Hi PeteS.
Again excellant wood chip info you have put up.
I hope many read your important real world practical information.
My first two pictures show the tools I use to sort out the accumulated woody debris from under the woodsplitter. Left to right they are a silage/ensilage fork, a spading fork and a five tine pitch fork. This wood feather/wood whisker trash has a high amount of dried pitch resin in it. Righthand pile will be used in the woodstove as fire starter. Center pile as mud abatement in and around the chicken house and chicken run. Lefthand pile as weed control mulching at the base of the acid loving raspberry and blueberry plants. As you know now none of this stranded and particle crushed stuff would flow well through a gasifer without clogging or hanging up. Lefthand pile only maybe as a 10% fuel additive to actual chunks.
On your “found” “free” woodchips - well, you are still lucky. My County this year changed from chipping to a shredding machine. Saves them much expensive hand labor, the 2nd and sometimes 3rd truck and trailer for hauling away, and time to get property dumping permissions.
3rd and 4th picures are of conifer Douglas Fir shredded. 5th and 6th pictures are of different types of native deciduous saplings. Last picture is what actually was flung onto my property perimeter walking path. I miss my roadside fencing hedge. Gave privacy and kept the Auzie Ruby-dog from fence bolting and car chasing.
High resinous woods gasifiy with fine energy. Some of the quickest, most powerful fuel woods that I’ve used. They do tend to run very sooty. Expect more downstream filering and piping manintence needed. Very, Very easy to run your self out of char bed before all of the volitiles are burnt off and converted to allow the remainig char left to free up and then fall down and char bed replenish. In your case I’d recommend mixing with the slow, low power rate release deciduous chips to counter this and get the best features of both. In my case with my side jet type gasifiers and virtually NO hardwoods I’ve found I must always shut-down/cool-down set-up for the next run with lots of char left above the nozzle hieght. ONLY start back up with the driest, least resinous wood fuel. And ONLY put the high resinous fuel wood in a HOThigh flow load demanded gasifier. Resinous woods NOT good for idling loads, cool running or shutting down on. Will make a sooty clogging, glued together mess inside.
Ha! Ha! At that; much better than pure bark fuels with their super high mineral ash grate clogging content and poor, poor char coaling.
Regards
Steve Unruh
