Founders
Cliff Welles, the founder of CNW, has been working in the catalytic field for more than 20 years. No one could figure out how to enclose a catalytic reaction while providing enough oxygen to adequately burn the fuel. We’ve changed all that!
Paul Kramer spent his career in design, sourcing, and manufacturing in the outdoor equipment business. Most recently he was a Founder and the Senior VP at Mountain Hardwear. He was in charge of Design and Sourcing.History
A catalyst, as many people know, is basically something that, when involved in a reaction, allows the reaction to take place at a lower temperature or pressure than it would otherwise be able to. Furthermore, the catalyst itself does not enter the reaction. It does not change itself; it just facilitates the reaction.
There has been study of catalysts for several hundred years. Originally and for well over 100 years, the most common use of catalysts was in catalytic heaters and in mantles of lanterns. Of course, nowadays, folks generally think of catalytic converters in cars. The concept is the same. Gases that won’t burn in the engine, for whatever reason, were ejected out the tailpipe until the additions of catalytic converters. The converter uses a catalyst, (usually something like platinum) to allow the unburned gases that are passing through it to combine with O2 and burn, thus venting less unburned gas to the atmosphere.
Catalysts HAVE been used in heating devices, but all such devices in the past HAVE been open to the outside air, so not totally enclosed combustion. Think of it like this: a thousand years ago, civilization had candles, and fires, all of which were very useful, but then the internal combustion engine was invented. Now real work could be performed using combustion. I think we all can admit that this was a huge discovery, whether you want to admit it was a boon to mankind or not.
Catalytic combustion heating technology, for the most part, has remained essentially an open air catalytic process. No catalytic combustion had been completely enclosed-until Coolfire® technology was developed.