BioLite stove keeps gadgets going

If you enjoy the great outdoors but don’t want to give up your gadgets, the BioLite stove might be just what you’ve been looking for.

Designed to burn any solid fuel you can get your hands on – the canonical method of firing it up is to stuff it full of dry twigs – the energy-efficient stove allegedly uses half as much fuel to generate the same heat as a traditional stove, while reducing smoke emissions by a claimed 95 percent.

The guys over at OhGizmo, who have been lucky enough to experience the device in action, even claim that it can boil your campfire kettle faster than a more traditional gas or solid-fuel camping stove.

However neat the BioLite is – and anyone who spends time in the wilderness will agree it’s pretty neat, if a little bulky – you were promised something that would prevent you from having to give up your gadgets, and the BioLite delivers.  Inside the stove is a miniature thermoelectric generator which borrows heat from the fire to drive an electric fan, feeding air into the fire and increasing the efficiency of the combustion process – hence the claims of quicker kettle boiling.  However, the generator is efficient enough that a small amount of energy is left over at the end of the process – which is then fed to the included USB port for charging your devices on the go.

While the overall energy left from the generator once the fan has had its fill isn’t much – it’s estimated at a couple of watts – it should be enough to provide a trickle charge and ensure that your GPS, cell phone, or iPad doesn’t fail you when you need it most.

Obviously, a stove that doubles as a USB charger is an extremely handy device for the urbanite making his or her way into the wilderness for a camping trip, but the technology behind the stove could prove most useful in the developing world where access to electricity is hard to come by – not to mention the possibility of reducing harmful combustion emissions from nations which traditionally use lots of small campfires for cooking and heat.  This isn’t something which has passed the makers of the BioLite stove by, and the company has announced that it will produce a larger version specifically aimed at developing nations.

The BioLite stove is due to launch in the US before the end of the year for an expected $80, with the larger model for use in developing nations expected to sell for $50.