I've been thinking a bit more about this self-contained chip-burning boiler housed in a shipping container that I saw recently at a show in Sweden.
As noted in another post, the back half or third of the container is devoted to chip storage. You load the chips from the top and they are augered into the boiler through a wall built into the container. The and auger mechanism are shown in the pic on the right.
Given the size of this hopper, I'm wondering if it would be practical (or safe) to run a couple of heating coils into the fuel chamber (say halfway down), which would serve to help dry out the fuel, assuming you loaded it with green chips. My questions are as follows:
Would there be a danger of spontaneous combustion if you heated green chips?
Would there be enough "dwell time" for the chips to dry out enough (down to 30% mc) before being augered into the boiler?
Would you lose an unacceptible amount of energy when venting the moist air into the atmosphere?
Assuming these are surmountable problems, seems to me you could have a temperature and/or moisture sensor in the hopper to turn the heating coils on or off. It also seems that you could locate some hot water storage in the fuel hopper, which would also help heat up the chips, depending on how well you insulated it.
As noted in other posts, a big shipping container is a pretty ugly addition to your property, but they can easily be sided and otherwise made to look pretty decent. Add the fact that a shipping box is basically a temporary, portable structure, and it probably doesn't require the same amount of legal permitting and other red tape as a permanent structure would. Heck, you could even integrate a chipper into the hopper, so that all you had to do would be to periodically feed the beast brush and small logs. Not a bad rig for a municipal garage, I'd wager.
As noted in another post, the back half or third of the container is devoted to chip storage. You load the chips from the top and they are augered into the boiler through a wall built into the container. The and auger mechanism are shown in the pic on the right.
Given the size of this hopper, I'm wondering if it would be practical (or safe) to run a couple of heating coils into the fuel chamber (say halfway down), which would serve to help dry out the fuel, assuming you loaded it with green chips. My questions are as follows:
Would there be a danger of spontaneous combustion if you heated green chips?
Would there be enough "dwell time" for the chips to dry out enough (down to 30% mc) before being augered into the boiler?
Would you lose an unacceptible amount of energy when venting the moist air into the atmosphere?
Assuming these are surmountable problems, seems to me you could have a temperature and/or moisture sensor in the hopper to turn the heating coils on or off. It also seems that you could locate some hot water storage in the fuel hopper, which would also help heat up the chips, depending on how well you insulated it.
As noted in other posts, a big shipping container is a pretty ugly addition to your property, but they can easily be sided and otherwise made to look pretty decent. Add the fact that a shipping box is basically a temporary, portable structure, and it probably doesn't require the same amount of legal permitting and other red tape as a permanent structure would. Heck, you could even integrate a chipper into the hopper, so that all you had to do would be to periodically feed the beast brush and small logs. Not a bad rig for a municipal garage, I'd wager.
