Can you use heat generated by a wood burning stove to generate electricity to charge battery packs?
You can use a device called a Peltier junction. You heat one side and cool the other side, and that produces a voltage between the leads. (You usually see them used the other way, in portable refrigerators: you run a voltage across them and produce a hot side and a cold side, then blow air across the hot side to move heat away.) You’d place them up against your stove, and then cool the other side by running cold water over them (using a water cooler like the kind they use on CPUs, leading up to a heat sink and a fan like the gizmo on the left.) You may have to wire up several Peltier junctions in series to get enough voltage. You’d want a regulator in the circuit to keep from over-charging the batteries, or they might explode. Sources:
