Anyone ever heard of bio-fuels being used to fire a hot-water type furnace?

Yes there is a site that specialises in that, let me see if I can find the link.. Its a YAHOO group. altfuelfurnace or something to that effect



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/altfuelfurnace/

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Proud owner of ....
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Maybe not the biofuel of which you're thinking, but I've heard of folks burning grain to heat their home.

We have had a "corn burner" that was designed by the Buck Stove folks. It is a fireplace insert, 0 clearance in back if you want to back it up to a wall. It has a corn bin, an auger that feeds corn kernels to a burn box, and a fan that keeps combustion going on in the box. It will burn about 25# of corn in 12 hours and will then need re-fueling. At that end of 12 hours I have a "hockey puck" of carbon in the burn box about 3" x 2". I flip that out of the burn box and if lucky the combustion keeps going. I think it is rated around 25,000 btu +/- depending on how fast you keep the corn entering the burn box.

Much cleaner than a wood burning stove, less waste, but I'm not sure it saves much money. I need a cheaper source of clean corn.

Chuck