Chippings Sawdust vs firewood

[WetWood]

I have a lot of softwood waste that I can process into firewood and make small money from for a lot of work, or I could consider hiring a wood chipper and putting it through the chipper

If I did that my questions would be

1. how easy is it to sell as chippings/ sawdust?

2. how much a cubic meter I would get for this?

3. what is the volume comparison (cubic meter) of firewood to sawdust/wood chip?

[easy-lift guy]

Unless you have an existing market for your material, I would spend as little time and money processing what you have any further. You may discover that your ROI deminishes very quickly with more processing and handling.

easy-lift guy

[cornish wood burner]

First find your market. Price chipping and transport.

Boilers take a variety of chip size. G30 is the normal one used in small boilers. We can use G50 or G100. You can see the sizes that means by looking up chip specs.

By a lot of softwood you need to be talking more than 100 tonnes to make it worth while. Chipper traveling and set up needs to be paid for.

It costs us just under £20 a cube or £70 / tonne to produce our chip. That includes buying the wood. Chipping is under £10/ tonne using a 600 to 800 mm capacity chipper.

If you have the wood it will cost you circa £15 / tonne to chip providing you hire a reasonable chipper and operator. Assuming you have enough to justify his visit. Don't be tempted to get a small chipper just because your wood is small. Big is much cheaper.

You mention sawdust several times, forget this, boilers and buyers will not accept sawdust.

Moisture content for biomass will need to be between 20 and 35% for most boilers

[WetWood]

I dont have a lot of experance in this job so sorry I dont know what you are both saying

[harvey b davison]

how much softwood waste do you have ?

 

Is it tree waste, joinery off cuts ?

 

is it clean wood ?

 

do you have access to any machinery ?

[gdh]

I dont have a lot of experance in this job so sorry I dont know what you are both saying

 

If you're selling it for burning in biomass boilers it needs to be chipped to a certain size eg g30 which is 30mm maximum. It also needs to be dry.

[openspaceman]

If you're selling it for burning in biomass boilers it needs to be chipped to a certain size eg g30 which is 30mm maximum. It also needs to be dry.

 

I wish: G30 can have slivers up to 8.5cms long as long as their surface area is <3cm2

 

In fact it was slivers longer than this and fines that caused the most problems.

 

When I test wood chip supplies of G30 W30 ten years ago I never found a sample in spec for size distribution or moisture content being below 30% wwb.

[gdh]

I wish: G30 can have slivers up to 8.5cms long as long as their surface area is <3cm2

 

In fact it was slivers longer than this and fines that caused the most problems.

 

When I test wood chip supplies of G30 W30 ten years ago I never found a sample in spec for size distribution or moisture content being below 30% wwb.

 

Yes, I don't know of a chipper that doesn't make any slithers. Our heizohach has a sieve in it before the chip leaves the drum but obviously it can't stop stuff going lengthways. Saying that we haven't had a boiler blockage yet.

[openspaceman]

Yes, I don't know of a chipper that doesn't make any slithers. Our heizohach has a sieve in it before the chip leaves the drum but obviously it can't stop stuff going lengthways. Saying that we haven't had a boiler blockage yet.

 

Actually once they went over to an auger in a square tube slivers weren't a problem. The feed auger on a one of our boilers successfully passed my 13mm ratchet spanner into the fire We broke an auger when it repeatedly jammed on dust.

[cornish wood burner]

Yes, I don't know of a chipper that doesn't make any slithers. Our heizohach has a sieve in it before the chip leaves the drum but obviously it can't stop stuff going lengthways. Saying that we haven't had a boiler blockage yet.

 

Best sample we have had is from a Musmax. Even with an 80 mm screen it still produces a very good chip with very little in the 100mm plus range. Even slabwood chip is quite acceptable. They have obviously produced a good system that doesn't seem to need a tight screen.