Public School Using Wood Fuel

[deck2]

Check this out, A school in Upstate NY has installed a "wood chip boiler"
Wow and I thought "burning wood is bad for the air quility"



http://poststar.com/news/local/article_5f6eeafc-e3b8-11de-ad26-001cc4c03286.html

Maybe more of this and the loggers and truckers will have something to do in the Adirondacks!!

 

[coolidge]

There is a School system in Maine that is in the planning stages of one of these. I think they are going to break ground next year.

 

[peakbagger]

Vermont is loaded with school wood chip boilers. THe state subsidizes the installation. Chip Tech and Messersmith both make a lot of them. There are some issues with fien particulate emmisions. I had one across the street from where I worked and never noticed it for several months. the society for the protection of new hampshire forests headquarters near Concord VT has a small system that heats their complex. Most of the systems require a high grade wood chip rather than whole tree chips.

 

[flyingcow]

we looked into one of those chip burners for our school system. cost prohibitive, not many "grants" to help out. Retrofitting over is expensive. Maybe new construction, might work, but I'd don't know. preferred clean chips, no bark. Can get pricey just for the fuel. Plenty of chip mills up here, but still.

 

[waynecub]

deck2
I live in Vermont and run a Chiptec wood chip system at our school. We heated our school last year for 32 cents a sqr. foot. We burn what is caled ( bole chips ) that is all of the tree except the crown. The trees are all hard wood. ( everything that has a leaf is hard wood and everything that has a needle is a soft wood ) The trees are cut and in the same week we burn them. The chips are not dryed. The chip are not a high grade of wood chips. The unit is a gasification system and that makes for a clean burn out the stack. Our system is 18 years old and works great. All of the money that it takes to heat our school stays in our state. Gasification is the only why to burn wood cleanly.
Marcus

 

[peakbagger]

There are three grades of typical chips used for small wood boilers

Whole tree - includes leaves sticks and twigs, theese are used by larger biomass power generators. They dont work well in small school size biomass boilers, the main reason being that they "birdsnest" in the wood feed system. They can also cause particulate issues

Bole Chips- Take a log and chip it, no twigs, small branches or leaves, they have a higher moisture content than a typical high grade chip, but if the boiler is designed to use them, they work fine

High grade wood chips - generally chipped up waste wood from a sawmill, these are generally drier

As the market has collapsed for low grade sawlogs and the demand went up for bole chips, some of the logging contractors in VT shifted production over to bole chips. Do note that bole chips compete directly with firewood but require less processing.

 

[Blevesque]

There is a School system in Maine that is in the planning stages of one of these. I think they are going to break ground next year.

Falmouth has already broke ground in fact they should be pretty close to complete. The chip boiler(s) will be supplying heat to the three schools!