Gas to wood pellets, anyone?

[EricP]

Not personal use but three local schools had them foisted on them last summer to replace ancient oil boilers.

All three have had a disasterous experience with them, one boiler retiring itself in a load bang and taking the boiler house roof with it.

Pellets are also very iffy with variation of quality from supplier to supplier.

One school did research on them as eco-friendly as claimed and found that when all factors are considered, oil is far more eco-friendly.

If you are considering one I would scout around locally and find some in use and enquire as to make and pellet supplier. Never take any notice of the guff spouted by boiler supplier or pellet supplier under any circumstances.

I also know of two local domestic installs and both are very happy, one saying it is the best thing he has ever had installed.

So, as I said make very careful local enquiries and base your decision on that. Believe nothing claimed, only information from users with no axes to grind.

[Timothy Murphy]

I'm thinking of changing from a gas central heating system (the boiler is very old) to a wood pellet system. [There is a grant here for doing that at the moment.]

Has anyone any experience of, or views on, these "biomass" systems?

[tinnews]

We're interested in this so please post any information/reports etc. in this thread.

[unsteady]

be worth reading

breeze

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Timothy Murphy writes

Ping AJH. He's the expert.

regards

>

[AJH]

Yes I think foisted is a good word to use in relation to biomass and council run schools.

Was this the Binder boiler?

I had the job of cleaning out 4 very nice italian hot air pellet furnaces where there was some evidence of "deflagration" from poor maintenance, in an arty establishment by St Pancras.

Yes, in spades, especially these micro pelleters that need large amounts of binders because they never get hot enough to extrude properly and the pressure is too low, the ash problem and slagging increase dramatically.

I'd need a bit of evidence to be swayed by that. A big pellet mill will use less than 5% of the energy in the pellet to pelletise it, albeit motive energy is worth more than thermal energy.

Agreed

And I've got a

[Alan]

In message , [e-mail] wrote

Is this another alternative technology that only works if the take-up is low? Will the cost of wood pellets be that cheap in 5/10 years time when they have to be shipped from the Amazonian rain forest?

[EricP]

Without asking next week I can't remember. It is Swedish and an "Eco Boiler" if that helps.

The bang according to a consultant was combustion of uncombusted combustion gases. In other words it produced a house full of bang-bang gas which combusted and went BANG!

It has been on Manual ever since rebuild/reinstal and they offered me the job of turning it on at 8am every morning. I declined. :))

"Deflagration" is "the combustion of uncombusted combustion gases" I take it? :))

It makes a very nice cloud of smoke as well.

It was a schooly type exercise with transporting and manufacture etc. Not scientific, just done out of interest by frozen staff trying to keep warm because the heating didn't work for some reason. :)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Pretty much, yes.

Its something like an acre of decent land to produce enough biomass for a small family on a renewable basis.

OTOH if you have the land, or there is scrap wood around, its probably worth using it at any rate.

[The Natural Philosopher]

..for the .1% of the population using this system ..

...and by returning all of te agricultural land to biomass productions ..

and by polluting te world with yet more carbon/nitrphgen/suplhur emissins. :-)

[Timothy Murphy]

AJH? Ping?

[Timothy Murphy]

As far as I can make out, the Greens here (they are in the government in Ireland) claim that Ireland at least is capable of producing all the wood necessary.

At the moment I think the pellets are mainly imported from Eastern Europe, so hopefully it would be the other way round - imported now but not later.

[Tim Lamb]

:-)

Look back up the thread.

regards

>

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Timothy Murphy saying something like:

Supposedly true, but I wait with interest the flood of demand for pellets when every bugger wants one.

Several pelletising plants are being set up right now.

I installed one of these pellet burners last year; a 15KW domestic in a garage. Not really an option for a lot of houses - you definitely need room for a feed hopper and fuel storage. After a bit of setting up I had it running well and it's been faultless since. Early days yet, though. I'd wait another couple of years before I would say it's perfectly fine and reliable.

You should have a look at Sustainable Energy Ireland's website for more info - unfortunately, the grant system has skewed the market and you need to have one installed by a 'registered' installer to get the grant, otherwise the full grantless price is around ¤4000.

[Alan]

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon wrote

When enough people are tied into to a wood burning the grants will stop and pellets will be taxed in the same way as petrol in the UK.

[Doki]

TBH it's hardly rocket science. We had a couple of self feeding / stoking coal boilers when I was a kid. Obviously wood doesn't burn as cleanly, but the stoking and feeding bit would be pretty similar I imagine.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doki" saying something like:

The headaches will come along as the pellet crusher in the burner wears after a few years, I've no doubt. I'm sure the wood in these pellets does burn fairly cleanly, as it's in a controlled burn envinronment, exactly the same idea as a pressure-jet oil burner.

[AJH]

In fact the wood will probably burn more cleanly than the coal simply by having less sulphur.

There is no pellet crusher but there are more moving parts than an equivalent gas boiler, at the least an auger feed.

AJH