Barnsley MBC, UK, District biomass heating from local tree waste - Ashden Award winner

[jamesdiddy1]

what about biomass pellets, i make my own pellets from leaves and grass clippings, could this system perform as well with biomass pellets as it does with wood chips

[AshdenAwards]

@jamesdiddy1 Yes, you certainly can use pellets, but they're usually made from wood. How do you make and use yours made from grass and leaves?

[jamesdiddy1]

@AshdenAwards i just run the leaves and clippings throu a mulcher and depending on how wet or dry the material is i add or subtract dry or wet material then i run the mixture throu a pellet machine, i jus use them in a pellet stove to heat the home in winter,i was asking cause if something like that could run an entire building it could b used to power a town or more and giving where i live there is a lot of open land with plenty of very grassy plains that could b havested for that

[AshdenAwards]

@jamesdiddy1 Intersting. I'm not sure all boilers can cope with leaves, due to the different chemical make-up compared to wood. Certainly worth looking at though.

[steveeo1]

this idea is briliant iam a tree surgion myself and we struggle to get rid of the wood chip waste a lot of the time In wich somtimes just goes to waste

[AshdenAwards]

Did you look at our other video, Bioregional? They set up a "tree station" in Croydon for tree surgeons to bring their waste to, and it all gets converted to wood fuel.

[s16100]

I have one question for you? You are relighing on wood. What happens in a few years when your wood supply is gone? I thought the idea was to use fuels that would not use up the tree's?

[AshdenAwards]

The wood they're burning is mostly from tree surgery and other work that's being done anyway, so if the wood wasn't being burned it would be going to landfill - this way some useful energy is recovered and fossil fuel use reduced.

Also, trees grow continuously, and as long as the wood is only harvested up to the rate the trees are growing at, then you can keep going for ever. This is especially true if the trees are coppiced, as then they grow back far more rapidly than normal.