Bio Ethanol Fireplaces
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We have a client that is intereted in the use of a Bio Ethanol Fireplace. I am a abit concerened on storing the fuel and the requirement by the manufacture of leaving a window open when using?
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Steve,
Is the fireplace vented (that is, does it include a flue)? Or does it use the living room as the flue?
Hmm, I assume this is a ventless one? I am interested in one of those as well. I called one of the retailers and asked about the "leaving a window open when using" She told me you don't need to. and if you just google "bio ethanol fireplaces" you will get information on them that seem to suggest no venting is required (I guess like MArtin said, using living room as the flue. It may be worthwhile to research the gel/fluid that your fireplace burns. They are required to be denatured to render them not consumable to humans, which I think is the concern about storage.
Steve:
I think that answer your question you find at ethanol fireplace http://www.planikausa.com
This is one of the best producers bio fireplaces and I think they quickly help you.
We looked into these recently for a client and the issue is that the fuel needs to be approved for ventless combustion and the concern is that as the price and shipping cost for that is not insignificant the temptation to just grab a couple gallons of denatured alcohol at the paint store is pretty high, which doesn't work well in a ventl-ess fireplace. we like the ribbon burn but went with a direct vent propane fueled ribbon fireplace.
Unvented combustion appliances are fine as long as they work perfectly as designed. No mechanical equipment works perfectly as designed forever. Hence it's foolish to install an unvented combustion appliance in a tight home.
Secondarily, if the fuel is made from corn ethonol, then it is contributing to the competition between food and fuel and increasing world food prices, hunger, malnutrition and starvation. How "green" is that?
We live in iowa. Ethanol is a renewable resourse. It is a longer discusssion than we can have here. The bad press on Bio ethanol is spread by the oil companies.
The criticism of bio ethanol as unsustainable comes entirely from the environmental movement, such as the following:
In the current alcohol-from-corn production model in the United States, considering the total energy consumed by farm equipment, cultivation, planting, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides made from petroleum, irrigation systems, harvesting, transport of feedstock to processing plants, fermentation, distillation, drying, transport to fuel terminals and retail pumps, and lower ethanol fuel energy content, the net energy content value added and delivered to consumers is very small.
With every step required to transform a fuel into energy, there is less and less energy yield. For example, to make ethanol from corn grain, which is how all U.S. ethanol is made now, corn is first grown to develop hybrid seeds, which next season are planted, harvested, delivered, stored, and preprocessed to remove dirt. Dry-mill ethanol is milled, liquefied, heated, saccharified, fermented, evaporated, centrifuged, distilled, scrubbed, dried, stored, and transported to customers.
Fertile soil will be destroyed if crops and other "wastes" are removed to make cellulosic ethanol.
Fuels from biomass are not sustainable, are ecologically destructive, have a net energy loss, and there isn’t enough biomass in America to make significant amounts of energy because essential inputs like water, land, fossil fuels, and phosphate ores are limited.
In fact, the real driving force behind corn ethanol is Archer Daniels Midland, which had lobbied for ethanol in gasoline for 30 years and is now profiting handsomely from it , largely due to government subsidies.
. On the side
The leftovers, or co-products, of the process — distiller’s grain and carbon dioxide — are saved. Distiller’s grain is a highly nutritious livestock feed, and carbon dioxide is collected, purified, compressed, and sold for use by the carbonated beverage and dry-ice industries.
Water is no an issue in iowa, if anythig we have too much.
With the use of the leftover distillers grain as a livestock feed. ethanol has not taken away from the food supply, but has limited the amount of corn sugars available for the food indusry.
Each year we are improving the way we grow corn and produce ethanol. It is not the solutin, but part o fthe solution.
1. Though it can be produced from petrochemical sources the vast majority of ethanol fuel (for transportation use or otherwise) is from biological fermentation. Adding the 'bio' tag to these ethanol-burning stove products is unnecessary and just reeks of greenwashing.
2. Using distillers grains for livestock feed DOES reduce the total agricultural product available for the human food supply. Consuming our grains as animal flesh after they have been processed through the critter's alimentary tract is extremely inefficient and wasteful. With perhaps a few minor exceptions on the margins, even the most extreme of traditional meat-eating cultures have never practiced animal husbandry as we currently do with such casual disregard for a sustainable farm ecology
We are way out of the building science I would like to keepthis post ontrack. Thanks for all of your thoughts
Steve
Steve,
You can ask a question but you can't control the discussion. This is a green building site and discussing the sustainability of a product you brought to this forum is entirely appropriate.
This is from the USGS back in 2007:
Concern about the impact of ethanol production on Iowa's water resources has increased due to the large increase in statewide ethanol production. Water use at ethanol plants could soon reach 22 billion gallons per year (Ggal/yr). Groundwater is preferred for these operations because of its high quality and stable quantity; however, placement of ethanol plants is determined by access to corn, not necessarily to groundwater supply. Permits for ethanol-related groundwater withdrawals are being granted in rural areas where determination of local pumping impact is often performed by a well driller or consultant. Tools for assessing the larger-scale impacts of ethanol production in aquifers (including water quality and ecological impacts) and for evaluating the sustainability of aquifers in the State need to be developed in order to provide a scientific basis to strengthen administrative oversight of groundwater use.
And some of the conclusions of an exhaustive thermodynamic study of corn ethanol:
Sustainability of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle
Tad W. Patzek
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
U.C. Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
College of Engineering, Berkeley, CA
May 12, 2004
Industrial agriculture can never be sustainable because it relies on the irreversible burning and chemical transformations of fossil fuels.
Industrial agriculture uses a huge land area, and it mines and contaminates huge amounts of soil, water and air. The environmental damage it causes is much more widespread and more difficult to reign in than that from the highly-concentrated industrial sources. In addition, industrial agriculture invades large ecosystems and destroys them. In other words, the twenty first century industrial agriculture poses a more acute threat to life on the earth, than the nineteenth century smoke stacks ever did.
Today, the industrial corn-ethanol cycle generates on 4.9 million hectares about 7.9 million metric tonnes of CO2/year over and above the energy equivalent gasoline.
To satisfy 10% of U.S. fuel consumption, the additional CO2 emissions will be about 65 million metric tonnes per year.
The industrial corn-ethanol cycle needs about 10 × 106 liters of water per hectare and per crop.
That water weeps into the aquifers, causing, e.g., the omnipresent nitrate contamination of groundwater in the Corn Belt, and runs off to streams, rivers, into the Mississippi River, and to the Gulf of Mexico, generating a large anoxic zone there.
No matter how efficient is the engine that transforms the industrial corn-ethanol cycle’s output into shaft work, the cycle remains utterly unsustainable and unattractive as a source of fossil fuel. The industrial corn-ethanol cycle is unsustainable by a factor of 100-600%. No adjustment of process parameters I can think of will change this terrible situation.
Excluding the restoration work of decontaminating aquifers, rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico, the minimum cumulative exergy consumption in restoring the environment polluted and depleted by the industrial corn ethanol cycle is over 6 times higher than the maximum shaft work of a car engine burning the cycle’s ethanol.
U.S. pays its corn farmers $10 billion a year in subsidies1 (18% of corn acreage in now devoted to ethanol).
The stated goal of adding ethanol from corn to gasoline was to help in cleaning the air we breath and lessen the U.S. dependance on foreign oil. The opposite is achieved. Air is more polluted, and as much oil and more methane are burned as without the corn-ethanol. At the same time, additional health hazards are created by the agricultural chemicals, fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides, and by the waste water streams.
The industrial corn-ethanol cycle accelerates the irrevocable depletion of natural resources: fossil fuels, minerals, top soil, surface and subsurface water, and air, while creating a wide-spread environmental damage throughout the continental United States. The recent growth of ethanol production could occur only because of the massive transfer of money from the collective pocket of the U.S. taxpayers to the transnational agricultural cartel, represented most notably by Archer Daniel Midlands Co., Cargill Inc., Monsanto Co., and A. E. Stanley Manufacturing Co. This flow of billions of dollars of public money into few private pockets was accomplished by federal subsidies to corn producers, and the federal and state tax subsidies to ethanol producers.
Great information and good timely and (so far) respectful dialogue here. Thanks for the insight all.
M
Bioethanol fireplaces are eco friendly and flueless fireplaces, requiring no chimney, no building permission and no installation.you can get more knowledge about fireplaces at http://www.imaginfires.co.uk/category/free-standing-fireplaces/oblosk-bioethanol-fireplace.php
I'm adding to what I know is an old dead thread as there is so little info to be found regarding these so-called "clean burning" appliances, here's a critically important article based on research from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140903091728.htm
Summary: "Ethanol fireplaces are becoming more and more popular. However, they are not only highly combustible -- in the past, severe accidents have occurred repeatedly with decorative fireplaces. The devices also pollute the air in the rooms."