Woodchip pile combustion

[Ty Korrigan]

Although I've never had any issues with woodchip combusting, I do get the occasional customer comment that their woodchip pile is smouldering.

It never is though.

We know that.

However, it got me thinking after learning a local biomass company has suffered severe fires in their rather large chip piles which proved very difficult to extinguish, that there might be a 'critical mass' where pyrolysis occurs.

I found this article which I'm saving for my 5 hour ferry crossing tomorrow: 

Low temperature ignition of biomass - ScienceDirect

WWW.SCIENCEDIRECT.COM

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Biomass is an especially reactive fuel. There have been large...

 

 

Any-one had any experience of fire in woodchip piles?

  Stuart

 

[Khriss]

Yup. Big fire by M1 a few years back, 2004 i think. Tree company woodchip pile went up.  K

[Luckyeleven]

A fire might occur where the following conditions are met:

 

• The pile is large and core temperature reaches 150 F or higher.
• High summer temperatures and pile heat encourage evaporation of moisture from the setup.
• Lack of uniform moisture in the pile leads to dry pockets, i.e., combustible material.
• Wet organics are compacted in the pile, perhaps due to inadequate turning and churning and possibly due to lack of adequate coarse bulking material. This leads to pockets of anaerobic decomposition producing methane gas.

 

In summary, dry areas (combustible material) plus heat plus methane gas result in flash point which result in fire ignition.

 

[scbk]

There was one in Aberdeenshire, burnt for 10 months. Not sure if it was woodchip/green waste/compost

 

 

Compost fire to be extinguished after 10 months - letsrecycle.com

WWW.LETSRECYCLE.COM

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Keenan Recycling claims that the fire smouldering since June 2012 at its Aberdeenshire composting plant will be...

 

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

It's a little bit off topic but might be of interest....

 

 

[Ty Korrigan]

3 hours ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

It's a little bit off topic but might be of interest....

 

 

That... is clearly a miniaturised mobile V2 launching platform...

   Stuart

[Peasgood]

Next door chipped a load of Leylandii for biomass,  By a load I mean Stobarts were running 3 artics and didn't come close to keeping up which resulted in a big heap left here.

That caught on fire, brigade was out all night messing with it. Don't really know why as there were no properties near it and remote enough not to matter.

[aspenarb]

If chip is not being shifted reasonably quickly it needs turning, building a mountain of the stuff and neglecting it is just asking for trouble. Three fairly big chip fires around here in recent years have caused havoc, one in particular couldn't be extinguished despite several attempts and had to be capped with soil (expensive). I won't give it yard space.

 

Bob

[HuntingHicap]

I worked on a greenwaste site years ago, if compost is stockpiled, as in built up in a heap, tracked down, more put on top, a fire is inevitable. Impossible to put out by conventional means. Had to build a temporary pond next to the mound and process the compost by the digger bucket load through the water.

[HuntingHicap]

The correct way is to wind row it and turn regularly. Smells lovely.