The measurement of the amount of energy wood can be based on volume (m3), weight (kg) or energy content (MWh). Physically the measuring can be made in the forest, at the roadside storage site or at the heating plant. In this study the differences, variations and correlations between the different energy wood measurement methods are examined. The whole supply chain from the forest to the heating plant was tracked. The material was collected from young stands and it was based on about 14,300 m3 solid (12.7 million kg) energy wood from 75 worksites. There was a strong correlation between the values given by the different measurement methods throughout this study although a remarkable weight loss (37 %) between the forest and the heating plant was observed. Moreover, the solid volume factor 0.49 between the chips loose volume and the calculated solid volume, based on the crane scale, was higher than the 0.40 factor that is normally used in practice. The average moisture content measured at the heating plant was 43 %. The original research article: ”Laurila, J. & Lauhanen, R. 2012. Weight and volume of small-sized whole trees at different phases of the supply chain” is in print: ”Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 2012; 27: 46-55”.
Keywords: crane scale, energy wood, measurement, moisture content, volume, weight, whole tree
Authors
Laurila J.
Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, School of Agriculture and Forestry, Ähtäri
Lauhanen R.
Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, School of Agriculture and Forestry, Ähtäri
Login to download the PDF