Best setup for forestry and chipper work?

[mendiplogs]

We have a local small estate around 1500 acres has gone down the same route, even with lots of woodland he struggles to feed the beast and it's not even a chip boiler.

 

Suggest to him to get a burn anything boiler (ie: logs/bails etc)... As 200 acres will be bare in no time.

 

In my humble opinion you'll be buying in chip in no time so is not worth the expense in investing money in drying and extraction. Also a correct storage shed will be needed.

 

Another local big estate has about 2000-4000 tons of softwood laying beside there chip shed and get a 500hp chipper in three times odds a year.. The boiler maybe heats 8-10 houses and the big house. The scale is ridiculous and if the government wasn't paying him to do it - it simply wouldn't be viable.

 

200 acres of land is a small piece of land to run a biomass boiler from. Especially at 20 tons a week!!!

 

However I maybe wrong and have been may times before! Just my observations between the people I know that have big boilers.

 

Hi mate I no of some to in the same boat mate 200acres will not last long thanks Jon

[theflyingscotsman]

Hi Jon,

 

Hope you've had a lovely Christmas!

 

Yes the chap in question even has a wood of around 2000-3000 tons of softwood ( most of it wind blown) so would make great fuel..

 

Problem is that the access is horrendous (extremely steep and hilly ground) and will likely kill the poor inexperienced chap he pays 7.50ph to haul out! The wood is only about 5miles from the boiler but in my opinion not worth getting as it's not viable to harvest and cart the wood with (only safe way) a forwarder to a hard standing where a lorry could cart it the last few road miles..

 

Madness...and little common sense employed when it comes to getting something for free or perhaps even get paid to do it.. Sod how we'll feed the beast it's free!!

 

The scale of the big estate is quite shocking the money that's been invested to heat a handful of houses ... I'd bet my life if the government wasn't paying it would not be viable to set up and run..

 

I do think though if it where a sawmill with an endless amount of waste wood and sawdust to dispose of it would be a great idea to make biomass a heating option. As it would both heat the houses and buildings surrounding but also save the need to cart the waste off site saving time and money...so in some settings biomass boilers are excellent.

 

Anyway.. Hope everyone's has had a great Christmas and that Santa was good to you all

[renewablejohn]

Thank you all very much for the replies so far they are all much appreciated.

 

The replies would be much better if we new what spec the boilers are or even just the model numbers so we could look up the specs. Big difference in operation having a boiler which will run with 50% MC to one that needs less than 20% MC.

[openspaceman]

5 boilers burning 20 tonnes per week means they will be very small. Therefore the chip delivery system will almost certainly be very sensitive to any out of spec chip. If you do buy a chipper you need to make sure it is absolutely top notch to provide this standard of chip. One of our boilers can burn more than 20 tonnes a day and overlength pieces can still stop it. As matter of interest why didn't your woodland owner go for a centralized system with one larger less sensitive boiler. Unless the houses are very large distances apart it must be the cheaper and certainly the more reliable way

RHI funded drying I presume.

 

I wouldn't consider a boiler burning 4 tonne/week small. The biggest I dealt with was 1MW and running a department store and that didn't manage 20.

 

I wonder if there are estimates of the split of home grown biomass consumption between large installations and little stoves in homes only burning a couple of tonnes per year.

 

How do the longer bits stop yours? they generally don't jam my 150kW one but tend to lift a safety flap whish causes a burn out. Mine constantly short cycles because of insufficient load.

[cornish wood burner]

Merry Christmas open spaceman

I guess it is all relative. We run our RHI funded 1 MW. 24/7 and hope to put through up to 50 tonnes a week.

Both our boilers have walking floors with the feed controlled via phoocells. Auger size on the 1 MW is about 250 as far as I remember but is prone to long pieces hanging across the auger blocking a photocell. Runs out of chip then of course. Another rarer trick is for a long piece to poke the blockage flap open same as yours. Sometimes we get zero blockages in 500 tonnes but a batch with some overlenght bits in can easily result in many stops.

Our 3 MW has 330 dia augers and is far more forgiving as it needs longer pieces to bridge or stick into the photocell line of sight. It did have trouble with very dry fines rattling down the auger and eventually

causing a jam. It was install too steep by the installer but we changed this and has been OK since.

We buy our wood in but use around 3000 tonnes pa depending on the temperatures.

[walkerboys]

Something like this would extract your timber I came across it in a yard while tipping some chip off old but cheap

[openspaceman]

Merry Christmas open spaceman

 

Same to you and all Cornish

 

I guess it is all relative. We run our RHI funded 1 MW. 24/7 and hope to put through up to 50 tonnes a week.

 

At 30% mc wwb shouldn't it top out at about 42 tonnes?

 

Both our boilers have walking floors with the feed controlled via phoocells.

 

Do you mean the feed to the stoking auger is a walking floor or that the grate is a reciprocating walking floor? We had this latter on the Kobs with the feed controlled by 2 light barriers, the first to sense when the feed was too low and the second to sense the leading edge of the heap and stop the feed. A third over the tail end of the grate sensed ash build up and started the de ashing auger.

 

I loved working on these and snagging the installations, it was always out of spec fuel or the fuel store that caused problems and yes I also had a long shard jam in the light barrier tube and cause a burn out. I wish I were still involved in the business.

 

Our 3 MW has 330 dia augers and is far more forgiving as it needs longer pieces to bridge or stick into the photocell line of sight. It did have trouble with very dry fines rattling down the auger and eventually

causing a jam. It was install too steep by the installer but we changed this and has been OK since.

 

We didn't have any inclined augers (except in pellet stoves) but still managed to snap the drive chain and eventually auger shaft on a 500kW because of fines jamming the auger.

[cornish wood burner]

Hi open spaceman

Always worked on 4KWh/kg @20% and 3.5@ 30%, boiler efficiency at 90%? With a little cleaning time gave me 50 tonne

Walking floor holding 120 tonnes of chip, the chip then drops into a cross auger (extract) that then feeds the stoker auger. Photocells look across the extract to start the walking floor. Another photo in the stoker feed chamber to start the extract.

Our de- ashing is on timers so fairly simple there. I have made timers to give an air blast over the photocells which shift most chip but still get some problems mid auger.

200,000 ltr accumulator tank through the byroads was interesting.

 

The 3MW was our first and I had little input in the design layout but for the second I made sure things were to my liking and especially that there were no sloping augers. Lesson learned the hard way. The first install company are still installing near vertical augers which only work with screened chip. We looked at one of their systems when choosing the 1MW. They obviously have not learnt so lost a sale.

Totally agree about the out of spec chip and I too enjoy the snagging and fine tuning.

Hate drive chains, lost a couple but job for the apprentice now I think.

If you ever are passing Plymouth and would like a look around pm me.