[Default] On Sat, 25 Jan 2014 20:23:14 -0500,Alex English <engl...@kingston.net> wrote:
>If I were to dry wood chips, I'd be building a variation on the linear >corn crib. > >http://tinyurl.com/pdq4uhp > >Wide enough for a loader and a minimum of 7 meters tall*.* Planks at >loader scraping height with wire or chain link fencing above. >Polyethylene roof. Orient it across the path of the summer winds if >possible. > >Having tried it at a smaller scale, I'm inclined to think it would work >here with one or two good drying months out of twelve. I've always advocated using solar energy for drying and this is just another example. I've discussed much the same with a local farmer and woodchip boiler owner, he has a three sided barn which he uses a bucket loader to move the chips around and present fresh surface to the air. We have considered using pallets on their side in a configuration like your corn crib. In UK we have about 1m of rain (more this year than most) and about 30cm of evaporation so a large chip heap soaks up more moisture than it loses if it cannot shed or drain rain. As a vegetation management company we produce chip all the year round and it's impractical for us to store it for a season, so it's shipped to a biomass plant on a regular basis at 45% mc wwb. On the smaller boilers it really needs to get below 30%mc in order to have a clean burn. A clean burn requires high temperature combustion and on a lossy burner it is simply not possible to raise all the water to the required temperature. This is exacerbated in char making as you are trying to retain 50% of the energy in the byproduct, which is why pre drying is more important in char making. AJH _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address stoves@lists.bioenergylists.org to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
