Effects of 9 months of weather exposure on slash bundles in the Mid-South.

With more interest in using woody biomass as an energy resource, the John Deere 1490D slash bundler is gaining in popularity for extracting logging residues from harvest sites. In the Mid-South, the winters are wet, and extraction from the forest is limited; therefore, energy facilities store up to 6 months of material to survive the reduced logging output. This study's goal was to determine if the slash bundles would be a good storage medium for wet winter storage. Five bundles from each of four different harvest sites were placed in open storage in southeastern Arkansas during July and inspected monthly through April. After the April inspection, a 5 percent sample was cut from each bundle and analyzed for British thermal unit (Btu) value per ovendry pound. The results indicated that the bundles would maintain their structural integrity through winter storage and that the Btu value per ovendry pound after the exposure was only slightly less than the average value used for wood (8,376 compared with 8,600). This would indicate that slash bundles would be a very good medium for storing these residues during the winter months.