Abstract
Stationary-type drying for cutting chip of Japanese cedar was developed and examined. The wood chip is expected as alternative fuel to heavy oil for boiler heating greenhouse. It is desirable to assume that the heat source for chip dryer is the exhausted heat of a biogas power plant. Therefore, we conducted a subscale and full-scale experiments of drying live-cut Japanese cedar wood chip through ventilation.
For the subscale (0.1 m3 scale) experiment, the chip was dried for 210 min under the following conditions: an accumulated height of 30 cm; a ventilation flow of 14.2 L/s; and a ventilation temperature of 95 °C. At constant ventilation flow and temperature, it was shown that the drying time was proportional to the accumulated height. For the full-scale (1 m3 scale) experiment, the chip was dried for 580 min with a ventilation temperature of 100 °C. Over the course of these experiments, it became clear that the chip could be dried using the experimental dryer and a simple composting container. Therefore, we developed a new heatproof flexible container for ventilated drying. We estimate a drying time of 14.5 h with a ventilation temperature of 100 °C using the heatproof flexible container.
