Abstract
The usage of overhead cranes is state of the art for handling processes because they increase productivity and reduce operating costs in large storages. To improve such overhead crane, we implemented an innovative intelligent woodchip gripper for small-medium storages. It achieves a higher efficiency and avoids CO2 emissions by improving the combustion. It characterizes the woodchips in terms of moisture, ash-content and granularity. This makes possible a material selection before feeding the combustion process, selecting a specific quality depending on the load of the boiler.
The main scope of this study is to analyse the influence of different handling strategies on the efficiency of the combustion, i.e. their contribution to save energy and time. To do that, we developed a gripping simulation to analyse in detail the handling strategies for different storage scenarios regarding the variety of woodchip qualities and surface topology inside the storage. Our simulation results prove that algorithms for woodchip handling are directly influencing the efficiency of an overhead crane system for woodchip boilers. They also prove that simulation and analysis is the way to go to achieve a higher efficiency.