Lapierre Hurricane Force 5 Boiling Seminar

[chris]

On December 5, 2009 from 1:00pm until 5:00pm, the public is invited to a boiling demonstration/seminar on the new Lapierre Hurricane Force 5 Wood-Fired Evaporator. This is the new high-efficiency wood-fired evaporator that reduces emissions and cuts wood usage by 40%. The demonstration will be here in our sugarhouse in Lyndeborough, NH.

The inventor, Rejean Laverdiere, will be here along with the President of Lapierre, Jeff Goulet, to answer any questions. Pre-registration is required. For more information, you can call me at 1-888-627-5349 or e-mail me at themapleguys@yahoo.com.

Chris

[ennismaple]

Rejean and Jeff are great guys and very knowledgable so take the opportunity to ask them questions!

[chris]

Force 5 boiling seminar update/ specials.

Lapierre will talk about the time frame on new Force 5 orders and what is going on at Lapierre.

I will be offering a FREE temperature monitering/interface system with a Force 5 order that will allow you to monitarr the fire box, stack, and syrup temperature's for peak performance. The interface will also have flow meter option and other custom features.
Chris

[KenWP]

Darn for a minute there I thought that was a free Force Five with the purchase of the interface. Have to get my glasses. I have to check around with the two sugar guys I know up here and see if they know anybody that is getting one.

[ennismaple]

Ken - The Force 5 is free... if you buy a couple of really expensive hats and a vest!

[Amber Gold]

I went to Chris's over the weekend for the demo. The inventor was there. Very nice guy and informative w/out giving away his design. Apparently LaPierre hired him to design a new arch. They have the plans to make it, but not the design. Apparently, if you change one thing, the flame just falls apart...it's a cumulative effect. His design is a comprimise for minimizing wood usage while maximizing evaporation rate.

Very impressive evaporator. 45+ min load times burning wood that was cut/split two months ago and achieved 1600+ firebox temps. I'm not sure what the evaporation rates were because the gauges weren't calibrated, but is estimate to be 200 gph on a 3x12. It had a (2) 2' syrup pan and a 8' flue pan...45% of the evaporation occurs in the syrup pan and 55% in the flue pan which is pretty amazing. This is due to the concentration of temps under the syrup pan. He said he reversed the pans (flue pan in front) and it was too much heat and had sap shooting 1.5 meters above the pans. By getting so much of the evaporation in the syrup pan, it's not entering the syrup pans as sweet, so the the flue pan niter buildup is reduced by 80%.

Another great thing is 40% less wood usage and if it's less than 8 inches you just cut to length, if it's greater than 8" split once. Less wood and the wood you do burn is less work...how can you beat that.

From what I understand the heat isn't generated from burning the wood, it's from burning the gases and it's desirable to have some green wood in the mix. He didn't/wouldn't go into detail on why.

The version that's out now is the 4th version and will not undergo any significant changes. The evaporation rate is what it will be. From here he's going to mount a temperature gauge display for finetuning operation and the final change will be to automate the blowers for optimum performance. First change is anticipated next year and the automation the following year. He's expecting to get another 5% reduction in wood consumption.

Emissions w/ this evaporator are greatly reduced...even burning the green wood. He had the flue gases tested and it burns as clean as propane/natural gas. I forget the burn efficiency, but I think it was around 90%.

I'm having a hard time finding anything bad about this evaporator. It does everything well. I guess the only downfall is it's dependent on the blowers, so if you lose electricity you're not boiling. Also cool down takes a couple of hours because of all the heat that's generated.

He's also applying the same principles to wood boilers...maybe woodstoves. They're in testing phase now. He's getting significant reduction in wood consumption and load times. I think the wood boiler is about the same size as you're standard woodstove and they're loading every couple of days and he's thinking w/ some modifications you might load every 4 days...maybe a week. Seems pretty impressive.

I think I covered everything from his demo. Pretty cool rig and he's currently working on a design for smaller rigs...he's not sure if the concepts transfer to smaller sizes becuase he needs a minimum amount of space for everything to happen.

[Dave Y]

Amber Gold

Are you buying one? and by the way I was there!

[sapmaple]

Josh thanks for the report. I wanted to go myself but just toooo much to do at home in the woods sounds very interesting
I'm looking forward to the report from the guys that use it during sugaring

Kevin

[Steve O'Farrell]

Josh thanks for the report. I wanted to go myself but just toooo much to do at home in the woods sounds very interesting
I'm looking forward to the report from the guys that use it during sugaring

Kevin

Hello,
You will be impressed, because this equipment as surprised us at every step.

On our final tests at the Lapierre sugar camp. We operated a 6 X 16 FORCE 5
with 17 brix sap. The syrup output was around 100 gal. u.s. an hour.
After a couple of hour of this, Rejean and I looked at each other and said,
"If we take the road telling people that, we will be treated as liar".
We and the employees could hardly believe what we observed.

Similar reports were made by the other owners.

Steve O'Farrell
Lapierre equipment

[ennismaple]

When Rejean was firing our 3.5x14 the wood was 2 years old and split very fine. He called it gunpowder because it burned too fast. We needed to turn the primary air waaay down to control the burn. After a while we fired with wetter wood that wasn't split and he achieved the blue/purple flames he wanted because it wasn't gassifying as quickly.

I am definitely looking forward to the reduction in sugar sand that is advertised. The blowers will run off of most generators if you have a power outage. Since my RO won't be concentrating if the power's off I won't be firing long because boiling 2% sap sucks when you're used to 8%+!