Kesla Oyj is a Finnish multitalent in forest technology. The company manufactures machines for the entire timber harvesting chain, from the forest to the factory. Kesla products include chippers, forest machine cranes, harvester heads, tractor forest equipment, grapples and truck and stationary cranes. Kesla’ headquarters are located in Joensuu, and the company has 300 employees. Kesla is a limited company, and its turnover in 2014 was over EUR 45 million.
The purpose of the energy and climate strategy is to control global warming and environmental pollution. This also affects machine manufacturers’ decisions in the planning of new products. The machines currently used for chipping and crushing in order to obtain bioenergy from forests produce a lot of emissions. New machinery is needed that produces as few harmful emissions as possible.
Luke helped in research to determine the productivity and fuel consumption of the hybrid chipper, as well as the quality of the chips from different raw materials. The results were compared to those obtained with traditional chippers in similar conditions.
Kesla’s hybrid chipper produces significantly fewer emissions that result from the burning of fossil fuels, and therefore it reduces the climatic and environmental burden. Reduced oil change amounts, the lesser need for various chemicals and the smaller number of mechanical parts used during the lifetime of the machine also reduce the load on the environment. Thanks to hybrid technology, the combustion engine size can be reduced almost by half.
As hybrid technology in machines becomes more common, emissions are reduced. The climatic effect is significant even on a global scale.
The Infres project, funded by the EU, and a Metla project on reliable and efficient acquisition chains for biomass from wood
‘We chose the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) as one of our partners because we are talking about a completely new kind of application of hybrid technology in chipping. It would have been very difficult to compare the results to those for the chippers we currently use, so we wanted an independent party to carry out measurements and provide research know-how during the project. Luke’s expertise and knowledge about bioenergy were extremely valuable to us during the project.’
– Kari Kokko, Product Development Director, Kesla Oyj
‘Together we were able to create an extensive cross-section of existing chipper technology. Besides productivity and cost data, we collected a lot of material on the quality of the chips and the effect of the wood storage time on the raw material properties. In addition to machine technology, these results can be used in the development of liquid biofuels, for example.’
– Juha Laitila, Researcher, Luke
