permaculture

[George Anna Clark <esac@laneta.apc.org>]

Just to add that friends with a composting center in south central Mexico 
employ an 18 hp chipper which costs about $4500 US for heavy duty (can be 
4-5 hours daily) chipping of up to 4-5 cm wood limbs. (anything bigger they 
sell for firewood or posts). This is from a local company that produces its 
own machinery.

If you want to go expensive, the Italian equipment for shredders (and 
rotary tillers as well) have a very good reputation.

In these parts, shredders are used a lot for forrage sorghum, and are 
supposedly good for chipping as well but they don't last at all. I hope to 
start processing smaller branches (leaceanea and glyricidia sepium, among 
others) in  a chipper, my friends say 12hp will do.

Good luck,
George Anna


At 09:33 a.m. 30/07/2004, you wrote:
> Scott, do you have any old copies of the Permaculture International 
> journal sitting around? There was a company that advertised in there that 
> sold various types of chippers that hooked up to your PTO shaft.
> Seems like that would be the simplest way to employ biodiesel in chipping 
> - with a diesel tractor,  if you actually have one. Seems like even 
> developing countries they aren't uncommon. Of course, you wouldn't need to 
> do any conversions of your tractor or the chipper if you were to use 
> biodiesel - but you would need to convert your waste vegetable oil (WVO) 
> into a methyl ester, using relatively expensive and scary chemicals. Or 
> you could modify the fuel system of your tractor so that after starting it 
> on diesel or biodiesel you could run it on WVO. Here is a cool guy in 
> Minnesota who sells some cheap plans for building components that will let 
> you run WVO in an older style Indirect Injection Diesel: 
> http://danalinscott.netfirms.com/ . The plans are like, under $50 for 
> everything you will need, and even if you use all new parts to build his 
> conversion you can make one for two or three hundred dollars - about half 
> what you would pay for a "commercial" kit. Of course, you can scrounge 
> recycled parts and make it all a lot cheaper.
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