Hi Harmon,
I am not sure what do you mean by ultra prolific crops - but if you meant
abundant energy
resource here is one of the answers:
straw - used for combustion in furnaces and boilers....
I do not know exactly where the idea of using it was first born, but certainly
Denmark is a good
example of its utilization.
I have seen small boilers manually fed with straw bales or mechanically with
chopped straw of
ordinary cereals (whey, barley etc), also bigger ones to produce steam that
goes into turbines to
produce electricity.
They divide straw into two categories:
ordinary: (just after harvesting) having LHV (Lower Calorific Value) of about
14.5 GJ/metric tonne
and
yellow (which was taken from the field after few months and dried a little) -
LHV of 15 to 15.5
GJ/metric tonne
this compared to coal is not as good (average coal burnt in stoves has LHV of
22 to 24 GJ/tonne
and 10 to 15% ash and at least 0.6 to 0.8 % sulphur content) but it is not bad
as well.
Ash content of straw is 4% and makes good fertilizer and straw does not
contain sulphur which
contributes to the acid rain.
There are in principle two methods of burning the straw:
a) as chopped - the whole bales are fed onto the chopper prior the
combustion chamber and
the chopped straw is blown onto the furnace by fan
b) the entire bales are burnt "step by step" by being pushed into the
furnace for example by
means of the vibration grate that pushes it 2 to 3 centimetres a stroke.
They call it "cigar burning"
This method is rather suitable for larger capacities boilers (not for
domestic ones).
Few years ago I was trying to burn the whole smaller bales (0.5m*0.4*0.3m) in
a coal fired steam
boiler (it was fixed grate boiler) with natural draught (no exhaust fan for
the flue gases) and the
result after three hours:
- I was exhausted physically
- 4 tons of straw was burnt completely
- we barely kept the minimum steam parameters (pressure and temperature) and
minimum steam
capacity of the boiler.
Conclusion:
To burn straw you need proper boiler - for which the feed system of the fuel
and exhaust fan to
control combustion are of critical importance.
If you need more information we can start to exchange ideas and data.
yours
jan sur—wka
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Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
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