Who burns biomass besides cord wood ?

[woodsmaster]

Just wondering what you burn and how it works. Was sitting here thinking of where I could get some quanity of things to try like nut shells, cocunut hauls, corn cobs etc.
I do Know a farmer that bails corn stalks, but don't Know how well it would work. Any ideas what to get and where to get it ?

 

[pybyr]

I've heard of people burning fruit pits with success.

With a downdraft gasification boiler such as you have, I think there are going to be two or three limiting factors-

1) a good coal bed seems to make a huge positive impact on heat output/ best combustion, and many materials may not create or sustain a coal bed in the manner that wood does;

2) you need to have material that is of a size and shape will not fall through the boiler's nozzle too quickly, either to begin with or as it begins to break down during combustion

3) the ash content of other materials may be far higher than wood; I know that here in VT there's been some research into pelletizing grass as an alternative to or augmentation to wood pellets, and the ash content goes way up

At one point a friend who deals in used books gave me a crate of books with all the bindings removed and that were heading for recycling, and out of a sense of curiousity, I tried them as fuel after getting a good intense bed of coals going using wood-- the results were entirely disappointing, despite the fact that it was a significant mass of cellulosic material that had been derived from wood-- it just didn't create/ sustain the same sort of coal bed as wood. It also created a quantity of ash far greater than a regular load of wood.

I have tried paper grocery sacks full of bark and dusty debris left over from firewood, and as long as there is a hot coal bed already established to ignite the bark quickly and to keep it from all blowing quickly through the nozzle, it generates truly impressive amounts of heat

Don't mean to discourage you or anyone- look forward to hearing what people may have tried, innovative thoughts, etc.

 

[woodsmaster]

I've tried bark and sawdust on a coalbed with good results. Just wanting to play around a little. I'll try the corn stalks when I get a chance. The extra ash dont bother me. My boiler is extreamly easy to clean the ash out of the secondary chamber, One scoope and it's done.

 

[Como]

A lot of people burn wood chips.

 

[Mushroom Man]

We have tried burning spent mushroom substrate (SSS) but with disappointing results so far. The SSS is 95% wheat straw packed into plastic columns. I cannot as yet get it dry enough to burn without opening the plastic columns. If I do that I end up with loose straw which needs to be burned in the presence of a hot coal bed in order to facilitate any gasification. In fact I mostly lose gasification because the straw smolders and seems to smother the flame in the coals.

I know that it is possible to burn agricultural waste in gasifiers but I suspect that attention to compression (into synthetic logs) is necessary along with attention to the coal bed, if gasification is to be expected.

Somewhere I read about the idea of using a grate and lava rocks for a sustainable coal bed and then compressed synthetic logs (biomass) on top. It seems plausible but I have not tried it.

Compressing the logs could end up being an expensive endeavour but I do have an idea for an extruder. The idea is a simple one.
Here it is:
1. Place an metal auger inside a metal tube ... 8" tube, 7.5" auger
2. Weld onto the tube end a cone reducing from 8" to 4"
3. A hopper needs to be attached to the starting end of the tube to feed the auger
4. When the auger is turned with a crank or electric motor/pulley the compression of the biomass from 8" to 4" creates a crude extruder and the logs will break off at a consistent length. The biomass ideally will hold a log shape due to the heating of the cellulose outer sheath with heat created by the compression.
5. The logs can be placed on skids to dry

I have seen various compression techniques but they all look very slow.

I'd love to use my biomass for heat as I used 9 bush cords of hardwood to heat house, barn and DHW last season and the processing of that much wood takes a long time.

 

[Shaneo]

I have been burning corn stalks that are cubed or compressed, denseified into a 1 1/4 inch by 2.5 inch rectangle. i throw in 50LB bag at a time and walk away. they get very hot!

 

[singe]

Ive been thinking the very same thing..

Ive currently an EKO25 but im about to upgrade to a EKO60, or FARM2000 ht45 (english) the farm2000 burns biomass and is an upward gassifyer so its ahead at moment. I like eko's tho and ive access to woodchip so I was wondering if you could block the back nozzle on the eko60 with a steel plate, load the back up with wood chip and the front with logs and get away with it? or place a cast iron grate over the nozzle to reduce the size of the embers blasted through? anybody done this?

cheers

 

[Trex83]

Ive been thinking the very same thing..

Ive currently an EKO25 but im about to upgrade to a EKO60, or FARM2000 ht45 (english) the farm2000 burns biomass and is an upward gassifyer so its ahead at moment. I like eko's tho and ive access to woodchip so I was wondering if you could block the back nozzle on the eko60 with a steel plate, load the back up with wood chip and the front with logs and get away with it? or place a cast iron grate over the nozzle to reduce the size of the embers blasted through? anybody done this?

cheers

I think some folks have tried to block the nozzle with something in metal. It basically rusted out very quickly. I like the lava rock idea though... The ash may get stuck though.
Trex83