Getting ready for the Bio-Mizer

[Jeff]

We went swimming in the pool today. Earliest date ever. The water is right around 80° 

[stonebroke]

How much sawdust did it take to get it that warm?

Stonebroke

[Jeff]

I would say about a small pickup load, which if you had to buy it the sawdust around here, about 12-15 bucks.

[Gary_C]

If you heated 12,000 gal of water from 45 to 80 deg. it would take 3.6 million BTU's not counting losses.

That's about $125 worth of fuel oil.

[logwalker]

Went to Barnie's today and got a load of Pool dust. 


We found this new resident there. What a cutie!  (I'm referring to the first photo...  )

No one was confused by what you said

[Jeff]

The lose of heat was substantial while heating the pool.

[Jeff]

Jeff, 150,000 BTU's sounds good. If you want to PM me your address, I can UPS you some bags of sawdust...

-Norm.

Hey!  I got some bags of sawdust by Fedex today    This may be the weirdest thing ever delivered via mail to our house.

Was this from you StorminN?  It should be enough to do a decent test.

[StorminN]

Hi Jeff,

If it was four boxes with burlap sacks in them, then yes... it was me.  I meant to PM you... Sorry it took so long, I got sidetracked with some other stuff. I hope it works and keeps your pool warm for a little bit, at least...

-Norm.

[Jeff]

I have some pictures and a report for you on the dust.    The dust you sent burns, and will work as fuel. However it is very light and fluffy so two things occur. One., it takes a lot of it. If you have a lot of it to burn, it will work as a fuel for the bio-mizer. The other issue with it is that because if its make up, being more like fluff then dust, it bridges in the hopper.  Some sort of alternate stirring would have to be devised to keep it flowing, but that would be doable.  As you can see from the photos below, the last photo you can see the starting level of the sawdust through the hopper. The dark stuff on the bottom is what was in there, the lighter stuff is what you sent. The sawdust was enough for probably a little less then half a hopper and when the aspen dust started entering the system, it burned in about 1 hour 20 minutes. As a comparison, the sawdust that was in the hopper that I got from Barnie, feeds at a setting of 30%. A normal, dry bandsaw sawdust.   In order to keep the fire satisfied for fuel with the aspen, I had to turn the fuel feed rate up to 95%.   Hope this test helps you out with what you wanted to find out Norm!

[StorminN]

Thanks Jeff,

An hour and twenty minutes!!  Wow... I didn't think it would go that fast! Funny that the feed rate would have to be that different!

Those bags were a good representation of what typically comes out of our dust collector. It's a two stage dust collector, the first stage is just a cyclone and the second is a bag house, the lighter stuff comes out there. The dust is a combination of sawdust from our Baker band resaw, our band pallet saw, our finger jointer saw, and really small dust from our abrasive planers... and all of it is kiln dried to begin with, that's probably the biggest difference. We do produce a bit of it... about three pickup truck loads a day... sounds like that would be enough to keep the BioMizer running? BUT, we'd have to work out a much bigger hopper / stirrer unit?

Thanks again,
-Norm.

[Jeff]

Maybe a modified stirring deal is something Bio-Mizer is working on already. I dont think you need a bigger hopper, in your case, some sort of auger or fuel delivery system would be the way to go, delivering fuel right to the hopper from the source. Then use some sort of sensor in the hopper to turn the delivery system on when the fuel gets low.

 I know that BTU's are derived from biodust by mass by the pound, not by the area. Your sawdust is way way lighter then typical mill dust so thats why it uses so much. But if your having a disposal problem with it, burning it all up for energy would be a good way to go I would think. A consistent in type, dry fuel is perfect for the bio-mizer to run on. The bridging I think comes from the fact that when you look at the dust, its all different type particles. almost like loop and hook as an exaggeration.