Pellet Boiler Maintenance Tip #4: A Solution to Fines Build-up
If your silo has a 45 degree (or lower) sloping silo floor fines can build up. If fines get into the burner, faults can occur. We recommend that you install a fines cyclone in the pneumatic feed line. If you are planning a new installation, specify an exterior silo with 60 degree bottom cone or build an interior silo with 60 degree walls and a central auger. Yes,…
Pellet Boiler Maintenance Tip #3: Why do pellet fines concentrate?
Fines Concentration mainly occurs in silos with 45 degree or lower slopes due to funnel flow. Silos with bottom slopes of 60 degrees degrees tend to accumulate far fewer fines because pellets go down in a Mass Flow. See the graphic. The cures for fines build-up? One is to Vacuum fines out of your low slope silo when it becomes “empty”. Do this once a year or so which will…
Pellet Boiler Maintenance Tip #2: Fines Management
Concentrated pellet dust can be a killer to good boiler performance. Every load of bulk delivered pellets has a small percentage of fines. When they are mixed in evenly with pellets on their way into a boiler, everything is FINE. But when fines get concentrated–which most often happens inside the storage silo–a variety of control faults can occur that shut down your boiler. So if you see an excessive amount of…
Pellet Boiler Maintenance Tip #1
Pellet Boiler Maintenance Tip #1– Of all the problem calls that we get, ash build-up is the #1 cause. Dump your boiler’s ash containers once a week! Do it on same day each week. (Ash Wednesday?) If it is full to the top, check for ash build-up in the chamber behind the ash box(es). The above refers mainly to Commercial applications where dozens of tons of wood pellets are burned…
New Twitter Series on keeping your pellet or chip boiler trouble-free
Starting later today: A series of Tweets containing advice from the @FrolingEnergy Service Department about keeping your biomass boiler running well. It goes without saying that in the extreme cold weather like we are having today (-3 with high winds in Peterborough on January 21–worse up North), having a reliable boiler is of utmost importance! As advanced as today’s wood pellet and chip boilers are, we must admit that they…
Our UNH Biomass Project is nearing completion!
After a long summer of work, our Biomass district heating project at UNH’s Thompson School area is nearing completion. PDCs were delivered and blown into the silo today. The big biomass boiler was fired up and now is operational! This is just in time–as buildings all across the campus are starting up their boilers in preparation for winter. We are now officially ahead of schedule! But we still have a…
Heating the UNH Thompson School with Biomass
An extensive new heating project is underway at the Thompson School of Applied Science in Durham, NH which will provide biomass heat to Putnam Hall, Barton/Cole, the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab and the Macfarlane Greenhouses. The district heating project includes the construction of a new central boiler house with an interior wood chip silo and the installation of new underground piping to each of the buildings. The boiler system features a…
Biomass Tech Conference for Engineers
Froling Energy held a Biomass conference that was specifically aimed at mechanical engineers wanting to learn more about state of the art biomass boiler systems. On May 3 and 4 over 50 engineers, energy, and forestry consultants, boiler representatives and folks from three state agencies attended our first Biomass Technology Conference for Engineers. Speakers at the various sessions included Bob Malmsheimer a professor at SUNY in Syracuse NY, Scott Nichols of…
Record Production of PDCs
Another record was set at Froling Energy’s PDC production plant in Peterborough this past last winter. We produced and shipped 3509 tons of PDCs to customers from August 2017 through the end of April 2018. That means that our customers offset, with locally sourced wood chips, the burning of over 328,500 gallons of fuel oil in one year! We like to think of our region’s sustainably harvested forests as New…
Energy Upgrades Result in Savings
Reuben Duncan, Superintendent and David Reilly, Facilities Director of the Jaffrey-Rindge School District (SAU 47) were quite proud to announce that their energy upgrades have saved the district over $50,000 this winter. They led a tour of the school on April 24th to show off the upgrades which were executed over the last year as part of an energy performance contract with EEI (Energy Efficient Investments). This project was comprised…