EthanD.net
| Overview |
| Feasibility |
- Economic
- Technological
| Gasification |
| Project Journal |
| Conclusions |
Biomass Collection and Storage
Along with a system to convert biomass into heat and power, we need a source of biomass. There are essentially two types of biomass, woody biomass (trees) and leafy biomass (grass). You can buy wood pellets now, and very soon you will be able to buy grass, or combination wood/grass pellets. Commercial pellets burn great, but they have their problems. Wood pellets have to be transported, usually a long way, using fossil fuels. They are also a waste product; they're made from saw dust left over at sawmills. They don't grind up whole trees just to make pellets, and if they decided to start doing this, wood pellets would no longer be feasible. Commercial grass pellets are on the verge of hitting the stores, but they are having issues with the integrity of the pellets because grass lacks lignin, which is a natural binding agent that is in wood (see my pelletizer experiment for more on this). Like wood pellets, these pellets will still require some transportation.
The transportation problem is eliminated by going local. My pelletizer project page chronicles my attempts to make a small home scale pelletizer, but for our application pelletization may not be necessary. The woods surrounding my house has tons of woody biomass just sitting there. There's no point in grinding it up fine enough to pelletize when you can just grind it up enough to feed into a burner as wood chips. The downside of this is that it requires work on the part of the home owner. But think, you then get nicely managed woods that will grow more productively, look better, and as a result you get locally fueled heat and power production. With the addition of a home-scale grass pelletizer you could even collect grass clippings from mowing your lawn and add them to the wood chips.
We have decided that to most efficiently remove and process the junk wood around our house we will need a small vehicle to get the wood out, and a chipper to chip it. The vehicle will have to be able to get in and out of the woods without making too much of a mess. Also, it should be versatile, because the more jobs you can get done with the vehicle, the more justified the cost.
Contact: edreissigacker@gmail.com
Copyright Ethan Dreissigacker 2008