[Gasification] Why would you want to make heating grade woodgas?

[Jeff Davis]

Dear Chipsters,


Having a sawmill I was able to saw 4/4 boards or slabs then sticker
them. After drying they chipped well and made fairly consistent chips, I
didn't see a need to screen them. A nice amount of the fines would blow
away with the wind so some kind of air separator (cyclone) might be just
the ticket with dry material.

The down side is that it may take more energy to chip dry wood and it
did seem to be noisier. The sawmill is kind of an extra step but the
logs have to be broken down some how unless you have a whole tree
chipper but then you end up with wet chips and bark crap in your chips.
Difficult to make much production chipping branches.

The up side is that your stacks store/dry well outside and are easy to
handle with a fork lift. This seemed to produce a consistent chip with
less fines (plus wind). You might be able to adjust the size of the chip
by sawing different size slabs.

Having sharp blades seemed to reduce fines.

Also, keep an eye on blade angle.

Personally I don't care much for chippers. The affordable ones are on
the junkie side, the high performance ones are dangerous and expensive
and of course they all need maintained well. People have been sucked
into them, now you see Fred and now you don't. The whole tree scale,
with knuckle boom loader, would be the safest and the specific cost
might be the cheapest.



Chips ahoy,


Jeff