For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613244
Colonel Panic wrote:Kiln dried logs produce less smoke (/steam?), and so are presumably healthier. But I do find the concept of using a load of energy to dry wood in preparation for burning it in a fire somewhat galling...



You just need patience...... we stack ours in the wood for a couple of years and then bring it home and cut it into logs and off we go.... :D
By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613249
Dried wood releases significantly more energy than damp. My memory is that the kiln drying process uses less energy than the extra energy released.
Of course, leaving in a wood store to season for a few years uses less energy again...

You can get wood burners which are certified to be used in smoke-free areas. The one I have can be certified if you use only dry wood and (strangely perhaps) the air supply is modified so it can't be closed entirely (to presumably stop smouldering embers producing CO).
By Bill McCarthy
#1613280
I belong to a vintage farm machinery group and we went to an outing to a firewood drying unit (just two miles along the road) where they burn low quality spruce in a row of twenty furnaces , half of which are in operation at a time. These furnaces heat water which is then stored in huge reservoir tanks. Split logs are dried by hot air circulation (taking heat from the water) in 1 cubic meter baskets stacked within huge ovens, for the wood burner market.
OCB liked this
User avatar
By OCB
#1613307
I believe there is at least one engineer on here who could probably increase the efficiency of the process by adding low cost condensing heat exchangers etc.
User avatar
By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613337
romille wrote:I thought burning wood for heat was supposed to be carbon neutral, how ever they define that. I know that they have converted some power stations to burn wood pellets, Drax being one.

[completely unscientific observation] but as someone with a view of Drax from our living room we've noticed that it appears to burn with far less visible smoke than in the days of coal. Interestingly (?) in the early days of conversion to biomass the smoke seemed worse/blacker than coal - so I'm guessing there has been a certain amount of refining of the process going on. That said, I still struggle to think that shifting wood pellets half-way around the globe in polluting ships is really a 'green' solution.

The whole carbon neutral thing seems all a bit spurious - I'm thinking of adopting some algal bloom to make my company become carbon neutral (I assume that's possible, other companies seem to adopt elephants and such likes to prove their environment credentials?)
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613375
Simple minded approaches to the management of emissions will generally be counter-productive, because it's necessary to look at the whole energy production and consumption life cycle and nobody does.

Moreover in looking at products like motor cars it's necessary to cover not just energy used while in motion but that used in the production, maintenance and disposal processes.

The only practical way to make a difference is to use common sense to minimise energy consumption, that too requires considerable thought and a bit of planning and a level of ingenuity and a level of faith.

An example from us and I truly don't know whether it works or not.

We coppice a woodland and some of the timber is laid aside as fuel. It is allowed to season for a couple of years and then burned on an open fire. The main energy consumption is fuel for a chainsaw and a vehicle to shift it a relatively short distance. The rest of the house is central heated but we keep it a temperature that implies wearing jumpers. If we want to use less energy than that it's just cold and uncomfortable and we're not prepared to go that far.
User avatar
By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613378
Indeed .... most debate looks at a subset of the issues. A lot of the spotlight is shone on transport and domestic heating, but I recall that the biggest impact we have is actually what we consume. Living off locally grown chicken, apples and carrots would be a lot better than imported bananas and kiwi fruit, with their transport and chilling impact. And whatever you do, don't pay for them with bitcoin, that's just creating pollution for the sake of it.

I have colleagues that seem to be very conscious about how they travel and heat, and just seem oblivious to what they eat and their love of trendy crypto-currencies.
johnm liked this
User avatar
By Flintstone
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613410
rikur_ wrote:...bitcoin.....




How does that create pollution? Isn’t it just an imaginary, in-the-ether, not really real money, scam?
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613414
Paul_Sengupta wrote:I think it needs lots of processing power to create them.


Yup immense amounts of computer power required which means immense amounts of energy.
User avatar
By Flintstone
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613420
That’s a bit bonkers.


The first time I typed that it auto-corrected to ‘bankers’.

:D
User avatar
By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613421
Flintstone wrote:
rikur_ wrote:...bitcoin.....




How does that create pollution? Isn’t it just an imaginary, in-the-ether, not really real money, scam?



https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/

Ridiculous when you consider the amount of effort that's gone in to everything from low energy light bulbs to solar panels, to be eclipsed by computers burning electricity for the sake of it. And yet we have an army of environmentalists that want to ban all sorts of useful things that do far less damage.
User avatar
By nallen
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613436
There was a piece on the BBC's Click program last month about "mining" cryptocurrency in Iceland (to take advantage of the cheap electricity there). The power usage was something amazing -- lots of energy to drive the processors and loads more to keep them cool! (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b0bk8t/click-mining-for-money)
User avatar
By kanga
#1613439
rikur_ wrote:..Living off locally grown chicken, apples and carrots would be a lot better than imported bananas and kiwi fruit, with their transport and chilling impact...


<slightly aviation.. :oops: >

Some years ago, when wide-bodied airliner direct flights between Europe and Africa/Asia/South America started becoming commonplace, so also 'exotic source' produce started appearing (and cheaply) in UK supermarkets; eg, mangetout peas from Kenya. I was told by someone in the wholesale fruit business that these were related:

a. (especially US) airliner MTOWs and freight hold capacities were designed on the assumption that configuration might be all-tourist and might be full and all passengers might be adult (and large US!) males each of whom might have used their full baggage allowance (pieces and weight).

b. This was very rarely true, so that most flights heading to Europe had hold space and weight to spare, which could be sold at very short notice to freight agents at the departure airport. This meant that a Kenyan farmer/wholesaler with a suitably packed container of peas could truck it to Nairobi airport with reasonable confidence that within 24h it would reach somewhere in Europe (it hardly mattered where) where there would be a willing wholesale buyer.

This meant that the transportation cost in 'air miles' was fairly marginal, just a bit of extra weight probably adding a bit to fuel consumption in initial climb.

Now, I gather, the process of taking advantage (for all sorts of commodities) of lastminute air freight capacity is much slicker, and freight holds in newer airliners are not quite so generous, so that the Kenyan farmer may have a bit more of a problem. The wholesaler may have to book specific hold space in advance, at greater cost.

Happy, as ever, to be corrected.
By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1613447
johnm wrote:. It is allowed to season for a couple of years and then burned on an open fire.

Your open fire will be about 15% efficient at converting the energy stored in the wood to useful heat.

A modern wood burning stove can be up to 89.8% efficient (at least, that is the one that I've got) at doing the same thing.

In an open fire, most heat released goes up the chimney and the up draft pulls something like 20% of useful carbon fuel also up the chimney. It also sucks warm air from your room up the chimney.

If you regularly burn wood, worth investing in a stove. You will need your flue insulated / lined as the flue temperatures aren't high enough to allow good draw.

For some of the tech involved, see how it works from http://burley.co.uk/customer-service/te ... formation/ (a good British manufacturer, who if you have a problem, the tech support line is manned by the guy who designs them).