Hatsuden Nabe, The Fire Powered USB Generator | The Woodsman Hut | Forums

looks like the biolite has some competition

http://theepicenter......%

It looks like a cooking pan, but it’s really a fire-powered DC generator with a USB charging output!

The Hatsuden Nabe (roughly translated as electricity producing pan), uses thermo-electric technology to convert heat energy into electrical energy and charges USB devices.

At the heart of the Hatsuden Nabe is a thermoelectric generator module (TEG). A TEG is a device that creates a voltage when there is a different temperature on each side of the device. This TEG is made with materials developed in Japan for recovering waste heat in industrial applications and is capable of operation at extremely high temperatures, like found in a wood camp fire.

The TEG module used in the Hatsuden Nabe is mounted in a cavity on the bottom of the pan. One side of the TEG is exposed to heat from a fire, and the other side which is thermally connected to the interior of the pan is cooled by water inside the pan. When heated with a wood fueled fire, the bottom of the pan will be exposed to temperatures in the range of 450 to 550 degrees Celsius. In a few minutes the water inside the pan boils and maintains a constant temperature of 100 degrees Celsius. This creates a temperature difference of 350 to 450 degrees Celsius (662 to 842 degrees Fahrenheit). It is this temperature difference that the TEG module uses to generate electricity.