Portable Bale Furnace Dries Grain, Heats Homes

Portable Bale Furnace Dries Grain, Heats Homes ENERGY Miscellaneous 28-6-3 Ron Horvath of Leross, Sask. likes the flexibility of his mobile bale furnace that burns large round bales of flax and wheat straw. He uses it to dry grain, and also to heat two homes. The one-bale unit mounts on a heavy-duty I-beam trailer with duals all around. He says the 8 by 12-ft. bale burner cost him about $16,000 to make. He hired a machine shop to build the furnace itself and then he did all the plumbing, electrical work and other finishing work. "To insulate the furnace ourselves, we bent and spaced out some 1-in. tubing 6 in. out from the furnace, and then filled the space in with fiberglass insulation," Horvath explains. "Then we sheeted it with white steel cladding by screwing it onto the steel tubing with self-tapping metal screws." A big insulated door covers the main furnace door keeping heat in during operation. There's a 2-ft. sq. inspection opening in the main door. "It's important to see if the bale is leaning on the main door before opening it because it could flop out on you," he says. "The main door on the furnace is 4-in. deep, and has double wall construction, allowing it to be full of circulating water to prevent warping. Usually, the bale burns from front to back because there's a large-volume, forced air fan on the front end. The furnace has a thermostat to regulate the damper and it's usually set at 180 degrees, The fan thermostat is set for 140 degrees." For transferring the furnace's heat to a grain drying application, Horvath purchased two large radiators from a local grain dryer manufacturer and ran 1-in. tubing from the radiators to the water jacket on the furnace. The furnace has two small 110-volt electric-driven pumps that circulate water continuously. "Water going into the radiator is 170 to 180 degrees, but coming out, it's just luke warm so most of the heat is pulled into the bin," he says. Horvath concedes that running the furnace is not free. You have to have the bales and the time to put them into the furnace. However, he says the furnace costs 1/3 as much to run as using natural gas or propane. Horvath heats two homes - his and his parents - by parking the furnace about half way between the two houses so it's only a couple hundred feet away from each. The furnace's hot water is carried to each house by double-walled Kytec plastic pipe that is buried 3-ft. under ground, inside Styrofoam insulation. When the water reaches the house furnace, it flows through a small radiator that's mounted in the heat duct right above the furnace. Hot water is pushed through each system continuously and a separate thermostat in each house allows Ron and his dad, George, to control when the furnace fan kicks in to distribute the warm air though the houses. "With the original thermostats as a back up, we can still use our furnaces the way we always did if we need to," he says. In the spot where the pipes come up out of the ground near the furnace, Horvath set it up so they emerge into a small plastic barrel that he dug into the ground. During the summer, when the furnace isn't being used for heat, he covers the opening of the barrel with a big disc blade so he can run the lawn mower right over it. The furnace easily heats Ron's 1,200 sq. ft. bungalow and his dad's 1,500 sq. ft. two story home, simultaneously. When used for grain drying purposes, the furnace can be hooked up to two bins at a time. "If you're pulling a lot of heat off the furnace, the bale will burn up a lot faster," he says. "For the two houses, one bale will last one to three days depending on the outside temperature. "The furnace is plumbed and wired for a third pump because it's my intention to heat a shop in the future," Horvath explains. He says that, compared to burning flax, wheat straw "gives you slightly more than half the heat and twice as much ash. "As a result, he prefers flax. It's also a cheaper source of energy because producers just want to get rid of it since it's difficult to incorporate back into the soil. With no other u

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