Brackenburn Ltd is an ethical social venture business established to produce biomass fuels derived from local sustainable resources, primarily bracken, and to market to domestic customers and public sector, agricultural and commercial users within the region.
Bracken Harvest - Autumn 2008
As you will no doubt remember, the grain harvest of 2008 was very wet and, consequently, harvesting continued into October in some places. This limited our ability to harvest bracken since we relied for our feasibility project on conventional harvesting equipment that was still being used for the grain harvest.
Eventually, we succeeded in harvesting almost 50 tons of bracken in total. This is now in storage in large bales (400kg and up) and we are now able to produce bracken pellets for testing purposes, including burning in our own biomass boiler.
Using Fuel: Biomass Boiler
As part of our feasibility project, we have acquired and had installed a biomass pellet boiler.
This is running side-by-side with a conventional oil-fired boiler and we intend to compare the ease of use and the cost of running and maintenance of both systems over all 4 seasons. read more ...
Laboratory Analysis
Two 5Kg samples of bracken pellets were sent off during March to two different testing organisations, one in Scotland and the other in North Wales.
First results confirm that bracken is likely to make a very good biomass fuel. read more ...
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News
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Lab Tests
We have had all the lab tests back and Bracken as a biomass fuel has been proven to have a clean bill of health and, at the right levels of moisture, is an excellent sustainable source of heat and power
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Moisture Management
We need to hit a 12-15% target range to optimise the physical qualities of pellets and, at the same time, their calorific value and clean burn characteristics. We are also building a simple drying facility as we have found that obtaining the correct moisture content is even more important than we had first thought. Two versions of the Moisture Meter…
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Production
We have also invested in a second hand generator that runs on biofuels to drive our key production facilities, including drying (when it is necessary), at the same time helping to minimise our end-to-end carbon footprint (a.k.a. embodied energy). Of course, bracken-based biomass fuel is carbon neutral in itself and 100% naturally occurring and sustainable, brining into play land that…