Hog Fuel Burner Systems

[Andrew BVW]

Hello all,

I am wondering if anyone might have some knowledge to share and help me figure out a way to burn an abundance of wood materials produced at my work site.

We run a small construction waste landfill site in Alberta, Canada. We keep all kiln dried wood arriving on site separated, so we have a HUGE pile of it. We are considering installing some sort of biomass burner to use this material to heat our office space and maintenance workshop. From the raw waste received we can chip this material down to a 6 inch minus/hog fuel style product for burning (or smaller, though this requires more work/labour so my preference would be to burn the 6 inch stuff). Ideally this would be run through a hopper system so we can load up and let it run a day or two without having to refill.

We have a relatively small space required for heating (perhaps around 3000 sq ft in total) so it may not ever be the most economic of applications. However the main advantage of installing a burner would be to deal with the wood pile which has accumulated. We have so much of the stuff that we don't know what to do with it all and it's taking up too much space on site!

Does anyone know of any technology that might be well suited for this situation/application? Aware of any similar working applications? Or any general advice on how I might proceed with this project? All advice will be gratefully received.

Thank you in advance.
Andrew

 

[Jags]

At 3000 sqft you could probably get away with a twice per day firing of a gassifier with water storage. Others will be along to shout out some other options.

 

[begreen]

Be sure to plan for a dryer for the chips if they are raw. I like the gasifier idea, but would like to sow the seed for another product that could be made from this process - biochar, which is marketable. By utilizing pyrolysis to char the chips you can produce fuel (wood gas and wood oil), wood vinegar and biochar. This will be a cleaner burning system with a beneficial agricultural product afterward. The char is also valued and used as a filtering medium for water, air etc..
http://www.biomacon.com/
http://www.agtgasification.com/eng/prodotti_agt.htm
http://www.ensyn.com/

 

[ScotL]

I know of an industrial biomass burner company but for just 3000 sq.ft. you might want a more commercial product.
I believe Sidecarflip on these forums mentioned his boiler would burn anything. I don't remember the brand.

 

[Andrew BVW]

Be sure to plan for a dryer for the chips if they are raw. I like the gasifier idea, but would like to sow the seed for another product that could be made from this process - biochar, which is marketable. By utilizing pyrolysis to char the chips you can produce fuel (wood gas and wood oil), wood vinegar and biochar. This will be a cleaner burning system with a beneficial agricultural product afterward. The char is also valued and used as a filtering medium for water, air etc..
http://www.biomacon.com/
http://www.agtgasification.com/eng/prodotti_agt.htm
http://www.ensyn.com/[/quote]

Thanks for the reply Begreen. I thought that the wood we received would be dry enough to burn without using a dryer but perhaps I'm wrong. Most of the wood that comes here is 'kiln dried' construction wood waste which should have relatively low moisture content (mostly wood planks, OSB, plywood) although some of it has been sitting outside for some time now.

I have heard of biochar, in fact we did have a start up company pitch a very similar idea to us quite recently, although they were only just at the planning stage, so some time from being able to deal with our wood/chips. It is an interesting concept, and I enjoyed reading more about it in the links that you provided - thank you. I am not sure whether this sort of thing would be plausible to set up on our small scale, but I intend to follow up with some leads from those links.

I guess one benefit of burning for our own energy needs is that we don't need to find a market for any product i.e. biochar at the end of the day.

And with a gassifier - does that also produce a product, or purely for heating? Jags mentions water storage so I presume it's heating only?

Excuse my ignorance but this is all new to me and I do appreciate everyone's help. Seems like there's a lot to choose from and not easy to decide which way we would be best going!!

 

[Andrew BVW]

I know of an industrial biomass burner company but for just 3000 sq.ft. you might want a more commercial product.
I believe Sidecarflip on these forums mentioned his boiler would burn anything. I don't remember the brand.[/quote]

Thanks ScotL. Yes we are pretty small scale, commercial size is probably more appropriate, so if anyone has information on these sorts of boilers then please post. This is part of what makes me sceptical that we will be able to do this economically at our site. However, as I mentioned we really just need something to do with all these wood chips!

 

[Andrew BVW]

Can anyone tell me then, what the advantage of a gassifier over a regular biomass burner would be?

 

[Jags]

Can anyone tell me then, what the advantage of a gassifier over a regular biomass burner would be?

Many (not all) of the biomass burners are larger than what you would need. A gassifier with properly sized storage could be dialed in pretty well for the size (3000sqft) of area you are looking to heat.

Edit: Gassers require dry fuel.

 

[begreen]

Can anyone tell me then, what the advantage of a gassifier over a regular biomass burner would be?

More efficient and complete combustion with the result of cleaner, hotter burning.

 

[ScotL]

You could contact the company I've used for burners. I think they may make smaller equipment. I'm pretty sure they've installed some in schools.
Their name is Solagen, Inc.
solageninc.com

 

[ScotL]

I'm hesitant to post this picture because I don't want to hijack your thread. But this is the biomass combustor I'm working on getting installed right now. There are several companies involved in it, but Solagen is one of them.