[Gasification] Size of blower and tumbler required to dry chip in a solar kiln

[David Coote]

As well as large amounts of unused waste woody biomass Australia also 
features a brutal summer in many regions as well as excellent insolation 
over much of the continent for the rest of the year. It's instructive to 
compare our peak sunhours (we have ~3GW of PV's installed ) against 
Germany's (~30GW of PV's installed.) A bad site in Australia would be an 
excellent site in Germany.

We're looking at several days around 40C in Melbourne this week after a 
record-breaking period two weeks ago with 4 consecutive days over 41C. 
Solar kilns can get very hot with this much insolation although this 
can, of course, be managed with airflow. Managing timber drying in a 
solar kiln requires some care to reduce checking etc but drying chip 
would be less sensitive.

Perhaps someone on the list could give some guidance on the following 
queries.

What size motor would be required to tumble a few meters of wet chip in 
a solar kiln? What sort of temperatures could the tumbler motor cope 
with if it was inside the solar kiln? (I guess the motor could be 
outside the kiln.) And what size blower would be required to move air 
through the rotating  mass of chip?

David