James and All, For our stove testing, we purchased one large, freshly cut "green" log. We cut the log into the desired size for fuel wood. We allowed the wood to air dry until it reached the desired moisture content. Then we packed half of the wood into air-tight drums and stored the drums in a freezer to prevent mold from growing on the wood. We allowed the other half to air dry until it reached equilibrium with ambient humidity. The low-moisture wood was 10% average moisture content (wet basis), and the high-moisture wood (in the freezer) was 26% average moisture content (wet basis). We measured moisture content using the oven-drying method. We removed high-moisture wood from the freezer, as needed, and thawed it out to ambient temperature (inside a sealed plastic bag) before using it for testing stoves. We measured moisture content of the wood on each day of testing. This method worked well for us, and hope it might be helpful.
Jim ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:07:24 +0200 From: James Robinson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: [Stoves] Controlling wood moisture content for stove testing in a lab Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Dear all, Is anyone using a system to control the moisture content of wood (or other fuels) for stove testing in a laboratory? I was thinking along the lines of a humidity/temperature controlled cabinet with multiple sections to allow for the grading of MC in a variety of samples. A quick web search turned up a number of systems but none that obviously fit the requirement. A home made system is also a possibility. Cheers, James Robinson SeTAR Centre University of Johannesburg _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address Stoves mailing list 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://www.bioenergylists.org/ [email protected] http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
