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

[Mark Ludlow]

Hi Jeff,

During one of the previous "great recessions", a mill where I lived in
Oregon chipped unit after unit of dimensional lumber because home building
was slow and toilet paper wasn't, I suppose.

There's just something about sawing boards then chipping them that 'goes
against the grain' if you'll pardon my bad pun. Recoverable biomass was the
magnet that brought a lot of people to gasification. I think that your other
initiatives for gasifier fueling are a lot more interesting and sustainable
than turning boards into chips, especially in a world hungry for shelter.

Best regards, Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
Davis
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 9:25 PM
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
Subject: Re: [Gasification] Why would you want to make heating grade
woodgas?

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


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