Wood chip fuel.

[oil pan 4]

Well I got a wood chipper. The smallest DR chipper shreader. It got a 208cc gasoline motor and chips up to 3 inch sticks.
To me anything bigger than about 1.5 inches is fire wood so it's plenty big enough.
I had an electric one but it kind of sucks.
Barely ever have to run it at full speed and a quart of gas will make a big pile of wood chips. Maybe hundreds of pounds.
All I do is put down an old tarp in front of the wood chipper discharge, put a pallet up to stop the biggest wood chips from flying over the tarp chip a bunch of tree branches and spread the wood chips out all over the tarp so they dry.

To burn them experiment number 1: Step 1 fill the coal furnace with dry wood chips to the top of the fire bricks. Step 2, wait for it to get cold. 3 set it on fire and observe what happens.
Experiment number 2: when there is a fire burning in the coal furnace shovel some wood chips in and observe what happens. Maybe rake all the coals towards the front and shovel wood chips into the back.

My hypothesis is that burning wood chips will be a lot like burning wood pellets. Shoveling them onto an already established fire results in a lot of smoke and a crazy hot fire that lasts maybe 20 minutes.
Wood pellets like to fall through the ash grate in the bottom so raking the coals forward and shoveling them in or filling the coal furnace with wood pellets to start was never an option. Wood chips are much larger than wood pellets and won't immediately try to all fall through the ash grate.

[jakobnev]

I thought you were going to build a wood gas or sterling range extender for your Leaf.

[oil pan 4]

I park the leaf in the garage, the coal furnace is also in the garage. Burning stuff in the coal furnace releases some heat into the garage and keeps the battery from getting frosty and extends the leafs range.
If I really wanted more range I would get a bigger battery

[oil pan 4]

I filled up an old dog food bag with dry wood chips off the top of the 2 oldest wood chip piles.
I'm going to say the low estimate is I can chip around 200lb of wood chips with 1 liter of gas on a dull blade.
With a sharp blade I can't even feed it fast enough.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by jakobnev

I thought you were going to build a wood gas or sterling range extender for your Leaf.

I also thought about a wood gas generator. Sterling might be cool but I won't hold my breath for any external-combustion engine to become viable again for automobile usage.

[oil pan 4]

My leaf is mostly powered by external combination power plants.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

My leaf is mostly powered by external combination power plants.

Coal?

[oil pan 4]

I would hope so. It's not like there's any shortage of coal.
But we are surrounded on all sides with wind farms.
So probably wind during the day and mostly coal at night.

[Piotrsko]

What happens when you run the chips through the shredder again using a sharp blade? Do the chips get smaller? Pellets have a spec: the ones I use are 1/4" by no more than 1.5" long

They are mostly dust that has been wetted, binder added, then run through an extruder.

[oil pan 4]

Chips get bigger.
It's like a chainsaw. The duller the cutters get the more powder like the saw bits are.
Looks like I find out how they burn Sunday, it's supposed to get down to about 25 at night.