Hello lv13r:
when you see the power it takes a shredder to shred branches of 10cm in diameter I doubt that 3kw is enough
The power required is proportional to the speed at which the wood is crushed!
We can grind it by hand, slowly, by sawing by hand, tapping on it with an ax with our individual human power 100W, even for good sportsmen 200W !!
So this machine will grind fairly slowly and not 200t of wood per hour as do some chip mills on trucks with 300 to 900hp of power !!
So the power to shred 10cm of branch is due to the deceptive commercial policy which makes poorly made and rudimentary shredders at ultra low prices !!
If you add a saw, an ax and a little bit of trick, it will shred large branches slowly at low power, at the limit, like by hand, with 100Watts.
Anyway we burn the logs and therefore a log grinder is absurd and therefore not found for private individuals.
Industrial machines are optimized in maximum return, financially which is mostly fixed by the high labor price and interest rates, and what
captive buyers agree to pay (308 € per ton even !!) !!!
So as long as l
e profit grows with size (which increases as much as the interest rates are low to pay the initial investment approaching the million € overall),
the size and the power increase !!!!!
So the power is misleading, if we forget the operating time and the absurd financial realities of maximum profit (cause of the current crisis).
Time to
cutting hedges and branches and picking in your garden is superior than
pass through this shredder quite efficient for private individuals (next to a garbage collector at € 100 Chinese!) making pellets at its individual speed and more.
Finally,
drying can be done in the sun in summer spread out on tarpaulins (like for hay) and returning to a silo at night to
avoid condensation which rewets at night, even under a tarpaulin. (fact forgotten very often)!
This condensation at night with fresh air also wets the commercial granules in the silos gradually over months !!
Finally Yes
we put the pellets near a stove (or logs) a day or more warm,
with a draft of the heated room, they improve their drying much better before use, with a good yield, because we recover the heat of evaporation by condensation in the house on cold walls (windows, thermal bridges),
system never used in commercial stoves and which improves performance on not very dry wood !!
You can use a dryer with a small passive solar thermal collector as discussed for a
simple solar algae dryer on econology very efficient and simple in summer!
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00 ... _625_0.pdf
https://www.econologie.com/forums/post164108.html#164108
https://www.econologie.com/forums/post184711.html#184711