Wood Stove Contest Seeks to Fire High-Tech Solutions for Smoke
University of Maryland team employs air-flow control for a cleaner, more efficient burn.
They gather around a black steel box, on top of which is a funnel, shepherding smoke away. They tensely watch the thermometer. The room is still cold, but it normally takes about 20 minutes for the stove to begin warming up.
Eventually someone sighs. Hunched shoulders relax.
"It's working," says Taylor Myers, captain of Mulciber, one of 14 teams from around the world that will be competing as finalists in the first-ever Wood Stove Decathlon, which begins Thursday and continues through the weekend on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The competitors are applying new materials, configurations, and high-tech control systems to an old problem: How do you burn wood with less smoke? (See related, “Quiz: What You Don't Know About
