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The Optimum Slash Pile Size for Grinding Operations: Grapple Excavator and Horizontal Grinder Operations Model Based on a Sierra Nevada, California Survey
Yoshioka, T.; Sakurai, R.; Kameyama, S.; Inoue, K.; Hartsough, B. The Optimum Slash Pile Size for Grinding Operations: Grapple Excavator and Horizontal Grinder Operations Model Based on a Sierra Nevada, California Survey. Forests2017, 8, 442.
Yoshioka, T.; Sakurai, R.; Kameyama, S.; Inoue, K.; Hartsough, B. The Optimum Slash Pile Size for Grinding Operations: Grapple Excavator and Horizontal Grinder Operations Model Based on a Sierra Nevada, California Survey. Forests 2017, 8, 442.
Yoshioka, T.; Sakurai, R.; Kameyama, S.; Inoue, K.; Hartsough, B. The Optimum Slash Pile Size for Grinding Operations: Grapple Excavator and Horizontal Grinder Operations Model Based on a Sierra Nevada, California Survey. Forests2017, 8, 442.
Yoshioka, T.; Sakurai, R.; Kameyama, S.; Inoue, K.; Hartsough, B. The Optimum Slash Pile Size for Grinding Operations: Grapple Excavator and Horizontal Grinder Operations Model Based on a Sierra Nevada, California Survey. Forests 2017, 8, 442.
Abstract
The processing of woody biomass waste piles for use as fuel instead of burning them was investigated. At each landing slash pile location, a 132 kW grapple excavator was used to transfer the waste piles into a 522 kW horizontal grinder. Economies of scale could be expected when grinding a larger pile, although the efficiency of the loading operation might be diminished. Here, three piles were ground and the operations were time-studied: Small (20 m long × 15 m wide × 4 m high), Medium (30 × 24 × 4 m), and Large (35 × 30 × 4 m) piles. Grinding the Medium pile was found to be the most productive at 30.65 bone dry tons per productive machine hour without delay (BDT/PMH0), thereby suggesting that there might be an optimum size of slash pile for a grinding operation. We also examined modeling of the excavator and grinder operations, and we observed that the constructed simulation model well-replicated the actual operations. Based on the modeling, we estimated that the productivity of grinding at a landing area of 710 m2 of slash pile location was 31.24 BDT/PMH0, which was the most productive rate.
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