Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.

i've always wondered about this too.
why is it not possible to use a wood chipper to chip up trees/branches, put
them in a wire hopper (like the way they used to do corn, a corn crib) and
maybe even possibly have an auger feed mechanism into a furnace. i'm
saying, so you don't have to buy pellets from corporation. it seems it
would facilitate much faster drying, be easier to store, transport, etc.
chipper technology is fully developed, chips would obviate the need for a
expensive pelletizer machine. no splitting, stacking firewood. less dirty,
no bugs, etc.

why don't people do this?!

b.w.



"stone" wrote in message
ups.com...
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.

"stone" wrote in message
ups.com...
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.


I have no clue, but I can't help but wonder if burning chips, with forced
air draft, wouldn't be much cleaner burning. Seems you could also have a
smaller fire that could be easily controlled. I'm thinking how pellet
stoves work---small, hot fire.

Harold

William Wixon wrote:

i've always wondered about this too.
why is it not possible to use a wood chipper to chip up trees/branches, put
them in a wire hopper (like the way they used to do corn, a corn crib) and
maybe even possibly have an auger feed mechanism into a furnace. i'm
saying, so you don't have to buy pellets from corporation. it seems it
would facilitate much faster drying, be easier to store, transport, etc.
chipper technology is fully developed, chips would obviate the need for a
expensive pelletizer machine. no splitting, stacking firewood. less dirty,
no bugs, etc.

why don't people do this?!

I think that anything that is remotely combustible could be burnt if you can get
the chamber hot enough. (even 99% of our garbage) They were talking about
recovering something like bio diesel by poring wood chips onto white hot
(liquefied) sand and bleeding off the resulting vapors (presumably starving the
system of oxygen) which condensed as it cooled into a combustible engine fuel.
(looked like heavy brown cutting oil)



b.w.

"stone" wrote in message
ups.com...
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.

"William Wixon" wrote in message
...
i've always wondered about this too.
why is it not possible to use a wood chipper to chip up trees/branches,
put them in a wire hopper (like the way they used to do corn, a corn crib)
and maybe even possibly have an auger feed mechanism into a furnace. i'm
saying, so you don't have to buy pellets from corporation. it seems it
would facilitate much faster drying, be easier to store, transport, etc.
chipper technology is fully developed, chips would obviate the need for a
expensive pelletizer machine. no splitting, stacking firewood. less
dirty, no bugs, etc.

why don't people do this?!

b.w.

People do this. Jut not in the US.

I use to live in Europe (read high gas prices and low availability of wood).
Everything is burned. Chipping branches and other waste is almost a given
in Europe. Travel to Europe and take a gander through the woods, and wonder
why they are so clean of fallen branches, etc.

In Germany feeding furnaces with an auger of chipped wood is very common.
Whole factories and even municipalities use such as a fuel. Although the
chipped wood is not limited to branches and such, but whole trees.
Reasoning being the exact reasons you stated above, ease of transportation,
storage, etc. Plus it is a lot easier to send a whole tree through a
chipper than splitting it.

It is odd that Europe, given its limited resources of wood, are many times
more advanced at burning it than we are here in the US.

Chris

stone wrote:
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.


I couldn't tell you which burns better or faster, but I wonder what
happens if the power goes out. If the power goes out how do more chips
get fed into the fire? Every pellet stove I have seen has had an
electric feeder. Do stoves come with manual feeders? How often do they
need to be fed? Can you get a stove that burns both pellets and logs?
Ken

Chris wrote:

Plus it is a lot easier to send a whole tree through a chipper than
splitting it.

Having seen such a chipper (here in Germany / Augsburg) I must say this
is impressive! 2 to 3 stems at a time with a diameter of 40..50cm are
pulled in (at about 2km/h) and chipped.
The chipper would't even hickup if you send some OT-poster through it.
:-


Nick
--
Motor Modelle // Engine Models
http://www.motor-manufaktur.de

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 14:58:37 -0400, Ken Vale
wrote:

stone wrote:
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.


I couldn't tell you which burns better or faster, but I wonder what
happens if the power goes out. If the power goes out how do more chips
get fed into the fire? Every pellet stove I have seen has had an
electric feeder. Do stoves come with manual feeders? How often do they
need to be fed? Can you get a stove that burns both pellets and logs?
Ken

That's a good thing to consider. It's the same reason I've never been
interested in a waterbed.

Pete Keillor

Allen Parks writes:

I think that anything that is remotely combustible could be burnt if
you can get the chamber hot enough. (even 99% of our garbage)

The electric utility in my hometown (Madison Wis) burns garbage to
make electricity, or at least they did when I lived there. They run
it through a hammer-mill and pull out the metals with a magnet first.
Some slag drops out (mostly glass) and has to be cleaned out of the
firebox periodically. In the summer it contains a lot of grass
clippings, and looks like sileage (the grass "could" be composted
instead, if people would separate it from the other trash).

It's a fairly straightforward modification to a standard pulverized-coal
boiler (I had a tour of the plant about 20 years ago).

"Pete Keillor" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 14:58:37 -0400, Ken Vale
wrote:


That's a good thing to consider. It's the same reason I've never been
interested in a waterbed.

The wife and I have been sleeping on ours for at least a quarter century
now. Our last heater burned out several years ago. Rather than feeding juice
to a heater, we get along fine with one of those thick foam matress covers.

Vaughn

Burning chipped wood is common at the industiral plant and power plant
level. Most wood processing plants (lumber, OSB, particle board, etc)
burn their scrap to produce process heat or steam. The chipped pieces
are nice since you can use automated material handling.

At least one of the coal fired plants in Minnesota was retrofited to
burn a mix of coal and wood chips. Starting in the late 70's, Dutch Elm
disease virtually wiped out all the shade trees in the Twin Cities area.
all of these had to be removed, many had nails and other debris, and
elm wood is not good for lumber. Power company got relatively cheap fuel
(just paid for handling and chipping), the resulting fuel was very low
in sulphur, helped with their emmissions specs.

One major problem with large scale chipping of green wood is that the
chips will compost rather than dying. Internal temp of a large (20'
high) pile of green chips will get to 170 to 200 F within a couple of
days. This makes storage pretty dicey. You can let the logs dry then
chip but it takes several months to several years to get the resulting
chips to dry well. Chipping to very large chips might allow air drying
but there always seems to be a fair amount of fines in the resulting
chips. You can always mechanically rotate and dry the result but.........

On the home level, the finer the chips, the less it wants to burn. Just
try and burn sawdust in a fireplace or stove. Big chips (3/4" slices)
burn nicely, you need to reload quite often unless you have full damper
controls.

stone wrote:
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.

Pete Keillor wrote:

[power outage]

That's a good thing to consider. It's the same reason I've never been
interested in a waterbed.

For me, it's the reason to have no electric chair.


Nick
--
Motor Modelle // Engine Models
http://www.motor-manufaktur.de

RoyJ wrote:

On the home level, the finer the chips, the less it wants to burn.

And the easier it wants to explode. Dust burns _very_ well, if it is
blown into the burning chamber.


Nick
--
Motor Modelle // Engine Models
http://www.motor-manufaktur.de

"RoyJ" wrote in message
et...
Burning chipped wood is common at the industiral plant and power plant
level. Most wood processing plants (lumber, OSB, particle board, etc) burn
their scrap to produce process heat or steam. The chipped pieces are nice
since you can use automated material handling.

Snip

On the home level, the finer the chips, the less it wants to burn. Just
try and burn sawdust in a fireplace or stove. Big chips (3/4" slices) burn
nicely, you need to reload quite often unless you have full damper
controls.


With a properly equipped stove, sawdust burns quite well. When I was a young
lad, Victoria had a lot of sawmills, and many homes had sawdust burning
stoves and furnaces. It was way cheaper than cordwood. At times a load of
firewood would have a lot of sawdust in it. We used it up by burning it on
top of a good wood fire.

In article ,
says...

"stone" wrote in message
ups.com...
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.


I have no clue, but I can't help but wonder if burning chips, with forced
air draft, wouldn't be much cleaner burning. Seems you could also have a
smaller fire that could be easily controlled. I'm thinking how pellet
stoves work---small, hot fire.


About 25 years ago I contracted to do the design work to
commercialize a wood chip burner that an ME professor at
the University of Maine had developed. It was supposed to
be a replacement for a conventional oil burner, i.e., the
intention was you would pull out your oil burner and
replace it with one of these units. For a variety of
regulatory and technical reasons, everyone involved should
have known better.

The burner itself was perhaps about 8x10x12, had a grate
about 5x5, with forced draft up thru the grate. The chips
were metered by a screw conveyor and fell onto the grate,
maintaining a bed 1-2 inches deep. It was indeed clean (for
wood) and worked pretty well. But the burner did not have a
very wide operating range; too many chips would snuff the
draft; if not enough were supplied the fire would burn
itself out. In other words, the burner needed to be cycled
on and off, like an oil burner, which meant it required an
ignitor and moderately sophisticated controls. All of which
may have been doable, but the real showstopper (besides the
ineptness of the company) were the regulatory hurdles
involved in retrofitting the system to existing furnaces. I
got fed up and bailed and as far as I know it never went
any further.

There are plenty of large biomass boilers burning wood
chips here in Maine in paper mills, etc., supplying steam
and power for the plants, and cogenerating power for sale.

Ned Simmons

Chip stoves don't burn chipper chips.
They are pressed wax rolls that must be small enough to go through a screw or such
in a hopper.

The problem with these - if you loose power - so you loose the hopper screw and ....heat.
I had a friend in the lake Tahoe area - worked fine - easy to haul in a bag - clean -
but they were glad they had the old wood fireplace sitting there looking pretty when
power was cut. They just had to scramble and find sticks of wood outside.

Martin
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



stone wrote:
Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.


----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Put in a dryer and a silo - a pto ramp to load the silo and naturally a
silo house to get it out the bottom... :-)
Martin
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



William Wixon wrote:
i've always wondered about this too.
why is it not possible to use a wood chipper to chip up trees/branches, put
them in a wire hopper (like the way they used to do corn, a corn crib) and
maybe even possibly have an auger feed mechanism into a furnace. i'm
saying, so you don't have to buy pellets from corporation. it seems it
would facilitate much faster drying, be easier to store, transport, etc.
chipper technology is fully developed, chips would obviate the need for a
expensive pelletizer machine. no splitting, stacking firewood. less dirty,
no bugs, etc.

why don't people do this?!

b.w.



"stone" wrote in message
ups.com...

Is there any difference between burning
wood logs versus burning wood chips from
a large chipper?

It seems like wood chips would burn up faster
and not make as good of a fire as with big logs.

But is this true?

Someone, some where has probably done research
on this very topic.

Thanks.





----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

I have burned chainsaw sawdust a few times. All I had to do was remove
the lid, pour the stove full of sawdust, replace the lid and light the
fire with a propane torch through the air vent. The smoke cleared up
after about 15 minutes. Every half hour or so I stirred the fire with a
welding-rod poker through the draft opening. Other than needing more
frequent attention than logs it worked pretty well.

This is an 'airtight' stove, the Scandia copy of the Jotul 118. The
draft setting controls the combustion rate well enough that I can put
just about anything in there, even a pile of birch bark, without it
running away or smoking badly.

jw

"Steve R." writes:

"RoyJ" wrote in message
et...
Burning chipped wood is common at the industiral plant and power plant
level. Most wood processing plants (lumber, OSB, particle board, etc) burn
their scrap to produce process heat or steam. The chipped pieces are nice
since you can use automated material handling.

Snip

On the home level, the finer the chips, the less it wants to burn. Just
try and burn sawdust in a fireplace or stove. Big chips (3/4" slices) burn
nicely, you need to reload quite often unless you have full damper
controls.


With a properly equipped stove, sawdust burns quite well. When I was a young
lad, Victoria had a lot of sawmills, and many homes had sawdust burning
stoves and furnaces. It was way cheaper than cordwood. At times a load of
firewood would have a lot of sawdust in it. We used it up by burning it on
top of a good wood fire.

It also makes a great firestarter if you stir enough old motor oil in
the sawdust to just start making it clumpy. My dad keeps a small bucket
of it near the woodstove for starting the fire- all you need is a cup or
so, single match to light it and no newspaper or kindling req'd.

Gregm

I must take a real strong exception to your statement about the low
availability of wood in Europe. In the early 90's my wife and I went to
Germany to visit and go camping with our son who was stationed there in
the US Army. At one point, near Titisee in the Black Forest of Bavaria,
we went for a long hike into a large forested area. We found hundreds
of cords of wood stacked and rotting in the forest. It was left from
thining operations.

On another occation we were with son's girl friend and her mother near
Rottenberg. We saw a very large sawmill that had not been in operation
for some time. There were huge log decks there with fairly large trees
growing out of the rotting logs.

So, while there are lots of places in Europe with few trees and other
natural energy sources, it sure isn't true generally!

Paul

Chris wrote:
"William Wixon" wrote in message
...
i've always wondered about this too.
why is it not possible to use a wood chipper to chip up trees/branches,
put them in a wire hopper (like the way they used to do corn, a corn crib)
and maybe even possibly have an auger feed mechanism into a furnace. i'm
saying, so you don't have to buy pellets from corporation. it seems it
would facilitate much faster drying, be easier to store, transport, etc.
chipper technology is fully developed, chips would obviate the need for a
expensive pelletizer machine. no splitting, stacking firewood. less
dirty, no bugs, etc.

why don't people do this?!

b.w.

People do this. Jut not in the US.

I use to live in Europe (read high gas prices and low availability of wood).
Everything is burned. Chipping branches and other waste is almost a given
in Europe. Travel to Europe and take a gander through the woods, and wonder
why they are so clean of fallen branches, etc.

In Germany feeding furnaces with an auger of chipped wood is very common.
Whole factories and even municipalities use such as a fuel. Although the
chipped wood is not limited to branches and such, but whole trees.
Reasoning being the exact reasons you stated above, ease of transportation,
storage, etc. Plus it is a lot easier to send a whole tree through a
chipper than splitting it.

It is odd that Europe, given its limited resources of wood, are many times
more advanced at burning it than we are here in the US.

Chris

wrote in message
ups.com...
I must take a real strong exception to your statement about the low
availability of wood in Europe. In the early 90's my wife and I went to
Germany to visit and go camping with our son who was stationed there in
the US Army. At one point, near Titisee in the Black Forest of Bavaria,
we went for a long hike into a large forested area. We found hundreds
of cords of wood stacked and rotting in the forest. It was left from
thining operations.

On another occation we were with son's girl friend and her mother near
Rottenberg. We saw a very large sawmill that had not been in operation
for some time. There were huge log decks there with fairly large trees
growing out of the rotting logs.

So, while there are lots of places in Europe with few trees and other
natural energy sources, it sure isn't true generally!

Paul

Paul,
The stacked wood that you mentioned; was is split in one meter lengths? If
so that is firewood that is normally stored in the woods. If it was along
side the trail, than that is exactly what it is.

If it was large thinning operation, what you most likely saw was a
government program on government land (although they will go onto private
land if it is not maintained). Cannot speak for what they did with the
wood, although I can say that it is not always put to good use. I can only
assume that it was not left to rot as one of the largest problems in Germany
are wood beetles that can really do harm. You can confirm this if they were
compete logs, as they most likely were debarked.

Although the thinning operation should give you a clue. They do this to
help preserve the forests, something that is scarce in most of Western
Europe. If you were fortunate enough, you might of been able to see some of
the machines that they use, really impressive.

I think you mean "Rothenburg ob der Tauber", as it is one of the largest
tourist traps in Germany. I use to live and farm within spitting distance
from there. Walk through the woods in that area, it will not take you long.
Or better yet watch how they hunt in that area.
Not very often I used to sell some of the excess firewood. If I remember
correctly it went for something like $240 a sq meter for pine in the late
80s or early 90s. I would guess that 90% of the wood burned was pine in
that area. Do not even want to mention how much I sold two oaks for. Let
us just say that you hold an auction for the larger ones, were they come out
an look at individual trees.

A better tour would of been trying to find a place that sells wood. To be
honest I cannot think of one store that sold a significant amount of wood in
Germany, although I lived in the farming area. Fortunate enough, that when
I needed new timbers for the roof we cut our own.

I am sure there is a number somewhere, but I would completely guess that the
20 times more forest per human in the US as compared to Western Europe..
Not sure either, but I think that Western Europe imports most of the wood
they use in construction.

Ya have to remember that Germany has 80mil people in a land the size of
Colorado, and has been inhabited well before anyone knew the world was
round.

Chris

Hi, Chris.
We did see a small logging operation. Looked like a farmer using a
fairly large diesel wheeled farm tractor. He was yarding the logs,
softwood and hardwood, to a landing where he had constructed a frame
from logs to keep the rest of the logs off the ground. I think he was
using the tractor scoop to get the logs up on the frame and then push
them together. (I am from a logging and sawmill family). I was
particularly impressed by the German program to keep mixed species
forests.

The wood we saw near Tittise could have been a meter long and could
have been debarked and they were near a trail. We suspected it belonged
to the farm we walked past since the trail went right by the house/barn
and then right next to their cow pasture. The wood was certainly
rotting, however.

Yes, "Rothenburg ob der Tauber" is where we had lunch and then went on
a walk around the town.

Our son's girl friend's mother took us to lunch at Rothenburg. She was
a secretary or book keeper at a building material company. She took a
long lunch because it was Thursday and no one would do any work untill
after the lottery numbers were announced on the Radio. Her company had
a lot of wood air drying in little roofed sheds. Perhaps 3 sided sheds?
She said they left it to dry for several years. If I remember
correctly, it was just rough-cut and quite thick timbers. Hardwood, I
think.

At least in Europe, they try to keep the people all living in town and
villages. That leaves the farm land for it's intended use. However, we
saw in some places where they had given up and let the houses take over
the farm land.

We used to live 20 miles East of Seattle. The house had electric heat
plus a fireplace insert for wood and a small wood stove in the
basement. We bought some firewood the first year, 1986/1987. We sold in
1998 and moved to Central Oregon. All the years from 1987 to 1998,we
never bought any more firewood and almost never used the electric heat.
We cut a few fir and cedar trees on our property, but got loads of free
wood and trees from either the neighbors or from land being cleared to
build houses. Also picked up lots of scrap wood from various wood
manufacturing plants in the area.

Same thing happening here in Central Oregon, except the trees are
almost all juniper. Some people here call them "weeds"! Our home is
quickly being surrounded by new houses and almost all the trees will be
pulled out by the roots and trucked to a recycling plant. They have to
pay to recycle, so would rather we cut the trees up for firewood.

Best Regards
Paul in Redmond, OR

Well Chris your a bit incorrect is saying its not done in the US. My great
Aunt had a sawdust furnace in her house in Albany OR. The chip truck would
back up to the house and dump it down a chute into the basement and it was
augured into the furnace. Now Albany used to be a timber town and lots of
wood waste was produced. I don't know of any sawdust furnaces today.
lg
no neat sig line

"Chris" wrote in message
...

"William Wixon" wrote in message
...
i've always wondered about this too.
why is it not possible to use a wood chipper to chip up trees/branches,
put them in a wire hopper (like the way they used to do corn, a corn
crib) and maybe even possibly have an auger feed mechanism into a
furnace. i'm saying, so you don't have to buy pellets from corporation.
it seems it would facilitate much faster drying, be easier to store,
transport, etc. chipper technology is fully developed, chips would
obviate the need for a expensive pelletizer machine. no splitting,
stacking firewood. less dirty, no bugs, etc.

why don't people do this?!

b.w.

People do this. Jut not in the US.

I use to live in Europe (read high gas prices and low availability of
wood). Everything is burned. Chipping branches and other waste is almost
a given in Europe. Travel to Europe and take a gander through the woods,
and wonder why they are so clean of fallen branches, etc.

In Germany feeding furnaces with an auger of chipped wood is very common.
Whole factories and even municipalities use such as a fuel. Although the
chipped wood is not limited to branches and such, but whole trees.
Reasoning being the exact reasons you stated above, ease of
transportation, storage, etc. Plus it is a lot easier to send a whole
tree through a chipper than splitting it.

It is odd that Europe, given its limited resources of wood, are many times
more advanced at burning it than we are here in the US.

Chris

"larry g" wrote in message
...
Well Chris your a bit incorrect is saying its not done in the US. My
great Aunt had a sawdust furnace in her house in Albany OR. The chip truck
would back up to the house and dump it down a chute into the basement and
it was augured into the furnace. Now Albany used to be a timber town and
lots of wood waste was produced. I don't know of any sawdust furnaces
today.
lg
no neat sig line


Ok I should of said that it is not that common. Heck I burn sawdust and
scrap all the time. So I even contradict my own statement. I often liken
Germany as a frugal country and in some ways the way the US was 50 years
ago. I mean this in good sense.

Chris