Could brash be compacted and baled ?

[Daniël Bos]

With hay and straw, the size of bales got dictated by weight, as you still had to lift the baled material.

 

Then tractors got loaders and balers got big, as now the limiting factor is the transport size.

 

If you baled brash the same as straw, you'd not be able to lift the bale, which would therefore need a loader....

 

Then you have the problems associated with small bales of uneven material -they bend and fall apart- and small bits fall out.

 

How about going from the existing situation, devise a way of bagging the Woodchip in mesh bags/nets. Then they could be stored and dried like your bales?

[Dean Lofthouse]

 

Is this the one you mean, Dean?

 

That's it Chris, the one at the show is a variation of that one with the hopper much lower.

 

With biomass boilers coming on scene, these will be a good manual fed alternative to hopper fed woodchip types and the problems of drying the chip

[doobin]

Do they not have the local authority collect brash with a grab wagon in Sweden or somewhere like that? I'm sure I remember reading similar on here.

[splinters]

this chipper bagger doesn't seem to compact it very much so surely it would burn rather quickly. you need one of the small straw balers like what the little old MF tractors towed just beefed up a bit. having said that as soon as the strings on a bale melted through the whole bale would twang undone anyway.

[skyhuck]

Is the simple answer not just a chip burning boiler?

[Daniël Bos]

Is the simple answer not just a chip burning boiler?

 

Trust you to ruin a good hypothetical solution with reason and common sense!

[Woodworks]

I have one of the branch loggers similar to the one in the video posted here. The end product does burn well but it fair to say that it is not very dense and someway to process brash that left it denser would be good. It burns lovely in my workshop stove which is top loading.

[Dean Lofthouse]

Is the simple answer not just a chip burning boiler?

 

It would, it's the drying of the chip that's the problem not burning it.

 

Re compacting the logettes more, that would cause a problem with drying them. The while point is to bag them green and reasonably loose to allow airflow to dry them

[openspaceman]

Is the simple answer not just a chip burning boiler?

 

Probably not on the small scale, the stoking mechanism and storage gets higher than the cost of the fire box and heat exchanger. That's why pellets got popular. they moved the extra capital cost from the point of use to the pellet mill.

 

Also the bulk density of uncompacted woodchip is poor, fresh branch wood, chipped, occupies about 3m3 per tonne, stacked roundwood is half that and compressed baled wood can get near to stacked roundwood.

 

Chips don't dry very well and they compost to some extent whereas bales dry in a stack outside and shed water much like roundwood does.

 

Chips also offer more resistance to air flow in a burner, requiring, normally, both primary and induced draught fans. Mind I'm an advocate of fans for wood burning anyway ans their electricity cost is relatively low compared with the total heat output.

[Dean Lofthouse]

Re: fans for firewood burning, the reason I looked into logettes is so I didn't have to have a fan assisted burn because I'd be living off grid