Interesting Paper. Creosote From burning Pine and Hardwoods various Moisture contents

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clemsonfor

clemsonfor

Minister of Fire
Dec 15, 2011
2,513
Greenwood county, SC
The results are contrary to what most have seen and reccomend here. I found this thing about 7 years ago and had printed a hard copy out for me a few years ago. I tried finding it the other night and could not so i made a PDF of my hard copy.

Shows that Seasoned Hardwood in most cases produced more creosote than green pine. Just skim through the paper and read and or look at the graphs. Granted this is in an old stove so im not saying it will work in my modern catalyst stove.

Just food for thought. I like realworld technical papers esp forestry related. But i am closer to school than many on here. I would sometimes get side tracked in my reasearch in grad school, reading totally unrelated papers on things that interested me.

Tried uploading the PDF but it wont allow it. Now i am forced to find it on the net!

http://www.gatrees.org/Resources/Publications/ForestMarketing/GFRP25.pdf
 
Interesting. That is not the first research that found dry wood produces more creosote. I don't know. I just know that dry wood is easier to burn. Smoldering fires produce creosote and EPA stove are better at burning the smoke, gases produced by a smoldering fire. KEEP YOUR FLUE CLEAN BY WHATEVER MEANS YOU HAVE. That is the bottom line, IMO.
 
It is interesting BUT they are trying to sell beetle killed pine. I know what I know by keeping track of the fuel I use in our stove and the condition of the flue. It is interesting though
 
mtarbert said:
It is interesting BUT they are trying to sell beetle killed pine. I know what I know by keeping track of the fuel I use in our stove and the condition of the flue. It is interesting though
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pick any subject and you will find "experts" that are on both sides of the issue. you find me an expert that says global warming is harming our planet, i'll show you an expert that says trees live and thrive on co2 and making less of it is harmfull to trees and thus our environment.
 
The paper was probly written after an epidemic year. I was born that year and dont keep up with the epidemic history and year of out breaks. I do know there cyclical and happen every 7-10 years. 2001 was our last bad year in upstate SC and N. GA. That said those years it happens there is so much wood much of it dosent get to a mill as there is just not capacity to use it. Southern pine only has weeks to a few months in the southern states and heat before it is degraded so much that it is of no use even to the pulp mills.

Point im getting at is there is so much of the stuff laying around all over the place in easy to get to spots they did reasearch on it for folks that want to burn it in stoves for fuel. Not every paper is to prove or sell something, many are done to educate even landowners on things.

Right now i am considering more pine to burn. I have always shunned it as the wives tale of crosote but more so that you have to burn twice as much for the sme heat almost. If im going to put effort into gathering wood i will get oak. But in my spot on public land i get wood much of the easy wood that is oak is gotten and the quality is going down as its more doady . But since NO one around here cuts pine and we have had bad Ipps beetle kills the last 5 years i have all the pine i could ever want right along the road sides that i can cut into the dirt road and load up.
 
That was a pretty interesting read. Certainly goes against the conventional wisdom we preach and practice here. I burn about 1.5 cords of seasoned, beetle-kill pine every season, and it's some of the cleanest fuel I burn. All I've ever gotten during my cleanings is the powdery/soot type creosote. I really think the secondary combustion design in today's stoves, when burned correctly, puts a major dent in the creosote factor...hardwood or soft wood.

It would be interesting to see the same study done using a modern EPA stove!
 
They weren't using a modern re-burn stove where that moisture would have prevented or impeded the secondary combustion. The study is irrelevant in relation to moisture content of wood burned in a modern re-burn stove.

Time for somebody to line up a couple of non-cats and do it all over again.
 
Right. I'll not burn any green wood and stick with the time proven dry hardwood. As for creosote, we're into our 5th winter with the Fireview and have yet to get any creosote from our chimney. In fact, we've cleaned the chimney one time since putting in that stove. Yes sir, I love dry hardwood. It keeps me warm.
 
Okay - I'm missing something. Why would the dry wood produce LESS creosote? I can understand that if you burn green wood on a hot fire the heat will drive the water in the wood up the chimney. So if you keep the fire hot enough you can burn green wood without having a lot of creosote. Of course we all know the problem with this - much of the energy of our hard work is wasted. Plus, a smoldering fire will also produce more creosote as the chimney is cooler and gases more likely to condensate. Can anyone explain then why the wood with less moisture would produce more creosote if you control for the airflow?

Very interesting read by the way. But somehow I can't bring myself to believe that green pine produces less creosote than dry oak.
 
This study shows why you need to burn the wood HOT no matter wet or dry. If you choke down a fire it will smoke. Smoke is unburned gasses and that goes out into the air and sticks to the chimney. The reason the green pine left less deposite was they had to burn it hotter to get it to burn. The reason there is so many chimney fire durring a cold spell is people choke down a fire when it is warm instead of building small fires and when it gets cold they build a big hot fire and there goes the chimney.
This is one of the reasons I love my gasification boiler WITH storage. Burn it hot every time with no smoke. Only a little fly ash ever in the chimney.
leaddog
 
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leaddog said:
This study shows why you need to burn the wood HOT no matter wet or dry. If you choke down a fire it will smoke. Smoke is unburned gasses and that goes out into the air and sticks to the chimney. The reason the green pine left less deposite was they had to burn it hotter to get it to burn. The reason there is so many chimney fire durring a cold spell is people choke down a fire when it is warm instead of building small fires and when it gets cold they build a big hot fire and there goes the chimney.
This is one of the reasons I love my gasification boiler WITH storage. Burn it hot every time with no smoke. Only a little fly ash ever in the chimney.
leaddog
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Does a "small fire" get an EPA stove (non-cat) hot enough to burn cleanly? I get the feeling that my PE Summit needs a pretty full load to burn cleanly. "Small hot fires" seem to be a contradiction.


I'm not disagreeing with your analysis, just with the solution.

It seems to me that is one advantage of a big heavy thermal mass stove (e.g. soapstone) that takes a long time to heat up and continues to give off the heat long after the fire is out.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

We usually use the pellet stove or the heat pump on milder days.

Ken
 
Too bad the authors didn't provide any discussion why they believe the results turned out the way they did. I wonder why they decided to adjust the fires so that the flue temperature was between 300 and 350F. Obviously that setting didn't allow enough air for complete combustion. I think this study shows that burning a wood stove too low causes creosote formation no matter what fuel is used. I can't explain why green pine caused the least creosote.
 
Interesting article. Wisdom around here is to never burn pine. I had to take 7 pines down in the fall to put my new septic in and right now they are just sitting at the edge of the hayfield. I need to take down 4 more and I am considering burning them in the stove...
hmmm...
 
simple.serf said:
Interesting article. Wisdom around here is to never burn pine. I had to take 7 pines down in the fall to put my new septic in and right now they are just sitting at the edge of the hayfield. I need to take down 4 more and I am considering burning them in the stove...
hmmm...
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C/S/S season & enjoy. Pine makes a quick hot fire when seasoned & burns as clean as any seasoned wood. As has been stated here many times. Many ares of the U.S. have only pine available for firewood & do fine with it. Dry wood solves most problems with wood heat. Just ask Dennis. :lol: A C
 
amateur cutter said:
simple.serf said:
Interesting article. Wisdom around here is to never burn pine. I had to take 7 pines down in the fall to put my new septic in and right now they are just sitting at the edge of the hayfield. I need to take down 4 more and I am considering burning them in the stove...
hmmm...
Click to expand...

C/S/S season & enjoy. Pine makes a quick hot fire when seasoned & burns as clean as any seasoned wood. As has been stated here many times. Many ares of the U.S. have only pine available for firewood & do fine with it. Dry wood solves most problems with wood heat. Just ask Dennis. :lol: A C
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And good common sense burning.
 
Isn't it smoke that causes creosote? Doesn't green wood smoke more? It sure does seem to be contradicting article.
 
Keep in mind that they had smouldering fires with all of the woods in order, they said, to simulate typical home burning habits. that doesn't explain why the green pine made the least creosote, but it does explain why every wood including the green pine made a fair bit of creosote.
 
Wood Duck said:
Keep in mind that they had smouldering fires with all of the woods in order, they said, to simulate typical home burning habits.
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They start out with "how to do it wrong" in the first place :(

I don't know whether they are right that the typical person does it wrong, but they would be more helpful if they concentrated on how to properly burn (no smouldering fires).

Ken
 
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