Burning wood chips in a log burning stove?

[Dr.Green]

Do u recon you could make brikettes with freash chip , press , and then stove out of sight out of wind for a while.. mind u , would take weeks to make use of a truck full of chip , but , another money spinner maybe on damp days

[ChissayLuke]

Thank you for all your kind thoughts!

I have a couple of questions:

LogBaron - I never heard of wood gas before, but this sounds a bit scary. Would this suddenly build up? Or simply pass up the chimney as it is produced? Why would I get more of it from chip than logs?

Marc Lewis - I can leave the chip to season easily if this will help,. but why do I need to do do it this way round, please?

Thank you again,

Luke.

[Brett]

i would be thinking about taking the 1-2k and buying a better, high efficiency stove, my stove can burn for days without having to relight.

[Paul Smith]

The chip will start to break down immediately if stored in piles, easier to store as brash to dry then chip. Does mean you have a mountain of brash though. Wood gas, look up wood gasification , you will be surprised how much energy comes from burning wood! I think this is the future, you can even run a generator directly from a wood burner burning the wood gas. Wood burning stoves will soon be made to utilise this!👍

[ChissayLuke]

Thank you Paul,

I have space (and time) to lay the chips out quite thinly to dry out first - then put them into loosely covered metre cubed open stillages. Would this stop them from breaking down?

Thanks,

Luke

[pie eater pete]

Interesting thread. My concern with making briquettes out of chip would be getting them to bind together? But on the plus side the chip won't take as long to season.

[Paul Smith]

Thank you Paul,

I have space (and time) to lay the chips out quite thinly to dry out first - then put them into loosely covered metre cubed open stillages. Would this stop them from breaking down?

Thanks,

Luke

 

 

Luke, the chips start to break down immediately, unless you can dry them very quickly maybe with a forced air system?

[Marc Lewis]

Sorry Luke, I used the wrong word 'must'. I have found it burns better this way round as the wood chip starts to break down after chipping with the high moisture content.

[Joy Yeomans]

as wood burns its first phase of burning is wood gas which is flammable my only reservation was if you layered too thick s layer all across the width/length of stove it may form a dense layer that the gas couldnt escape from to combust and so blow out and my concern would be if the stove was well sealed i.e air tight where and what consequences would that produce in a domestic fire perhaps renewable john would be the one to answer this for us.

joy

 

Sent from my GT-I8160 using Tapatalk 2

[zeroluke]

Thank you Paul,

I have space (and time) to lay the chips out quite thinly to dry out first - then put them into loosely covered metre cubed open stillages. Would this stop them from breaking down?

Thanks,

Luke

 

Why are you so set in stone with chipping it first? There is a wood chip pile up the road from me nearly as tall as my house. If you stick a spade into it, it will come out steaming hot! That is how fast it breaks down, and how unstoppable the process is once it starts. laying them out to dry with a forced air system or otherwise would be more costly, and the moisture would only seep back in, just like kiln dried firewood. Believe us when we say the best bet is to leave the small and twig wood over summer to dry, doing nothing with it, and then chip it as you need and store it in a silo / barrel or something else suitable . Otherwise you are wasting effort really. You could even be really clever and chip it straight into a silo with a auger and pipe and push it all the way to a pre burn chamber, if you were to build a rocket mass heater with one.