Wood Stove Design Workshop – Grand Prize

In 2013, the founders of MF Fire entered a wood stove design workshop competition, sponsored by the Alliance for Green Heat. This Wood Stove Decathlon challenged teams of engineers to design an innovative wood stove, and our entry garnered the grand prize for Low Emissions.

The follow up to the very successful Wood Stove Decathlon was held in November 2014 at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The goal of these competitions is to solve consumer & industry pain points. For example, many consumers do not operate wood stoves well, often using the wrong wood. Also, the EPA has not raised is standards in many years for fear that the industry would not be able to meet them, and these competitions jumpstart innovation.

The MF Fire founders entered an improved version of the  Mulciber prototype to compete against four other finalists. This time, our innovative wood stove was judged not only for its emissions, but also for efficiency, innovation, market appeal, and safety.  The Mulciber achieved top marks, taking first place overall as well as first place in the categories of particulate emissions and innovation.

As one example, the Mulciber adapted technology used for vehicles to improve safety in the use of wood stoves. An oxygen sensor, which regulates the fuel-to-air ratio in an engine, is used to achieve The Perfect Burn. Even with unseasoned wood, the wood stove performed quite well compared to the competitors and the existing products in the market. As a result, consumers do not have to load wood as often, saving time and money.

“We want to congratulate the MF Fire team – and all the teams – for participating in a process of sharing innovation, ideas and test results,” said John Ackerly, coordinator of the event and President of the Alliance for Green Heat.  “These stoves have many of the solutions to excessive smoke from modern-day wood stoves and are challenging the EPA and the stove industry, to catch up with new technologies and new opportunities,” Ackerly said. View the write up on our innovative wood stove by Alliance for Green Heat here.

Today, the Mulciber stove is now named the Catalyst and is the most efficient wood stove available. The MF Fire team is proud to offer the best wood burning stove on the market.