¦EQUIPMENT
out have come a long way in helping define that product, but there really has to be an understanding of where the material is coming from, potentials for size variation and lumps,” Price says. “In a wintery climate, it might be frozen wood, and you can get things as big as a football. Saucier reiterates Price’s remarks. “Wood yards are often designed too light of duty for what’s perceived as an easier-to-handle, cleaner, better quality fuel that what you’ll really have,” he says. “A common mistake is to believe that when a supplier brings you an initial sample of material, that’s what you’ll be getting for the next 20 years. The most common thread in what we see in wood yards is that they’re underdesigned to handle difficult fuel that they will receive down the road—stringy, dirty, not as homogenous and doesn’t flow as well. In two years,
you might have a very different fuel than when you started. “ So what’s the difference between an underdesigned fuel handling system, and an adequate one? “The difference is motor horsepower, the drive design, and general strength of all of the components—shafting, bearings, chains, belts, and sometimes, even the structural components of the system,” Saucier says. And the cost difference? It might be 20 to 40 percent of the overall job cost, according to Saucier. “If you’re talking fully automated, you could be talking millions more, and for totally manual, maybe the hundred thousands range.” Specifically on underdesigning, Price says not to skimp on belt width and feed. “The rest of it tends to work itself out,” he says. “Screens are second—make sure you have the right type, and the right screen particle size separation.”
For those looking for improvements or upgrades to existing wood yards, there are some features to incorporate—not necessarily sweeping changes, but small, technological improvements that have made a big difference over time.
Innovation, Evolution
Wood yard and fuel handling technology has evolved over decades, Evans says, and most innovation is based off what already existed, such as the microchipper. “The pellet chipper, specific for pellet facilities, came around in the early 2000s, and that really was a development of a standard pulp chip-type chipper. Pulp chips might be three-fourths of an inch long. Mini chips are a third of that, so you’re looking at making quarter inch chips instead of three-fourths inch chips—it’s not revolution, it’s evolution in existing design.”
WOOD PELLETING PLANTS QUALITY WORLDWIDE — For decades, KAHL pelleting plants with a capacity of 8 – 10 t/h per mill have been applied successfully for compacting organic products of different particle sizes, moisture contents and bulk densities.
AMANDUS KAHL USA Corp. 105 Hembree Park Drive, Suite L Roswell, GA 30076 · USA · 001-770-521-1021 sales@amanduskahlusa.com · akahl.us
AMANDUS KAHL GmbH & Co.KG SARJ Equipment Corp. 29 Golfview Blvd · Bradford · Ontario L3Z 2A6, CANADA 001-905-778-0073 · rbmacarthur@sympatico.ca