wheat for biomass?

[Grain Buyer]

I keep looking at ag products as a fuel for biomass. Straw looks like a good one, but the action and cost of getting it into pellets looks like it could be expensive. I know a bloke who burns oats, and assures me they are great. Suppose barley and wheat at £100 must look better then wood pellets at £190? Anyone else burning oats/bly/wheat?

 

[Clive]

Was thinking this the other day when a friend told me they were paying 230 for wood chip !

Wonder how calorific value compares ?

 

[frustratedfarmer]

How much heat do you need?

If a decent amount just use bales?

 

[woodworm]

Was thinking this the other day when a friend told me they were paying 230 for wood chip !

Wonder how calorific value compares ?

£230 for chip? really?, surely that's a pellet price! If not its got to be the most expensive chip in the UK

 

[Clive]

£230 for chip? really?, surely that's a pellet price! If not its got to be the most expensive chip in the UK

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Pellets probably then - it's all fairly uninteresting really

 

[beltbreaker]

Local grain group have a dust burner which by use of a hammer mill fires grain dust into a plenum chamber whereby once ignited initially on diesel is self igniting. Uses low bushel wt barley and dust collected from the dressers post drying. Looking to fit another one this year. No RHI on this though but because it is direct fired is far more efficient

I know one lad with a Heizomat boiler (you need a moving floor) who mixed crap oats with his bought chip. There was more clinker but it worked well and saved a good bit of chip. If he had been inspected and the oats found then he may have had to pay back RHI.

In Sweden there are large district heading systems run on Oats thousands of tonnes grown on contract to provide heat. In the US it is very common for a mid western farmer to heat his house using maize.

Cheers BB

 

[bravheart]

Cereal gasses are highly corrosive, not every boiler is suitable.

 

[Dman2]

Looked at burning oats in ours, but would void the warrenty.
They suggested that I would be ok mixing some with pellets at a rate of 25% oats to 75% pellets.
Think they are worried that oats burn hotter than pellets and will burn the flue out

 

[ratchet spanner]

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Pellets probably then - it's all fairly uninteresting really

Why is it uninteresting?

 

[renewablejohn]

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Pellets probably then - it's all fairly uninteresting really

Bet you would not be saying that if you could be selling your wheat for 230 tonne as a wood pellet alternative.

 

[Clive]

Why is it uninteresting?

Central heating never was exciting frankly !

 

[Daniel]

Central heating never was exciting frankly !

Until it stops working on Christmas Eve...

 

[frustratedfarmer]

All biomass is exciting - especially with straw involved

 

[ratchet spanner]

Central heating never was exciting frankly !

I find it interesting that the woodchip boilers and stirrer system we installed for harvst 15 more than halfed our drying costs. in this part of UK we allways have to dry grain ,so any saving on cost per tonne is important

 

[warksfarmer]

Still getting my head around fuels etc but anything over £100/tonne to feed a boiler on the current RHI does not work unless you don't need to borrow the money (still extremely questionable though). If you were an early adopter of biomass (well done by the way as it was a very good business decision) then higher priced fuels can be lived with, although they drastically reduce the income earnt front the installation.

Straw is without doubt the 'kiddy' for fuel supply as its runs at 3500-4000kwh per tonne. So in simplistic terms straw at £50/tonne means 1.3p/kwh fuel cost.

Straw at £20/tonne means 0.05p/kwh fuel cost.

Woodchips are around 4000kwh per tonne so with a cost of £230/tonne means 5.7p/kwh !!!!

Take a look at the attachment but how you cost your straw is the important one. Do you 'buy it' off your fields are market value in that year or do you 'buy it' off the fields with the only cost being baling and transporting to the boiler? Major difference in this cost to the tune of at least £30/tonne.

1MW boiler needs 450 tonnes to meet tier 1 so that's £13,500/year difference in potential fuel cost. Mutiply that by 20 years without RPI increases and theres a figure of £270,000 to play with!

There isn't much difference between wheat and wheat straw in terms of kWh per tonne so really you would need to see wheat at £50/tonne for it to stack up against straw where as it definitely stacks up again wood chip at £230/tonne.

 

[frustratedfarmer]

@warksfarmer am I right in thinking you have a conveyor system straw boiler?

How many kWh are you actually getting out of a ton of straw at say under 15% after boiler inefficiency?

 

[chickens and wheat]

careful with fuel savings as biomass boilers will always use more fuel than a fossil fuelled one as it never goes out, unless you have a constant demand some biomass fuel will have to be burnt when not really needed.

 

[frustratedfarmer]

True to some extent but with a decent buffer, good electrical design and well matched pumps this is relatively small

When oil goes back up in price these sort of conversation will become insignificant

 

[Luke Cropwalker]

Still getting my head around fuels etc but anything over £100/tonne to feed a boiler on the current RHI does not work unless you don't need to borrow the money (still extremely questionable though). If you were an early adopter of biomass (well done by the way as it was a very good business decision) then higher priced fuels can be lived with, although they drastically reduce the income earnt front the installation.

Straw is without doubt the 'kiddy' for fuel supply as its runs at 3500-4000kwh per tonne. So in simplistic terms straw at £50/tonne means 1.3p/kwh fuel cost.

Straw at £20/tonne means 0.05p/kwh fuel cost.

Woodchips are around 4000kwh per tonne so with a cost of £230/tonne means 5.7p/kwh !!!!

Take a look at the attachment but how you cost your straw is the important one. Do you 'buy it' off your fields are market value in that year or do you 'buy it' off the fields with the only cost being baling and transporting to the boiler? Major difference in this cost to the tune of at least £30/tonne.

1MW boiler needs 450 tonnes to meet tier 1 so that's £13,500/year difference in potential fuel cost. Mutiply that by 20 years without RPI increases and theres a figure of £270,000 to play with!

There isn't much difference between wheat and wheat straw in terms of kWh per tonne so really you would need to see wheat at £50/tonne for it to stack up against straw where as it definitely stacks up again wood chip at £230/tonne.

But good quality dry woodchip can be delivered for around £95/T, still much more expensive than straw. I would really like to be able to burn straw I am considering mixing chopped straw with woodchip.

 

[frustratedfarmer]

@Luke Cropwalker have you already got a chip boiler installed?