Tree chipped mulch as fuel ?

[Dustyw]

If i ever get my splitter done and my wood for the winter i want to try to get a small engine to run on wood chips (wood gasificaton). Once i get that down, i think it would be cool to run my log splitter on wood chips instead of gasoline. Just day dreaming again.

 

[scottcopper]

chips in an owb

i do use chips in my empyre works well in the spring and fall for me . my owb has tubes that inject air across the coals not just a fan in the door .hope this helps

Hello Porta Mill, do you mind expanding a bit on your burn set up? It seems like you have a way to heat a building using chips? In Alaska so going to burn a lot. Appreciate your time.

 

[muddstopper]

I dont know how this thread escaped my attention for so many years, but since it was brought back up I wanted to add a comment. Never tried burning wood chips in my wood stove, but have a little experience buring it in pile outside. My brother used to fill his horse stalls with pine shavings to make it easier to clean. He would pile the shavings and horse poop in a big pile and let it just sit in the weather until he had enough to spread on his pasture. Occasionally he would throw a bunch of boxes, or other wood trash in the pile and sit it on fire. It didnt really burn, but it would smoulder for weeks. Now this pile has been sitting untouched for a couple of years and has shrunk down in size a bunch and I was wanting something to put in the bottom of my new raised beds so I took the tractor and got a few scoops. Well guess what, when I broke open the interior of that pile, it started smokeing and caught back on fire. Now this had been laying in the pile in the weather for at least two years and it still had enough heat in it to start burning again. One thing I am pretty sure of, but havent tried, is that wood chips stored outside will collect a lot of moisture. I believe a tree cut into firewood and stacked on the ground will decompose faster than a bunch of chips placed in a pile.As for burning chips, I think it would be very important to store the chips in the dry to get rid of as much moisture as possible. Even then, I believe just dumping the chips in the stove would produce more smoke than flame. I think the dumped chips would rob the fire from any oxygen it needs in order to burn. If the chips are dry, I think the use of some sort of auger to sprinkle the chips in the firebox would work, it would be like burning pellets in a pellet stove. As for compressing it into logs, the pressure would help squeeze out the moisture, but I dont know if a normal wood splitter would be enough tonnage to squeeze the chips dry. Sounds like a good way to break a good wood splitter. If I was going to try compressing the chips into logs, I would probably run the chips thru some sort of grinder at least one more time to get the chips small enough to actually compress. If I was going to make something to compress the chipss, I would look into a roller mill instead of using hydraulic pressure. Anyways, just a few thoughts on a very old revived thread. Never know when a new ideal will popup because someone read this and decided they could build a better mouse trap.

 

[scottcopper]

Thanks Muddstopper. You fleshed out some of the thoughts that I had. I was hoping that someone had designed a stove for burning chips and I could figure out the other details like a silo and auger system for storage and transfer. Most of what I have locally is Black Spruce and it's pretty hard to get a lot of wood out of those things. Using the whole tree as a chipped product seemed to be worth chasing that rabbit trail.

 

[BeatCJ]

Hello Porta Mill, do you mind expanding a bit on your burn set up? It seems like you have a way to heat a building using chips? In Alaska so going to burn a lot. Appreciate your time.

Sorry, @scottcopper . Portamill posted that in 2009 and hasn't been here since 2016. You probably won't get an answer to your query.