Heating Things Up; University of Maryland Students Create Ultra-Clean Wood Stove

College Park, MD, June 10, 2016 --(PR.com)-- Taylor Myers and Ryan Fisher, graduates of the Fire Protection Engineering program at the University of Maryland, have designed and built the world’s first smart, ultra-clean wood stove, the Catalyst. Using advanced combustion technology and a smart controller, the Catalyst burns 60x cleaner than a traditional wood stove and emits less than half the smoke of a single cigarette. Catalyst is now available for pre-order through MF Fire, a fire technology company.

Myers and Fisher created the Catalyst for a school project. “We didn’t really know what we were getting into. We built the stove, it tested really well, and we received so much positive feedback from the clean energy community that we thought--why, stop now?” said Myers.

Myers and Fisher tweaked the design of the stove--most notably, adding a smart controller that allows users to control the burn from any smart phone--and competed with it around the country. They won the Grand Prize at the 2014 Wood Stove Design Challenge, the Energy Efficiency Prize at the MIT Clean Energy Prize, and racked up more than $350,000 in grant money.

But is using wood energy worse for the environment? Myers and Fisher do not think so. “Wood is a local, renewable resource, and we have tons of it,” said Myers. According to the U.S. Forest Service, there has been a net positive growth in forests since 1990. “We’re well positioned to start using wood as a renewable resource again,” said Myers. “The bigger problem with burning wood is soot.”

Soot, or particulate matter, is a product of incomplete combustion. When inhaled, soot can lead to health problems, like heart disease and lung cancer. Traditional wood stoves make a lot of soot, which has lead the EPA to crack down on wood stove emissions. The Catalyst, reduces soot enough to eliminate this concern. “We burn clean and with a renewable resource---now that’s a sustainable heating plan.” said Fisher, co-inventor of the Catalyst.

MF Fire is currently accepting investments through SeedInvest.com and pre-orders for the Catalyst through their website, mffire.com.