Any electrical gurus here?

[Brunel]

Something for any wild eyed inventors: - the top of my wood burner can get hot enough to boil a kettle, if the electricity was off would it be possible to stick a gadget on top of it to convert the excess heat into an electrical charge? I could then re-charge any small devices like a mobile, torches etc. Apparently the theory is simple enough - you need 2 dis-similar metals to create a thermo-electric couple which gets all the atoms moving and creates a charge. How to do it practically though, I wouldn't have a clue!

Is there anything like this commercially available? I've seen the Biolite stove which does something similar - but nothing I can find for everyday household use. Is it something for James Dyson to sort out for us or are any UKP's sufficiently proficient with a soldering iron that we could start our own line??

[redskies]

Will ask OH on their return from town. I'm not even going to try and go there; I make electrical stuff go bang!

[12mp82]

Yes there is an item available for turning heat to power.

http://www.thefireweaver.com/the-tinder ... rator.html

[essgee23]

excellent 12mp82...i love this forum

[poppypiesdad]

Well blow me , you live and learn

Jamie

[Moony]

This for charging up 12v (car / leisure) batteries http://tegpower.com/pro8.htm

[metatron]

You need a Thermoelectric compound. Easy way is buy some Peltier coolers of ebay. There designed so that when you run electricity through them one side gets very cold, the other very hot, their designed for cooling electrical components but if you apply heat to one side and keep the other cool, they produce electricity.

If I were doing it I'd run some copper pipe through the fire and then sandwich the peltier coolers with copper sheets, attaching the copper pipe to one side. You will need to keep the other side cool, you can do that by using a heatsink and fan or by running more copper pipe to a larger cool metal object. You can just run the leads of the peltier coolers to whatever you want, I'd knock up a little circuit with a 12v voltage regulator and a few other components to output a clearer power.

If you just wanted to charge up USB devices, you would use a 5v voltage regulator and you could get away with fewer peltier coolers. If you just need to charge USB devices you could do it for as little as £15, if you need more power costs go up.

[Brunel]

Great stuff, some excellent links there! I think the fireweaver looks a tad expensive, but the opportunity of doing the same myself for £15 looks a better route. I might even recruit an electrical engineer locally to work on a simple design and see if there's a basic version that anyone could knock up in their shed. Certainly some food for thought, so again many thanks, keep them coming!

[short circuit]

I started making one but I need more heat sinks thay work both from hot and cold you know mine lights some 6 volt led lights in my shed about two lots of 70 LED's as long as one side is hotter or colder than the other thay work, I did not use a kit got bits of ebay...

[short circuit]

BTW your going to spend more than any £15 on making one that works and stays working