Does anyone build a wood chip burning stove? There is a wood chip steam plant near me and it got me thinking. It would be a lot cheaper to skip the whole pellet phase and just burn chips.
Wood chip stove. ???
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Thought the same thing when buying a huge bag of cedar pet bedding chips for my kids Guinea Pig. Don't think there is a chip stove though, just a wood stove.
Mike -
Mike -
Nope, I haven't seen anything either.
I think it would be too easy for use to make our own fuel. Pellet making equipment is expessive. A wood chipper would be pretty cheap.
All the pellet mills would have to close :red:
just my 2
jay
I think it would be too easy for use to make our own fuel. Pellet making equipment is expessive. A wood chipper would be pretty cheap.
All the pellet mills would have to close :red:
just my 2
jay
- Feb 27, 2007
- 145
If you think pellets were in demand last year..... times it by 5 when it comes to chips. Pulp/Paper mills need wood chips to operate. Althought when thinking about it....Pulp/Paper mills pay about $50-75/ per BDT. for chips.
Vs $3 / Ton for sawdust.... We go from $3 to around 2-300 for finished pellets.
Can you imagine the cost of an end user produced wood chip to burn in a stove starting at $60/ton for the raw material....yowwza.
Vs $3 / Ton for sawdust.... We go from $3 to around 2-300 for finished pellets.
Can you imagine the cost of an end user produced wood chip to burn in a stove starting at $60/ton for the raw material....yowwza.
i cant see it as practical except in a boiler or forced air furnace due to the size of the fuel chips and the size the auger system and burn pot wuld have to be to accomodate it. storage would be more challenging as well. it could be done , but im not sure it could be done in a practical way for domestic home heating. maybe schools or buisnesses which could use boiler or forced air. i think it would just be too big and clunky for home use
I have read of people who made their own, the guy I am thinking of worked at a lumber mill that just happened to make wood chips as the waste, He made his own stove and it used a compressor to "blow" the chips into the fire as needed. Then the chips were no longer waste and he lost his source of free heat, so he made a sawdust stove that used compressed air to blow the sawdust into the fire (made kind of a roaring sound), then his company started selling the sawdust so that was the end of that also. Look around online you may find plans for something like his idea. I think the stoves were sold to scrap dealer after that.
About 25 years ago University of Maine had two departments reasearching and building woodstoves. The mechanical engineering group came up with Dick Hills "wood boiler" which was a gasifier for logs and the agricultural engineering department came up with a wood chip furnace. It was a lot more complicated requiring an oil burner to start the fire. If also was pretty large and required a large silo next to the house. There were also issues with mositure content and particulate carryover.
I expect what has doomed the concept is the moisture content, although fuel uniformity is another issue. Dried wood chips are availlable as sawmill waste on occasion but normal wood chips availlable on the market are whole tree chips which were probably standing timber with leaves a couple fo days before the chips were delivered. Usually they are around 48%. There is no real easy way to dry them and if you leave them in piles they are wet enough that they will spontaneously combust. A lot of schools in VT us wood chip boilers but they are a lot larger than a standard house unit. About the smallest installation (which is open for tours) is a that Socienty for the Protection of NH forest near Concord NH. They has a small system that heats 4 energy efficient buildings. The building housing the equipment and chip storage is about the size of a two car garage. They are also limited to a high grade dry chip produced by a sawmill.
I suspect over the years a lot of folks decided that in order to solve the problems with wood chip thay had to improve the fuel by increasing it uniformity and reducing its moisture content pluys simplifying the system, the net result is a wood pellet boiler, as wood pellet is basically a wood chip that has been dried and made to a uniform size.
I expect what has doomed the concept is the moisture content, although fuel uniformity is another issue. Dried wood chips are availlable as sawmill waste on occasion but normal wood chips availlable on the market are whole tree chips which were probably standing timber with leaves a couple fo days before the chips were delivered. Usually they are around 48%. There is no real easy way to dry them and if you leave them in piles they are wet enough that they will spontaneously combust. A lot of schools in VT us wood chip boilers but they are a lot larger than a standard house unit. About the smallest installation (which is open for tours) is a that Socienty for the Protection of NH forest near Concord NH. They has a small system that heats 4 energy efficient buildings. The building housing the equipment and chip storage is about the size of a two car garage. They are also limited to a high grade dry chip produced by a sawmill.
I suspect over the years a lot of folks decided that in order to solve the problems with wood chip thay had to improve the fuel by increasing it uniformity and reducing its moisture content pluys simplifying the system, the net result is a wood pellet boiler, as wood pellet is basically a wood chip that has been dried and made to a uniform size.
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