Which Causes More Pollution?

[Agvg]

let it rot is the best way if its possible, make large piles with a chipper is not so useful for wild life.

 

[Utopia Texas]

why not make brush piles, give cover for animals, allow the wood to rot decay. I have lots of these in the woods.

This is in a Pecan Orchard and the piles of limbs would eventually get in the way. I am talking about a pile the size of a one story, 2,000 square foot house a year. Native Pecans are not so bad on limb breakage but the paper shell varieties create a huge mess.

 

[hutchman]

I think what he was getting at is burning wood is Co2 neutral. Trees suck up Co2 so burning wood just releases what the wood soaked up ... it isn't a producer of Co2.

.... so if were talking pollution gas (or what EPA considers pollution), wood is carbon neutral.

If were talking airborne particulates, the tier 4 engine will belch less than an average open air wood fire ( wood in a gasifier may be best) .

 

[Utopia Texas]

let it rot is the best way if its possible, make large piles with a chipper is not so useful for wild life.

Can't let the limbs just sit and rot as this is a Pecan orchard. The pecan harvester would clog up with thousands of tiny limbs. I Need it to be cleaned up much like a park or golf course.

 

[tractchores]

You'd have to decide what constitutes pollution as both sources create different types of output. The wood creates particulate (especially if not burning very hot) and a bunch of gasses. The tractor produces fewer particles, but some more harmful gasses. The manufacture of the tractor and its fuel create some pretty nasty chemicals in and of themselves. You'd have to then define exactly what you consider as pollution. Is it the output during the disposal process, or is it the ultimate output over time? Do you include things like the carbon in the tree or the manufacturing of the tractor?

If looking at your local area, which means you exclude things like the manufacturing, shipping and refining of tractor fuel, hydraulic oil, the tractor itself - then probably burning creates more local pollutants. Your tractor burns its fuel very cleanly and efficiently and the wood chips will rot over time and trap their carbon contents longer. If you burn the wood you release all its contents at once in a relatively inefficient way create pretty substantial local pollution.

Personally I'd leave the branches, they're good for the Forrest and the critters and will trap carbon longer as they rot. If you need to dispose of them I'd chip them, its cleaner, quicker and easier. If you can't afford a chipper and need to get rid of them - then I'd burn.

 

[Fossil Farm]

Chip the branches and sell the chips for smoking meat or sell the chips as mulch. Pecan is in the hickory family and good for smoking meat. Us Yankees seem to love mulch for some reason. Vizually better to chip, but as said, just depends how close the neighbors are.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Reading this was interesting. Looks like both are good or both are bad depending. Since it is an orchard and there is no critters to make habitat for and you have to get rid of it anyway - if time is money I would burn it unless you can do better selling chips for mulch or smoking.

 

[MossRoad]

The correct answer is neither produce pollution. HS

Go suck on that exhaust pipe and see how that clean air works for ya! :laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

Look at it this way...

If you burn the branches or let them rot on the ground, you're still going to release just as much carbon into the atmosphere, just one way takes a lot longer, but exact same carbon effect. However, you can plant some trees, Pecans perhaps?:laughing: and make up for it pretty quick, as the trees will suck up carbon each year as they grow. Its kind of neutral. Tree sucks carbon from the air and stores it in the wood. Burn tree, it goes back to the atmosphere. Plant, it stores, over and over.

If you chip it with a fossil fuel powered implement, you are still going to get a pile of chips with the exact same amount of carbon in it as before it was chipped, and then you have the chips to dispose of by either burning them or letting them rot, which still releases the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere, PLUS the carbon from the fossil fuel that you burned, which would never have been released, had it been left in the ground, trapped forever.

So, the answer seems to be... burn them whole and plant some more trees, don't chip them.

 

[/pine]

FWIW...
CO2 (Carbon dioxide) which is mostly what enters the atmosphere when you burn organic material is actually 20 times less harmful (as a greenhouse gas) than CH4 (Methane)...which is what enters the atmosphere when organic materials decay on their own...