Building a Better Fire
November 8, 2006
By Jerry Perkins- Des Moines Register Farm Editor
Waukee, Ia.—John Kimberlin hopes to light a fire under mountains of manure and other biomass sources and turn them into heat and electricity.
For more than 12 years Kimberlin has been tinkering with an idea about how to build a better fire.
Now he thinks he’s perfected a small-scale furnace that can be adapted to farms, racehorse tracks or anywhere else biomass crops and live-stock waste pile up.
Inventors have long tried to tap into the energy of manure, and scientists and others say it could help Iowa become a power producer. The state has enough manure to meet the energy needs of 325,000 homes, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has estimated. Tax incentives are encouraging the development of methane digesters to create electricity and control odor, for example.
The inspiration for Nature’s Furnace—as Kimberlin calls his invention—grew out of the tons of horse manure and bedding that Kimberlin had on his acreage west of Des Moines.
A former horse trainer, Kimberlin had to find some way to red the place of the refuse. He couldn’t spread it on the land without contaminating the water. Having it hauled off would have been too costly.
Eventually, Kimberlin came up with the idea that within the pile of horse manure, heat was being generated naturally.
Kimberlin conducted some small-scale experiments and spent days in the Iowa State University library over two years researching his theory about how to build a better fire.
He eventually ended up with a patent for his brainchild and found some investors.
They formed a company called Nature’s Furnace Inc. and are preparing to manufacture and sell several types of the furnaces.
“It’s really simple, really simple,” Kimberlin said of the way the furnace burns. “Most people tend to overthink it.”
The combustible material is moved into the burn chamber by augers that pack it full.
Ignition from an electric starter creates a blaze, Kimberlin said.
“The fire is like a tornado in there, which gives it its efficiency,” he said. “Once you get it started, you aren’t going to put it out.”
Temperature sensors, also patented, direct the refilling of the burn chamber to keep the fire going.
A prototype of the Nature’s Furnace is being prepared for a trip to Northern Ireland.
That’s where David Lyttle wants to market the furnace to poultry growers and other producers who have been prohibited from applying waste from livestock and some forms of crops to the land.
“I think there’s huge potential,” Lyttle said during a visit to Kimberlin’s acreage recently. There are quite a few people who are waiting to see it in operation.”
Lyttle said he has purchased a distributorship and licensed marketing rights in Europe.
He found out about Nature’s Furnace when he checked out the Nature’s Furnace web site.
The group is waiting for approval from the European Union’s Environmental Commission before it can sell the furnace, Lyttle said.
“There has been an immense amount of interest here, providing the emissions comply with European regulations, and we are confident that it will or can be modified to comply,” Lyttle said in an e-mail sent from Northern Ireland.
One customer wants to order 30 of the furnaces as soon as the emissions test results are known and there area a number of people who want to order single units, he said.
“There are inquiries on a daily basis from all over Europe, so we are expecting a lot of business in the next 12 months,” Lyttle said.
The size of the Nature’s Furnace is ideal for small poultry producers, Lyttle said.
Each producer needs to find a way to dispose of about 25 tons of litter every 12 weeks, he said, “so the size of this unit is just ideal.”
At first, Nature’s Furnace will be used primarily for heat, but Lyttle said he thinks it will also be used for generation of electricity by the European producers. “Small-scale power generation is very big in Europe,” Lyttle said.
Matt Keeling, president of Nature’s Furnace, said the furnaces also will be marketed in the United States for sale to ethanol plants. “That’s been a dream of mine for five or six years,” said Keeling.
Kimberlin and Keeling said they want to sell the furnaces in sizes that con be used on farms for heat or for generating electricity.
The idea is to keep the size small so it’s portable. That way, you can move the furnace, which can be mounted on a flatbed trailer, and not have to move bulky volumes of biomass fuel.
“Small scale, small footprint is the idea, Kimberlin said.
They plan to introduce the units at less than $50,000 in the United States. Kimberlin is lining up manufacturers to make the furnaces, and he wants them produced locally.
“We want to build them right here, to bring the employment here,” Kimberlin said.
Originally printed in the Des Moines Register and other publications
Also online at: TheHorse.com