Chipping sawmill waste?

[paul case]

I have had a long summer of taking slab bundles by trailer load to brush piles out in the woods to dispose of them. It isnt making the best use of the wood that is there. Firewood isnt a viable option and if it were it would take more help to keep it going and that wouldnt work for me either.

I have a few neighbors who chip their scraps and slabs using electric powered hoggs but they take way more electric than I have. For the most part I wouldnt have anything bigger than a slab that may measure 10'' at the fat end. We probably make between ten and 25 tons of scrap a week.

I have a couple local markets to go check out that buy semi loads of chips. I even know a couple fellas that sell to them so I have the local contacts. I have so many questions that I think it may overwhelm them.

So I wondered if anyone here was chipping their waste and had some experience to share. Thanks

PC

[longtime lurker]

The one I keep coming back to is using waste for CHP generation.

A lot of the turnkey setups use chips, coarser the better for gassifying, because chip will flow in an automatic feed system.

http://www.borealiswoodpower.com/

Is a typical system of that type. Burns chips, produces ele and heat and some of the heat recirculates to dry the chips.
Of course then you use a lot of the electric to make the chips so I don't see it as a great gain unless you could use the heat elsewhere... Kilns etc

There's a few other systems that split gasification away from generation. So you burn in a vessel, collect the gas, hold it in propane tanks, then burn the gas through the generator as required. An example of the gasifier would be this here, though this is obviously too small.

http://stakproperties.com/index.php?p=3_67

To me that makes a lot more sense, if I could bundle and strap my slabs into a set size bundle ( say 8x4x4) and load those into the burner it would mean I didn't need to waste energy on chipping, didn't have to hand load each bit of wood, and the only headache would be holding a drying shed full of bundled slabs.

The actual generators are just standard internal combustion engines with a gass conversion, that's the easy part.

The problem I'm having is I don't have the time to figure this stuff out, design and build my own system. And every company that does turnkey systems either sees me as too small to bother with because Im not big industry looking to generate megawatts, too big because they're aimed at the home survivalist/ off grid crowd who can feed it like a wood stove, or fail to see that generating electricity to run the chipper to generate electricity is a pointless loop.

Dunno, just haven't asked enough people I guess. But maybe if enough of us were interested we might be able to get one of the established mid sized systems manufacturers like Borealis to look a bit harder at it.

[drobertson]

Thinking peter drouin chips all his slabs not sure after that, last photo showed a big pile,

[longtime lurker]

Another thing I've wondered about is charcoal. I knows there's a market, I know it can be done relatively low tech... but time to research it is scarce, and then you've got to have screening and bagging equipment and who knows what other things to tend with.

the average recovery of a hardwood mill here sits around 40%. The rest I buy to burn. Be nice to figure a way to get something off it.

[Gearbox]

Some thought for you . If you chip a semi load and get $ 1000.00 for it at a co gen plant . You spend $ 50000.00 for a hog and even $50.00 a load for electric . you still have a great payback . I know I an going to get bashed for sending out numbers that may be out of line where you are . The only # I am on is for a 25 ton load of chips .

[sandsawmill14]

gearbox its 26-28 tons per load here ;D :D :D :D

paul im  no expert but do know a little about chippers i installed 2  125hp chippers/screens this fall for 2 different mills and that is about as small as i have ever seen chipping slabs  most i have worked on were 150-200hp machines and 1 300hp    but anyway even the small 125 hp will chip 2 loads a day (50-60 tons) fairly easy if you saw enough production to get that many slabs    correct me if im wrong but seems like you are running 2 bandmills ??? if so your best bet would be to find you a small chipper/shaker screen and run the chipper with a diesel engine then it only cost you if its running  then pile your slabs for a week the chip all at once and see how many you get then you will know how many slabs is a load of chips and can adjust accordingly ;) but there is one thing for sure there is no way you can afford to run a chipper in line as you saw at 1 load a week it would take at least 3 loads a week to even get close to break even   
and at least 5 loads a week to see any profit other than just not having to mess with the slabs it wont take very long to chip a weeks worth of slabs
one of the chippers i installed we tested with 1000 bdft of gum lumber it took 3 men about 15 min to chip it and the chipper was waiting on them  i told them when we started the test to tip the stack on loader forks and so they could keep up but they were afraid it would choke up when they got finished playing around i put a 7x9 cross tie in it for my actual load test ;D  168 amps so passed the test :D :D :D

[longtime lurker]

See thats my waste issue right there in a nutshell: Enough that its a headache, not enough to make it viable to install the equipment to  chip it.

Because we buy on an unscaled system - cubic meters or weight -  and I know my processing cost I can put an exact dollar value on what my waste pile costs me. you dont want to know, it scares me: log cost per ton + processing cost per ton averages at near enough to AUD$300 per ton going up in smoke. Multiply that by 100 a month.
You guys dont calculate for that waste because you buy logs that are scaled to compensate for the waste - but somewhere in that price is the cost of harvesting, hauling, and processing it so one way or another you're paying for it. Wood does not appear in the slab pile for free.

Any time I look at chip its not profitable once I put that cost of fibre into the equation: Its a partial cost recovery byproduct. I know there are value added applications for the same fibre but most of them are out of reach: particleboard etc. Charcoal may or may not be - I do know its around $600 USD a metric ton wholesale, I dont know how many ton of wood it takes to generate a ton of charcoal or what the cost of production is.

I do know what my electricity bill is a month and that generating power for use in house with the waste would be revenue neutral or at least a higher cost recovery then selling chip. Chip is worth nothing once you factor the price of fibre in.

[Brucer]

... Any time I look at chip its not profitable once I put that cost of fibre into the equation: Its a partial cost recovery byproduct.  ...

Don't fall into the trap of trying top put a "cost" on each product you make. It's impossible to do in a rational way.

The only thing that matters is how much money your operation (as a whole) generates in a year. If you are running a profitable operation without selling your waste, then the cost of the fibre in your waste has already been paid for.

[Ljohnsaw]

LL,
I think I need clarification.  You buy your logs for some amount.  You make lumber and sell it at some market price (enough to cover the logs, labor and production costs), correct?  If not, you would not be in business, right?  You would be paying too much for the raw materials.

You are left with slabs.  To me, the only "cost" these slab have is in the disposing of them.  If you are able to convert them into a saleable product that has greater value then your production/conversion costs, then it is worth doing.  Otherwise, you "pay" for disposing them by having your crew move/burn them.  That would be your only "loss".

I'm not trying to be a wiseguy or insulting, just trying to figure out how your waste "costs" you so much.

[longtime lurker]

Don't fall into the trap of trying top put a "cost" on each product you make. It's impossible to do in a rational way.

The only thing that matters is how much money your operation (as a whole) generates in a year. If you are running a profitable operation without selling your waste, then the cost of the fibre in your waste has already been paid for.

I cant argue with that. Its part of the cost of doing business and its factored into the price of finished product. In that sense, any sale of waste for me is straight profit because the generation of said waste has already been covered somewhere else. By that accounting method my waste costs me exactly $0.02 + tax, because thats the price of a match to light it.

But I also disagree. If you want to start looking at doing something with that waste - chip it, run it through a shavings mill,make particle board, make charcoal, generate electricity, cut anything back to 1" x 1" x 12" long and then laminate the pieces together - then you better know down to the last cent exactly what the material costs. Otherwise how can you evaluate all those equally valid and proven outlets for solid timber waste against each other?

[longtime lurker]

LL,
I think I need clarification.  You buy your logs for some amount.  You make lumber and sell it at some market price (enough to cover the logs, labor and production costs), correct?  If not, you would not be in business, right?  You would be paying too much for the raw materials.

You are left with slabs.  To me, the only "cost" these slab have is in the disposing of them.  If you are able to convert them into a saleable product that has greater value then your production/conversion costs, then it is worth doing.  Otherwise, you "pay" for disposing them by having your crew move/burn them.  That would be your only "loss".

I'm not trying to be a wiseguy or insulting, just trying to figure out how your waste "costs" you so much.

Neah thats about exactly it, and i didnt take offense.

Logs entering the yard cost an annual average of $x per ton.

If you divide total annual tonnage/m3/BF/whatever other measure by total annual operating costs you come up with "cost of processing"
Cost of processing is different to cost of production. Cost of production is total annual output (saleable stuff)  divided by total cost. Production cost is the cost to produce a ton of sale timber. processing cost is the cost to process a ton of log. They're different numbers altogether because of the recovery rate, and both can tell us differing things about the mill business if we use them right.

When calculating the cost of the slab pile I have added up the cost of the raw material, plus the cost of processing it to turn it into slabs.
The average recovery number we work off for break even viable is around 33% - australian hardwood mills tend  to low recovery rates because thats the nature of our timbers. We mostly run better then that at around 42% which makes us one of the most efficient processors in the state but by softwood standards its still appaling It makes for high cost of production because every board that gets sold has to cover the cost of the two that went to waste one way or another.

Hope that clarifies it.
John

[Ron Wenrich]

The larger mills have 3 extra income streams from waste.  We sold bark at $750/ld, chips at $600/ld, and dust at $450/ld.  If memory serves, that comes out to about $75/Mbf.  Our chips went to a place that hogged it into mulch, so being a clean chip didn't really matter to price.  Sawdust prices were a lot higher when the pellet mill went in, but we didn't chase that market, and kept our ag markets, which were closer. 

Out of our $75/Mbf, we had an increased cost to maintenance and energy.  But, it was incorporated in the product flow through the mill that the only labor input was in trucking.  There was no double handling of waste, which takes away from production time. 

There used to be automated slab cutup saws.  Cornell made them when oil prices were high and firewood was a premium.  Not the case anymore.  I've seen chippers run with a diesel power unit.  But, a lot depends on your market.  A dirty chip is simply chips that aren't screened and can have bark.  They would be OK for mulch or boiler fuel.  Not so much for paper quality.  I've also seen guys that turn it into shavings. 

I think you'll have to judge whether its worth your while to search out markets.  I don't know what type of volumes your producing.  I do know you have to keep your costs down about handling waste.  Double and triple handling of slabs and dust is a real expense.   If you figure in your labor input, you're currently working at a cost.  That cost goes on top of the lost income.  But, without any markets, your alternatives are slim.

[sandsawmill14]

well said ron  
here you get about $10 dollars  ton more if the chips are screened to a certain size and then you get a little more than that if they are debarked (the actual clean chips) the reason i suggested a diesel engine is #1 you  said you didnt have enough electricity to run a chip pack # 2 (and the main reason) is most electric companies charge on peak demand for 480v electric that means your highest peak sets the base amount for your bill each month they figure in usage too but for an example the scrag mill i am sawing for can saw for 1 week a month and the bill was $3700 and when they saw 4 weeks its only about $5000 so if you have it better use it :-\  you could run it on 240V but it would take at least a 400 amp service for the chipper alone if you you get one of the smallest ones and that will cost alot to install  ;)  but if you put it on diesel it cost nothing except while its chipping 

both precision and morbark make some really nice little chip packs in the 100hp range and can be bought reasonable used at equipment auctions good luck whatever you decide

[Peter Drouin]

I do chip all mine. But, I keep 40 or so ½ cords bundles for the Malpel guys to make syrup.
All my slabs are Pine and hemlock. Hardwood goes in my wood stove.

The guy that buys my chips makes the colored bark munch with it.
I do sell the chips to Reg people  for all kinds of things.


  

  

 

He comes and gets it, I just count trucks and put my hand out for money.  ;D  Chips pay for all the land tax for the year.

Right now I have at least 1000 yards here. ten loads.

[4x4American]

Funny you should bring this up, as yesterday I was sawing a custom order and during the bovine scat session at the end, the guy was telling me that he was talking with an old time sawmill man awhile back, who told him that he made his money in his chips, not with his lumber...the guy didn't really know much about it other than that's what the other guy said.  I figured I may look into a chipper when the guy who buys all my slabwood stops buying it.  I just slide the slabs into a rack, when it's full I band them and then stack them in the field.  Then when I have a couple 2-3 loads I'll spend half a day hauling slabs down the road to him.

[paul case]

Thanks for all the replies.

Much of what has been discussed are the very nuts and bolts of my thoughts on chipping. I have the waste. IT is paid for. It actually costs me to get rid of most of it.I do sell some firewood slabs bundled into 1 ton bundles 10' long, but not enough to keep up. Every other small sawmill, and a few bigger ones in my area does the same.

I actually have a few options that might work.

One is that the 2 outfits that are close to me that would buy chips for mulch also do custom grinding. They would bring the grinder in and grind up all  the slabs,load and haul it off and pay me a little.

I was actually thinking of getting some local tree service to come chip my slabs. I could build a rack the same height as their chippers infeed chute and put a bundle on it to feed in and it wouldnt be as hard on a guy to feed it. I am just not sure of the cost or return

I dont think that chips bring that much here. I have been told they pay $300 per semi load if they haul it.That is if you grind it and load it.  I just have to do some more research. I know the guy I sell pallet material to chips a lot of waste and they make him run it through 2 times. I also know 1 sawmill that has a hog and all of his sawdust from the vertical edger and cut off saw and bark from his whole log debarker goes right in his chips.

I have hauled slabs to the local chipper in the past. They only paid me what I get for the slabs at the mill and I had to haul them 10 miles. The last load I took over to them, I waited for over an hour to get unloaded and they drove by me with the loader 3 times to see if I was still there. They didnt want them very bad.

I think I am getting into the volume that could make me some money that way instead of costing me money to simply dispose of waste. It kinda stinks to have any product or by product that could be worth something just go up in smoke.

PC

[sandsawmill14]

if your selling for mulch it might not matter about the chip size but the tree guys chipper wont work for boiler fuel (dirty chips) or pulp chips (clean chips) here the price for dirty chis is about the same as sawdust and clean, sized chips are about twice the price but you may not have those markets where you are but find the market and get the price and chip specs for for that market before you start chip size is a big enough deal here the buyers have a guy they will send to your mill free of charge to help you to get the chips like they wont them and if you dont call him and you send a couple loads of chips they dont like they will send him to see you :D :D :D but he knows his stuff and if he says you need you need it ;)

[Ron Wenrich]

You could buy your own portable chipper and chip daily.  They could drop a trailer for you, and haul when full.  We had arrangements like that on sawdust and it worked out well.

Adding electric may not be the best route to go.  We had 3 phase power out by the road.  To run to the mill, they wanted $100k.  Also, there was a flat rate of $1k/mo whether we run or not.  We decided to go with a generator.  We were wired for 3 phase, but felt we saved money in the long run.  We iced in our fuel costs when we could, and we missed those high spikes in fuel.  If the power company has to run line, it is even more.

The local pallet guy was mulching old pallets and charging a tipping fee.  Essentially, his raw material came as an income instead of a cost.  He still went out of business, but I think it had to do more with the pallet side than the mulch side.  The problem with mulch is you have to turn it, and it is very cyclical in income.  The place we sold to also used it for paddock and stable use, and for playgrounds.  Also used it on hiking trails.  Marketing is the key.  The chip buyer had been a rather large sawmill.  The bank found out that their mulch side made more money than the mill and put them in the mulch business and had them shut down the mill.  That was 25 yrs ago, and they're still in the mulch business.

[paul case]

One of the local outfits here that buys and portable grinds was in the pallet business for a long time. They put in a chipper and started making mulch and within 6 years quit building pallets. They said it was because they couldnt get enough raw material, but they quit buying wood and built pallets for another 6 months on just what they had. What do you think? They had a heat treat facility and quite a lot of business there. They shut it down as well.

PC

[Brucer]

.... If you want to start looking at doing something with that waste - chip it, run it through a shavings mill,make particle board, make charcoal, generate electricity, cut anything back to 1" x 1" x 12" long and then laminate the pieces together - then you better know down to the last cent exactly what the material costs. Otherwise how can you evaluate all those equally valid and proven outlets for solid timber waste against each other?

If you are dealing with the same amount of waste generated by your main operation, then the price of the raw material will be the same no matter what you make from it.

The expense of processing the different types of waste may be an important factor. But equally important (if you aren't going to expand your workforce) is the time it takes to produce a dollar of income from each possible byproduct.

The only way to know which is the best byproduct is to evaluate your entire operation for each of the possibilities.

There was quite a demand for Douglas-Fir chips in this area a few years ago. One of my competitors bought a mid-range chipper (3 phase electric, $30,000) to get rid of their slabs and make a profit out of them. The chipper wasn't terribly fast, but it exceeded the processing needs of their operation by about 50%. Perfect.

Then they noticed the specs on chips used for manufacturing ... less than 1% bark. So then they were faced with making hog fuel with their chipper, or investing another $100,000 in a whole-log debarker. Well, the dollars still favoured the manufacturing-quality chips, so they took a deep breath and invested in the debarker. The next year the bottom fell out of the chip market :(.

[longtime lurker]

And that's every lesson about investing in low value byproduct there in Bruce's post.

There's no market here for clean chips. Theres no money in mulch chips, not enough to make it worth investing in a chipper anyway. There's a market for shavings but when I look at the price of a shavings mill that can handle my species and running costs...I'd need about another 3000 ton of logs a year throughput to make it pay, and I just don't want to go there.

Which is why I keep coming back to fueling a CHP generator with the stuff. Two things I know for sure is that so long as I mill I'll need bulk electricity, and that the bottom won't be falling out of that market soon.

[JustinW_NZ]

And that's every lesson about investing in low value byproduct there in Bruce's post.

There's no market here for clean chips. Theres no money in mulch chips, not enough to make it worth investing in a chipper anyway. There's a market for shavings but when I look at the price of a shavings mill that can handle my species and running costs...I'd need about another 3000 ton of logs a year throughput to make it pay, and I just don't want to go there.

Which is why I keep coming back to fueling a CHP generator with the stuff. Two things I know for sure is that so long as I mill I'll need bulk electricity, and that the bottom won't be falling out of that market soon.

I'm in the same boat right now funnily enough.
No real chip market here, the local place doing wood pallets wont take hardwood for a start and I struggle to see the dollar payback otherwise.
I also NEED to get rid of any accumulated waste as part of our 'resource consent' with the local council to operate where we do.

I've been looking at wood gasification for some time now and will go that way eventually.
Electricity is just universal and easy to use
We now have a 200kw generator and large hogger for slab chipping (which I need to put a motor on at some point!) so I'm getting the bits all in place to support that sort of operation.
For now I'm just playing with a charcoal burner/making biochar to get rid of small amounts first.

We also pay per ton for logs.
Your recovery seems a little low for eucalypt in my eyes what are you sawing and what are you sawing it with?
It could just be that we are spoiled with only the good euc's from the bush

Cheers
Justin

[Brucer]

The pole mill down the highway from me generates a huge amount of waste -- mostly bark, but also short offcuts from trimming the poles to length. It's all Western Red Cedar, so theirs no commercial value in the chips.

Quite a few years ago a sawmill in Washington (just across the border from us) put in a co-generation plant. They wanted more hog fuel then they could produce themselves, so they would pay for a company to take around a huge portable chipper (2 - 650 HP Cat engines) to surrounding mills to chip up any waste. They'd even pay the mills for loading the trucks.

This was great for the pole mill because it kept their yard clean. But then suddenly the cost of natural gas went through the floor so the co-gen plant switched to natural gas.

The moral is, you really have to know your markets and also understand what might affect them.

[Ron Wenrich]

In 1975, I started to do procurement forestry work.  Basically, you go out and find stumpage from private landowners.  At that time, I was told not to buy red oak.  It was considered a junk species that had little market value.  We sold it mainly for cheap caskets.  Ties weren't much of a demand.  We favored tulip poplar, which had a higher demand value.  Within 2 years that turned around.  Foresters were managing for tulip poplar and the market fell apart and still hasn't recovered.

I remember black cherry veneer spiking and stumpage prices were as high as $3.50/bf.  Every log that rolled into a mill was produced at a loss.  The profit was in the veneer, which covered the losses. 

The problem is that high value markets are often bubble markets.  It happens in all fields.  The housing market, corn for ethanol, pet rocks.  They were all bubble economies.  But, you have to maneuver your way through those fields.  No market is ever guaranteed, nor are prices.

But, that doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue a means of dealing with wood waste just because the market may not be there in a couple of years.  You work with the markets you have, then find a way to address it with what you got.  Its hard to justify not to utilize current markets just because of uncertainty in future markets.

[longtime lurker]

I've been looking at wood gasification for some time now and will go that way eventually.
Electricity is just universal and easy to use
We now have a 200kw generator and large hogger for slab chipping (which I need to put a motor on at some point!) so I'm getting the bits all in place to support that sort of operation.
For now I'm just playing with a charcoal burner/making biochar to get rid of small amounts first.

We also pay per ton for logs.
Your recovery seems a little low for eucalypt in my eyes what are you sawing and what are you sawing it with?
It could just be that we are spoiled with only the good euc's from the bush

Cheers
Justin

My operation is best described as two different mills with the same saws. Resource issue.

About 40% of my intake is rainforest species or other privately sourced logs. Some of its euc species, some structural rainforest species, some is the big dollar cabinet timbers. Good logs, logs that make money. Not cheap but worth every cent. I bought a log last week (structural timber) and it cost me $850 landed in the yard. Part of him went one way for $1500, part of him went somewhere else for $900, and the balance worth about $1000 went to rack stock. Log averaged just over 63% recovery with a big flared butt on him. Not bad for half a days sawing, wish I could get one of them every week!
Issue being that its not a constant resource, and theres just not enough of it. My retirement plan involves those only.

To make up the balance we got the crown log allocation. Couple of years back the state decided to change the utilisation standard. That hit us two ways. Defects are cumulative, so you measure your log and if its got diameter of this it can carry so much pipe, and so much bend, and a knot so big, and a rot pocket so big and on and on... then add the defects up.  Defect is measured as the % of the cross sectional area, so 50% defect means half the cross section of the log is trash. If the log does not exceed the state set limit for defect on that diameter then its compulsory and you're paying for it even if you don't take it home. Anyho... to give some ideas of cumulative % defect in a compulsory log: ( I'll go small end log diameter under bark in inches, then total defect % before its classed as a dud)
15" top - 48% defect. 18"top - 54% defect. 24"top - 59% defect After 30" top everything is topped out at 60% defect. So literally I can stick my head up the pipe on some of them big old logs and have a look around inside. Real hard to get high recoveries when half the log is defective before you start.
THEN... cause they want to help us transition to a plantation based resource (aint planted the trees for that up here yet but well... its what Ronald Reagan about the nine scariest words in the english language) they decided we could come down to a 10"top. :(

A 10" top can carry maximum defect of 23%. You guys here us talk about spring in eucalypts right, you see some pictures.... any idea what the recovery rate is on a 10"euc log, when its got an inch of sapwood either side, two inches lost to heart in the guts of him, 23% of the log is classed as defective before you start... and it springs an inch every 10'?

Buttttttttttt... we pay a lot less for them. And they arent all that bad - thats max allowable defect and mostly they arent that bad but those few real low recovery logs can drop an average back. The issue lies in freighting low recovery logs, and the fact that sometimes we'll sit there in that small stuff when things get quiet getting recovery in the low 20's... saw 5 ton of logs, get 1 ton of lumber. Oh yeah... we're a lean and mean operation here. My issue is I need equipment that can process that fecal matter a whole lot faster.

Okay, done bitchin for tonight. Have a look at the Laimet chippers - different design to most. Not cheap, but they'll run the same kind of intake size and tonnages as a disc chipper but need half the HP to drive then. Very efficient machines, and cheaper over the life of them then anything else.