Burning corn in an OWB

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bucksnbears

ArboristSite Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
71
Reaction score
253
Location
mn
Fellas. A friend has access to about 1000 bushel of field corn that was combined. Truck tipped over in a steep ditch and dumped the load.
My thought are it would be great to recover it and burn in his OWB.
Am I correct or not?
Anyone here done it?
Pro/ con?
 
itll work.. ive done it.. but you need a large bed on hot cools to pull it off.. takes much to get it started...and go at it sparingly

Yup, I'd just toss in a small bucket twice a day maybe. It'll be worth some btu's but wont' burn well on it's own.
 
Yup, I'd just toss in a small bucket twice a day maybe. It'll be worth some btu's but wont' burn well on it's own.
corn WILL burn on its own,,ever see a old time elevator on fire???i have!!! lights the whole sky for miles around. that's why you need a thick hot bed of coals
 
corn WILL burn on its own,,ever see a old time elevator on fire???i have!!! lights the whole sky for miles around. that's why you need a thick hot bed of coals

I knew I should have said that differently. In a wood stove I wouldn't expect corn to burn on it's own. It needs either forced air, or rather high temps. Yes, a hot bed of coals or throw it in on each layer of wood. Can you burn 10 bushel and 10 cu/ft a day? I know a couple of farmers with central boilers, I'll have to ask them if they've ever tried mixing corn in. Last I seen they were throwing net wrapping off round bales in there too so who knows.
 
Biggest problem I see is the corn is probably not dry enough to burn well, if at all. Most corn coming out of the field is 16% moisture or higher. Corn doesn't burn well above 14.5% moisture. Just my .02¢
 
Biggest problem I see is the corn is probably not dry enough to burn well, if at all. Most corn coming out of the field is 16% moisture or higher. Corn doesn't burn well above 14.5% moisture. Just my .02¢
Not sure what seed corn gets dried down to? Buddy of mine has heated his place for years on it. He has a dedicated corn burning stove/boiler sys. Works nice. Corn splits and stacks sooooo well:drinkingcoffee:
 
A buddy of mine has a corn OWB. He is a farmer and grows all his own corn. Heats a very large shop and house.
 
A buddy of mine has a corn OWB. He is a farmer and grows all his own corn. Heats a very large shop and house.

That would be neat to see, a guy to the north of us was one of the first with a corn burner in his house, took about a bushel a day. That's when corn was under $2 a bushel though, I believe they used forced air to keep the fire going. It's been a few years but the local fair had a setup where they had burners like that. The one they had, and were still kind of working on was a round bale burner for cornstalks mainly. They had corn burners that were also belt driven to feed the chamber, pretty neat but that round bale burner looked interesting.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top