Chipped Pellets?

If you can get them dry enough you will get some heat. But the compression of a pellet would give you more. I'm sure you can get them to feed, Maybe mix them with pellets to help the heat?

Only one way to find out! Give it a whirl and see. Must keep us posted too!

I would like to see your results. I am sure the other members would too! Nice seeing others doing this and gives us snap shots from other batches and locations. Please share what you can.

Some day when the home pellet mills become more available(and hoping the prices come down some) I hope to get one. My grass, Leaves and other stuff will assist my pellets in the shoulders. Just not going to happen right now.

I remeber taking twigs and snipping them to about the length of a pellet and mixing them(bark and all) in after I had them stored indoors for a few months. Didn't hurt the old Quad and she ate them NP. As long as I didn't mix in too much it seemed to not effect the heat all that much. I did try em straight but they smoked pretty bad on start up. Started with pellets and they burned OK. But there wasn't much heat and the fuel gate got yanked all the way open. Burned pretty quick too! But was fun to try. I have done it to the Omega and she eats em too! I call them filler. Hehe

Interesting, Czech. I was independently thinking the same thing. Did a few searches, and here I am. I'm thinking that it could be a great way to salvage value from branches and small stuff on the fence lines. In one of the searches, I saw a report that the density of 40% moisture wood chips is somewhere near half that of 10% moisture pellets. If so, the chipped wood might still be an option for mixing in or perhaps burning straight when the stove is operating at less than half its capacity.

Have you made any progress, Czech?

Even if you use dry stock you could still have an issue with the moister content. How are you going to dry the chips out? If those chips are not properly dried out, you are going to have a compost fire in the middle of winter if you store a large amount. You might be able to get away with not drying small amounts for experimenting, however efficiency will go down. You might have to deal with condensation forming in the vent if the gas is to cold. Food for thought..

I have given some thought to this Over the last few months also.

Alot of scrap branches laying around all over the place here. Keep us posted.

Hoverfly said:

Even if you use dry stock you could still have an issue with the moister content. How are you going to dry the chips out? If those chips are not properly dried out, you are going to have a compost fire in the middle of winter if you store a large amount. You might be able to get away with not drying small amounts for experimenting, however efficiency will go down. You might have to deal with condensation forming in the vent if the gas is to cold. Food for thought..

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All well taken, Hover, thanks! I have piles of old branches on my farm, so as long as they aren't processed after a rain, I'd expect them to be dry enough to not compost. Still, on your advice, I'd store them outside at last until their moisture conent is measured. I'm burning ~16% moisture corn right now, and the fuel, air and ash dumping rates of my stove are adjustable by software over a wide range. I'd begin using them by simply supplementing the corn with them.

Since my last post (above), I did a bit of googling on drum chippers. I didn't like what I saw from a safety perspective. Issues include flying chips and (they are known colloquially as "chuck and duck"), and if your clothing gets caught in the branches as you load them, may the Lord bless your widow. Perhaps there are safer one than those mentioned on the googled page, but it is a consideration.

Hoverfly, I did a bit more googling and learned that a typical target for drying firewood is 20% moisture. I'd have to concede that that would be too high for comfort unless perhaps chopped on the fly in small batches then only used to supplement the primary dry fuel, whether corn or pellets or the like.

I do have good ideas from time to time. I doubting that this is one of them. Thanks, again, for your feedback, tho'.