Friday, November 25, 2005

Another Milestone

Today I managed to get all systems to work in unison and fire up the dryer burner on wood fuel. Up until now I had been running on LP exclusively. Propane does not provide enough BTUs on it's own to dry the wood fibers in preparation for making fiberboard. We will start the dryer burner on propane, get everything all warmed up, and introduce wood dust as the main fuel. At that point the propane will be turned off and the wood dust will provide the BTUs necessary. The timing of this changeover must be precisely controlled, if the burner chamber is not sufficiently preheated the wood will not ignite when it enters the chamber, if too much time has elapsed LP gas is merely wasted. I don't have this system completely fine tuned yet, that should occur sometime tomorrow, but merely getting the wood fuel introduced to the burner was a major milestone accomplished.

I am tired. I am happy. Wow, this is fun!

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