Hi Derek, I have a little experience with cherry pits. Are you on Michigan? Do you know what it costs to heat the green house with natural gas?
Burning the pits while wet, will use up much of the energy that is needed in the radiation, and convection sections of your boiler. The energy used to evaporate water in the wet fuel will just go up the stack, rather than go into your circulating water. To dry cherry pits I use a box that is large, easy to fill, and empty with a tractor-loader. The floor of the box has screen where unheated air from an electric blower pushes upwards through the bed. Bed depth is around one meter. In usual Michigan late summer weather conditions, 5 days is enough time to lower pit moisture content to around 15%. Electric use of the blower is tiny, compared to the chemical potential-energy in the pits. Chip Energy of Illinois has equipment right off the shelf. These are the top-lighted updraft type (T-LUD). Cherry pits were tested, and found to be a very nice fuel for these boilers. http://www.chipenergy.com/images/pdf_docs/FlashBoiler.pdf Hope this helps, Andrew Schofield Renewable Fuel Systems > I have a large supply of wet cherry pits and I want to burn them to produce > hot water for heating my greenhouse. > > I have a 200,000BTU natural gas boiler I would like to run 24/7. The hot > water would enter a large storage tank for immediate or later use. > > My thought was to make an updraft top loading gasifier. The hope being that > this would dry the pits sufficiently for burning. I would run the producer > gas through a rad to remove as much moisture as possible and then pump the > dry gas into the boiler. > > I understand that an updraft style gasifier will not crack the tars. Will > this require frequent cleaning of the boiler? Reduce efficiency? > > I understand the basic principles involved, but would love some input before > I start chopping and welding. _______________________________________________ Gasification mailing list [email protected] http://listserv.repp.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_listserv.repp.org http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org http://info.bioenergylists.org UNSUBSCRIBE HERE; http://listserv.repp.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_listserv.repp.org
