Tree Waste

frashdog said:
It all depends...there are sooo many ways to go about it. Recipes to activate and facilitate the process if you will. Wood chips will break down and can break down fast ...if done right. Many times the leafy matter is what will get the process going.... Yea dry only wood wood chips will not activate readily. Our farms take what ever I give them...do not ever give a farm black walnut chips due to the allelopathic properties, even though it will break down when composted. Some of the farms especially the local garden clubs use chips for mulching. We have no sycamore round here and the eastern cotton woods' chips really have not shown to effect vegetables...I think with cotton woods it's more about when they are alive, maybe in the roots or leaves.

Mix dry wood chips with some manure, dirt, water and turn them frequently...they will get hot quick.

But yes also the the wood chips for fuel...but no for us currently, when local loggers produce/sell them already for fuel st $24/ton. We are however looking at wood chip fire boilers, our new shop/building is 10,000 square/feet, and we are looking at putting in a kiln.
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What are you going to use the kiln for? Air drying board feet?
 
Coen said:
I look forward to responses to this. I've been chipping almost everything for years, but I'm so close to buying a grapple truck and hoping to not even use a chipper in the future. Chips are easy to get rid of but with my grapple truck plan I think I will have to end up buying property to dump debris on and having someone come in with a tub grinder when needed. I'm hoping the compost, or whatever you call it may be worth something to offset what the tub grinder costs. I have no idea yet what the grinder will cost per day or week.
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A guy around here charges $2500 a day for a tub grinder and excavator for feeding it.
 
Gorman said:
What are you going to use the kiln for? Air drying board feet?
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Mostly for finish drying for specialty live edge slabs, of course we will dry anything once it is up and running. The slabs would be 3"+ and air dried for months before the final kiln. There are several smaller mill operations around here and no real kilns...one big kiln operation 40min north and people complain about him cracking wood cause he just puts the heat to it too quick. Our building came with 4 galvanized insulated drive in coolers totaling over 4000square feet... We are looking at making one of the smaller ones into a kiln and the largest into a climate controlled gallery.
 
I myself have been toying with the idea of doing a compost pile. The biggest problem is that the best compost producer in my state is located a few miles away from my property. His stuff goes from 60 to 120 a yard depending on the "strain".[emoji57]
If I wanted to compete in that market I would have an uphill battle trying to hold s candle to their product.
 
Gorman said:
I myself have been toying with the idea of doing a compost pile. The biggest problem is that the best compost producer in my state is located a few miles away from my property. His stuff goes from 60 to 120 a yard depending on the "strain".[emoji57]
If I wanted to compete in that market I would have an uphill battle trying to hold s candle to their product.
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Wow...yea across the lake in Vt there are compost operations everywhere. They are even making laws about requiring it for food now. Lots in the news over there. Especially since last year big composter ended up with a banned herbicide in their product. Was traced back to some hay feed to horses.
 
I've been working for the last year in developing a working system to stockpile our wood chips to burn in a boiler that heats a local college. It's a challenging process but almost on line.

This link shows the Austrian chip specifications that are standard in Europe and will eventually be here. http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=77,317197&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
Different heating systems will require different chip specs. We need to meet the g100 spec for this 1mw (heat only) installation. Species and ash don't really matter, it's particle size and moisture content that are crucial.

G100 chips are attainable out of a typical drum or disc chipper if he knives are kept sharp and the anvil set right.

G50 chips that smaller boiler systems (less than 300kw ish) are impossible to attain out of our chippers without a screening process after the chipper. We are looking at importing a line of European chippers that screen chips to achieve a desired spec. So common practice in Europe but virtually non existent here.

Pyrolysis and bio char production is feasible in some cases but burning chips strictly for heat energy is more of a win.

If anyone wants some advice on how to set up a heat system for their shop, I'd be happy to chat. If you have natural gas, stick with that, sooooo cheap. Or if you're in Southern California never mind and get lost, It's Been -30 windchill here for two weeks.

Vince
 
The tree service that trained me sold their chips to a company that made compost. The company would contract I know with local restaurants to get their food scraps and whatever else they mixed in I know. They seemed to make a killing selling bulk amounts to farmers. I think most of our chips are too large though. I wonder if anyone has tried the Band Card breaker system. Evidently it reduces the size of chips considerably on all bandits drum chippers.

Im loving all the thoughts here. Great ideas, I guess thats the point of a community though eh? For some reason I have never really considered getting a kiln for our wood mizer boards. We always air dry them, takes forever though, especially with walnut. Has anyone made their own kiln?
 
nuthin_special said:
I've been working for the last year in developing a working system to stockpile our wood chips to burn in a boiler that heats a local college. It's a challenging process but almost on line.
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The University of Idaho, not too far south of where I am, uses a system similar to the one you describe: http://www.biomasscenter.org/resource-library/case-studies/campuses/university-of-idaho

I work for a municipality now. Our Parks Maintenance Division uses the wood chip byproducts from our Urban Forestry Division as tree ring and shrub bed mulch. When I worked for local tree services, more often than not, our wood "waste" was delivered to a local wood recycler. The largest of which was Cannon Hill: http://grindwoodwaste.com/woodgrinding.htm They charged (by the yard) to accept wood "waste". Except for wood chips. Dumping wood chips is free, because they don't have to grind wood chips. Everything else gets ground in a tub grinder. Then they haul it away (ie. sell it) for a few different purposes, one of which is hog fuel. I'm guessing a good bit of that hog fuel gets sold to the University of Idaho.
 
Our local high school 10 minutes away heats with wood chips, but like I said you can get tractor trailers of them for $24/ton...so not worth it for a tree service round here to compete with that. That's like $6/yard...rather get $40/yard for mulch...There is a tree service about 40min from me who makes a traditional mulch product and colors it...he run's a property maintenance business too.

I'm looking at doing "natural" mulch product separating the hard wood from soft and coloring on site if the customer desires. Instead of investing in a coloring machine and the dye...they make dyes you can mix in small quantities and spray on the applied mulch. Gives customer many color options.

Compost does reduce the over all volume quite a bit, but good compost is rare round here. Probably be using old wood chips that have already started to breakdown . Got plenty of those.

I'm working on helping local university where set up a mulching/ composting program. Probably will extend to the municipality.
 
This is the wood chip boiler we have interest in http://www.portageandmainboilers.com/#!pm-envirochip-series/c15g6

Looking at the 800k btu model with 30yard hopper will take 2" chips
EPA approved with Max moisture content 41%... That was explained to me by a rep that they do that for worst case situations because they can not control what the customer feeds into it so....you get way more btu's if you get the moisture down...he also said it is not hard to get it below 30% ....a kiln operation that has one and gets their moisture content to 7%

One of the figures they provide:
one ton of cord wood =4.6 million btu's
One ton of chips=6million btu's
 
Frash, how much space are you heating with 800mbtu? That should heat a really big building.

Portage and main makes quality products and they seem to be more innovative for north american manufacturers but outdoor, open system boilers are inherently inefficient. So are horizontal heat exchangers. Have you talked to Tarm Biomass? They are nearish to you.

Also not sure how you get more BTUs out of wood chips than cord wood, especially 23% more. It's easy to get cord wood to 20%Mc but very difficult to get chips to that. Also, if you take one ton of cord wood and chip it, it's going to yield 1 ton of wood chips. It won't magically make more energy just by chipping. They are likely quoting that difference because they get a higher efficiency burn from wood chips that cord wood which is the fault of the appliance and not related to the fuel.

Good luck storing and feeding 41% MC chips, there will be many problems. You can get lower MC in your accumulating or chipping phase but putting wet chips into any small boiler system will lead to headaches.


Call Tarm and look at a Froling, you'll spend more in the short term but save tons in the long term.
V
 
nuthin_special said:
It won't magically make more energy just by chipping.
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The magic is in how you compare these apples and oranges. All other things being equal, a ton of a given wood species of a specified moisture content will contain the same amount of stored energy regardless of whether it is sawdust or logs. But..

There's a reason we use kindling to start a fire in the fireplace. A ton of cue balls has more surface area than a one ton block of wood. The chips will be much easier to get ignited, will boil off the moisture faster (thus reducing the effects of evaporative cooling) and will reach a higher temperature in a very short period of time. So, if we shovel chips in one furnace and throw logs in another, for any given duration of time (say, ten minutes) the chip furnace will be putting out more BTUs than the log furnace. It will also run out of fuel much sooner. So, the log furnace will be putting out a little lower level of heat for a longer period of time. The magic is in how you're preparing the fuel and testing the furnace, and as you said, not in the fuel itself.

Of course, a true measure of efficiency would include the extra work and energy spent reducing logs to chips. But, if we assume the chips are the by-product of another necessary process (tree work) we can ignore that for now. A furnace company isn't going to bring it up, that's for sure.

It amazes me just how many of you folks are forward thinking, enviromentally conscious and willing to constantly look at better ways of doing things. Clearly, it carries into aspects of your lives beyond your occupation. Although we have such people here in Nebraska, they are rare as turtle fur. Most will bulldoze every pesky tree they see to make room for another half acre of corn they'll lose money on.

It's a joy being here.
 
JeffGu said:
It amazes me just how many of you folks are forward thinking, enviromentally conscious and willing to constantly look at better ways of doing things. Clearly, it carries into aspects of your lives beyond your occupation. Although we have such people here in Nebraska, they are rare as turtle fur. Most will bulldoze every pesky tree they see to make room for another half acre of corn they'll lose money on.
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And then they'll burn the corn for heat!!

We deal with Froling appliances made in austria (biothermic.ca) and they will burn cord wood at close to 90% efficiency. They also burn wood chips at the same efficiency. ALL cordwood burning appliance are in the 40% to 60% efficiency range unless they are gasification combustors.

Sadly, growth in technology and understanding here will grow very very slowly until fossil fuel prices go up further. For me it's cold enough through the winter that heat represents a much larger piece of our energy puzzle.
 
nuthin_special said:
Frash, how much space are you heating with 800mbtu? That should heat a really big building.

Portage and main makes quality products and they seem to be more innovative for north american manufacturers but outdoor, open system boilers are inherently inefficient. So are horizontal heat exchangers. Have you talked to Tarm Biomass? They are nearish to you.

Also not sure how you get more BTUs out of wood chips than cord wood, especially 23% more. It's easy to get cord wood to 20%Mc but very difficult to get chips to that. Also, if you take one ton of cord wood and chip it, it's going to yield 1 ton of wood chips. It won't magically make more energy just by chipping. They are likely quoting that difference because they get a higher efficiency burn from wood chips that cord wood which is the fault of the appliance and not related to the fuel.

Good luck storing and feeding 41% MC chips, there will be many problems. You can get lower MC in your accumulating or chipping phase but putting wet chips into any small boiler system will lead to headaches.


Call Tarm and look at a Froling, you'll spend more in the short term but save tons in the long term.
V
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Our building is 10,000square feet. We want to set up a kiln too.

What you said makes sense about the difference in the btu deal...
I was explained that the inherent inefficiencies with cord wood /or chunks is bringing the wood up to combustion temp. It robs the efficiency of the process....Imagine little pieces being feed at a time as opposed to big dense "cold" chunks. Kinda why pellet stove are so efficient...remember this is what some one explained to me.

With regards to the moisture content the engineer explained they qualify the boiler with worst case situation fuel. They do not expect people to feed that wet a chips into it.

Going to look into tarm thanks.
 
I haven't gotten to read through this whole thing so forgive me if it's already been mentioned. I've seen talk of kilns. I've dried lumber before and I think it took about 2-3 years for 2" thick material, drying it the old school way with stickers, air drying. Then not too long ago I began giving some lumber to bowl turners, and in return took a free class on turning. The kiln they used to dry wood took about a month, maybe less, and all it was was an old stand-up freezer with a light bulb in it. Apparently the incandescent bulb was all that was needed for the proper kiln temperature. I'm sure for more board feet that won't work but does a larger kiln have to be expensive? Or take up tons of space?
 
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