Heuristic Engineering Inc.

3040 West 5th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6K 1T9  Canada

Phone: (604) 263-8005  Fax: (604) 263-0786 Email: doug@aetmail.com

Converting refuse to energy in the 21st Century

Heuristic Engineering Inc., founded by Dr. Malcolm D. Lefcort, has been actively engaged in the development of clean burning, wet wood combustion for the forest product industry since 1980. Before that, from 1973 to 1980, Dr. Lefcort was Chief Engineer at Lamb-Cargate Industries Ltd. where he developed the Lamb Wet Cell Burner. The Wet Cell was the first stand alone, wet-wood, two-stage combustor capable of direct firing large lumber dry kilns and meeting the BC particulate limit of 0.05 gr/dscf without the use of any type of stack clean-up device. The EnvirOcycler is an improved, second generation version of the Wet Cell. Lamb-Cargate went out of business in the mid 1980's.

Dr. Lefcort obtained his doctorate from the Gas Turbine Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He is an acknowledged North American expert on gasification and two-stage combustion of wet wood and related (MSW, sludge, etc.) wastes.

In the mid 1980’s Dr. Lefcort developed a 2-stage gasifier (updraft gasifier followed by a downdraft char gasifier) with support from the Governments of British Columbia and Canada.

Since the late 1980’s he has been actively engaged in promoting the EnvirOcycler as a practical alternative to sawmill beehive burners in Western Canada (a.k.a. tee-pee or wigwam burners), from which useful energy can be recovered.

Beehive Burner in a British Columbia Sawmill