THE BRUSHSAW
 

When you cut down a tree, 20 to 50 percent of it is in the form of small branches, sticks, or twigs, also known as BRUSH or slash. Brush is usually a terrible nuisance which must be burned or hauled to the dump, consuming precious time, fuel and land. But if it could somehow be reduced to a pile of sticks and chunks, it would become a significant source of energy, or it could be hauled to a landfill with fewer trips. Luckily, the Biomass Energy Foundation has just released an attachment that allows a standard chainsaw to become the ultimate tool for cutting brush: the BRUSHSAW.

Wood is not very biodegradable. Whereas most agricultural biomass will be converted to mulch in a month or two and CO2 and H2O in less than a year, woody biomass typically takes 10-100 years to return to the soil and atmosphere. This is due to the presence of approximately 25% lignin which makes woody biomass waterproof.

First, let's have a look at the different ways that properly cut brush can be utilized.

BIOMASS is a term that was defined in the early 1970s to describe wood and other biological waste materials to be used for energy. Brush can be cut up into firewood and gasifier fuel using the BrushSaw attachment for chainsaws.

BIOCHAR is charcoal that is used as a soil amendment to improve the quality of soil. It also serves as a potent solution for global warming, since each ton of charcoal put in the soil removes 2-3tons of CO2 forming biomass from circulation. It can be made by pyrolysis in kilns, flaming pyrolysis devices, or in a simple backyard process some have called a "Tom Reed Pile" and which I also call a "Pyromid". described below.

BIOCOAL is a term applied to a material made by heating biomass to temperatures above 250C and densifying it into briquettes for use as a substitute for coal. Biocoal briquettes have a density similar to coal and have 10,000 Btu/lb energy content, similar to that of bituminous coal.

But in order to create Biobrush, you need a quick and effective way to cut brush. The best way to do this is with the BEF Brushsaw, which can reduce a 5 foot tall brush pile to 1 foot in less than ½ hour. It can be cut to sticks 1 to 2 feet long for stove burning or transport or it can be cut into smaller pieces for conversion to charcoal. We will describe below our new attachment for chainsaws for cutting brush into small pieces. Then we will tell you how to convert small pieces into charcoal using the PYROMID process.

Read on to discover how the Brushsaw makes cutting brush so easy!