Abstract: A furnace for burning solid burning biomass fuels such a municipal waste and wood pellets including a first compartment containing a hopper, a motorized auger positioned in the bottom of the auger for conveying a solid fuel out of the hopper, a first blower tube operatively coupled to the hopper for receiving the solid fuel from the hopper and a first blower operatively coupled to the blower tube for blowing the fuel through first blower tube. In a second compartment, the furnace contains a combustion chamber operatively coupled to the blower tube opposite the first blower and a heat exchanger arranged above the combustion chamber. To cool the heat exchanger, a second blower is operatively coupled to the heat exchanger for blowing a cooling air through the heat exchanger. A programmable control system is operatively coupled to the auger, the first blower, the second blower and a plurality of thermocouples for controlling the operation of the furnace.

Abstract: Accurate risk management curves are generated for companies that have limited market information available to generate a risk management curve purely from the market information by allowing a pre-existing risk management curve (referred to as a “leader curve”) to be selected as a basis for generating a new risk management curve (referred to as a “target curve”). The leader curve may pertain to a company (referred to as the “leader company”) that has similar characteristics to the company for which the target curve is being generated (referred to as the “target company”). Further, any known differences between the leader company and the target company may be reflected in the target curve by incorporating any number of offsets between the leader curve and the target curve.