Burners

Details Burners Burners

1994-02-28

1996-09-10

Melius, Terry Lee

Plant husbandry

Flame cultivating

47 142, A01M 1500

Patent

active

055534155

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to burners and is particularly concerned with burners using vegetable matter as a fuel.
It has long been a problem in agriculture to dispose of straw left after the harvesting of cereal crops. The principal methods of disposal currently used in agriculture are removal by baling, and ploughing to incorporate the stubble into the soil. Stubble burning, a method preferred by farmers has been under attack for some time on ecological grounds due to the smoke pollution caused, and mere recently a ban on stubble burning has been introduced. Straw incorporation by ploughing has disadvantages in that as well as being relatively expensive, any diseases in the straw are left in the field, and can affect the following season's crop.
It has been previously proposed in agriculture to use straw as a fuel in a burner for heating the surface of the soil in order to dispose of the straw and to control weeds. The disadvantage of previous attempts to sterilize large acreages by the use of heat has been that the penetration of the heat into the soil is insufficient to effect a complete sterilisation of the soil and thus an effective control of weeds.
The present invention seeks to provide a burner through the complete combustion of vegetable matter such as straw, can effectively sterilise large acreages of soil and thus reduce the need for chemical agents to control such pests.
A secondary objective of the invention is to provide a straw burner which extracts the maximum possible amount of energy from straw by combustion, and can be incorporated into a boiler arrangement to provide heating and/or electricity.
A further objective of the invention is to provide an agricultural soil steriliser capable of moving across an area of land and effectively sterilizing the soil by causing heat to penetrate more deeply into the soil than has hitherto been the case.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a burner for vegetable matter such as straw or the like, comprises a combustion chamber having an upstream and a downstream end, a blower discharging air and cut vegetable matter into the upstream end of the combustion chamber, an igniter positioned at the upstream end of the combustion chamber, and a number of screens extending across the combustion chamber and spaced from each other in the flow direction, the mesh size of the screens decreasing in the flow direction.
Preferably, the screens are so arranged that the total area of the openings in each screen is greater than the area of the openings in the adjacent upstream screen, and the blower is a combined chopper and blower, serving to comminute the vegetable matter and transport it entrained in a current of air into the combustion chamber.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a soil steriliser and stubble burner comprises a chassis, a pick-up device to collect a swath of vegetable matter from the ground, a feed device to feed the vegetable matter to a chopper and a blower to transport the vegetable matter to the upstream end of the combustion chamber of a burner, the combustion gases from the burner being directed via a discharge device onto the surface of the ground.
Preferably the vegetable matter is cut in a first chopper to lengths of about 100 mm, and is chopped in a second chopping stage to lengths of about 30 mm prior to being transported to the burner.
Embodiments of the invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, of which:
FIG. 1 is a schematic longitudinal vertical section through a soil-sterilising apparatus;
FIG. 2 is a schematic plan view of the apparatus;
FIG. 3 is a side view of a second embodiment of the apparatus, and
FIG. 4 is a plan view of the embodiment shown in FIG. 3.
Referring now to FIGS. 1 and 2, the apparatus shown is a soil sterilising device intended to be drawn behind an agricultural tractor in the direction of arrow A. The apparatus comprises at its leading end a straw pick-up device 1 comprising a pick-up reel 2 with tines 3 moving in slots in a pic

REFERENCES:
patent: 2523953 (1950-09-01), Johnson
patent: 2682728 (1954-07-01), Nisbet et al.
patent: 2858755 (1958-11-01), Toulmin, Jr.
patent: 3802020 (1974-04-01), Stone et al.
patent: 4239030 (1980-12-01), Benson
patent: 4420901 (1983-12-01), Clarke

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