260°C).

Please select from the choices to learn more about catalytic combustors:

HOW IT WORKS

TECHNICAL ADVANTAGES

PHYSICAL DESIGN

OPERATING A CATALYTIC WOOD-BURNING APPLIANCE

MAINTENANCE & TROUBLESHOOTING

SAFETY

WARRANTY INFORMATION

TERMINOLOGY