Vesto

Vesto +_ Switchgrass Pellets
Crispin Pemberton-Pigott, New Dawn Engineering, Roger Samson, REAP Canada, January 5,2008

Densified Canadian switchgrass pellets were burned in a VESTO (New Dawn Engineering) stove in the gasification mode.

Dear Grass Burners

Roger Samson was here today with Stephanie and he brought along a Mayon Turbo stove with rice husks and a big bag of switchgrass pellets.

We tried this 'fuel of the future' in the Vesto which first required putting a small sheet of newspaper at the bottom to keep the little pellets in, and second perforating the sheet to let in a least a small amount of primary air.

It was packed pretty tightly. The pellets are about 15 MJ per litre.

We lit it on top with a small wood fire and it got going nicely. It burned very much like a Vesto with the 'gasifier mode' engaged meaning that it ran with very little primary air getting through and a floating bed of flame perhaps 7 cm above the fuel. Very pretty.

The CO/CO2 ratio was stable at 2% and had no odour or visible smoke. I will get some picture posted and a movie with a description by Roger.

The flamefront was shallow, as Alex describes with wood pellets. Nothing really to add - it burned completely and gave off lots of heat.

Regards
Crispin

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