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What is the best type of wood you have used for your stove?


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This is from the Navitron site -

 

Chipboard - Definitely do not burn in a woodstove- gives off toxic formaldehyde fumes - smells really bad as well as being highly toxic, and carcinogenic. Ref.1 suggests that chipboard can be burnt safely at 800C

Particle Board (eg MDF) - Do not burn - highly toxic, gives off toxic formaldehyde and other toxic fumes. Smells really bad when burnt. Carcinogenic.

Plywood - Definitely do not burn in a woodstove - gives off toxic formaldehyde and/or dioxins formed by reactions with phenolic glues (perhaps not all plywoods will have phenolic glues,but how would you know?). Ref.1 suggests that plywood can be burned safely at over 600C.

I assume on a scale of bad to not so bad, chipboard and particle board are worst, whereas plywood and stirling board/fibreboard are not as bad
'Tanalised' Timber eg roof battens, fencing, fenceposts - Difficult to know with this one. If it has the new type of pressure treatment called 'ACQ' - it has copper compounds and 'quat' - a disinfectant (ref2) so it doesn't sound like it's a problem - in which case offcuts of new materials should be fine. Old tanolised goods may have been subject to the 'CCA' treatment which involved aresenic, which is highly toxic, and therefore shouldn't be burned

Railway sleepers - If they are untreated hardwood, there's no problem. If they are are ACQ treated (ie relatively new) then they should be no problem. If they are 'CCA' treated, then you should not burn for the reasons outlined above.

Painted Wood - Wood painted before the mid-70s may have traces of lead(ref.3). Lead can colour paint white, yellow, red, yellow, orange,grey, green or possibly red - so you can't just exclude one particular colour. If the wood is was painted with paint purchased after the mid70s, then I assume it's ok to burn (nb, you may have painted something last year with some left over paint from the early 70s).
 

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My employer runs two biomass power stations, one of which burns mainly virgin wood (oversized or undersized, twisted etc) which does not go to one of the two adjacent sawmills. The other burns grad waste wood - ply, MDF etc, about 200,000 tonnes per year in total. As such there is no need for this type of waste to go to China.

What's the difference between this and burning the same fuel on a stove? In the power station the emissions are recirculated in the boiler, flame temperature is closely controlled by forced and induced draft fans (air blown into and sucked out of the boiler), plus the flue gases are put through various scrubbing systems (particle filters, charcoal scrubber and bicarbonate of soda scrubber). Flame temperature manages dioxin, NOx etc, the post-combustion cleaning takes out other nasties like heavy metals (cadmium, lead etc).

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1 hour ago, djbobbins said:



What's the difference between this and burning the same fuel on a stove? 

A 'standard' wood stove can't reach the temps required to get rid of the dangerous emisssions. You illustrate how much control, sophisticated combustion and monitoring there is in an industrial power plant - you don't get that with a normal box stove.

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18 hours ago, woodrascal said:

This is from the Navitron site -

 

Chipboard - Definitely do not burn in a woodstove- gives off toxic formaldehyde fumes - smells really bad as well as being highly toxic, and carcinogenic. Ref.1 suggests that chipboard can be burnt safely at 800C

Particle Board (eg MDF) - Do not burn - highly toxic, gives off toxic formaldehyde and other toxic fumes. Smells really bad when burnt. Carcinogenic.

Plywood - Definitely do not burn in a woodstove - gives off toxic formaldehyde and/or dioxins formed by reactions with phenolic glues (perhaps not all plywoods will have phenolic glues,but how would you know?). Ref.1 suggests that plywood can be burned safely at over 600C.

I assume on a scale of bad to not so bad, chipboard and particle board are worst, whereas plywood and stirling board/fibreboard are not as bad

The point about burning these is not only do they need burning at high temperature (typically held over 800C for more than 2 seconds but also they need to be cooled rapidly to prevent  aldehydes and furans reforming.


'Tanalised' Timber eg roof battens, fencing, fenceposts - Difficult to know with this one. If it has the new type of pressure treatment called 'ACQ' - it has copper compounds and 'quat' - a disinfectant (ref2) so it doesn't sound like it's a problem - in which case offcuts of new materials should be fine. Old tanolised goods may have been subject to the 'CCA' treatment which involved aresenic, which is highly toxic, and therefore shouldn't be burned

This misses out that CCA  is an abbreviation for chrome copper arsenate, the copper and chromium are heavy metal poisons, worse is that the chromium changes state to the hexavalent form which is more toxic.


 

 

Edited by openspaceman
correction to temperature
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On 15/11/2018 at 14:29, difflock said:

BTW I strongly support local(within economic size constraints) incinerators, for dispos

I used to agree with this until I looked into it a bit more.  Particles below a certain size are just emitted into the atmosphere.  Up to a point we will get away with doing this but  as more incinerators are built and with all the other emissions I think maybe this is a step in the wrong direction.  

 

The UK is not too bad, but even here there is increasing awareness of the harm being caused.

 

Even burning pure wood is now being questioned in the press.

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