Lightweight portable conveyors are commercially available from several manufacturers. They have been used for construction, mining, nursery, and other temporary material handling tasks. The conveyors can be powered by hydraulics or electricity. Individual sections of the portable conveyors can be connected to meet project needs. Depending on loading rates and material properties, portable conveyors can move as much as 20 tons of material per hour. A variety of accessories are available for these conveyors, including feed hoppers, support systems, turns and transitions, and discharge chutes.

If these conveyors were used to remove forest biomass, conveyor sections (figure 2) could be deployed into a stand that was being thinned. Hand crews could bring slash to the conveyor line rather than to hand piles. A conveyor could carry the biomass to the roadside where it would be piled or loaded into bins. A key benefit to this system is that there would be no traffic back and forth when material was removed. Soil disturbance would be minimal to nonexistent. In addition, a conveyor system has a constant production rate no matter how far it extends into the stand. For most alternative ground-based slash removal systems, productivity falls as the skid distance increases.

Conveyor sections are relatively simple to deploy. Individual sections are carried into the stand, positioned and supported, then connected to power. As the conveyor line is extended, the conveyor can carry additional conveyor sections into the woods. Portable generators or power packs can be used to supply electrical or hydraulic power. After corridors are selected for the conveyor line, a crew needs to set it up. This initial feasibility analysis estimated cost of operations and ownership of about $7 per hour for a 100-foot conveyor line. Manufacturers estimate that 120 feet of conveyor line can be set up in 15 minutes in construction applications. Setup in forests would probably take longer.

Figure 2—When the conveyor was set up in the woods for a
more realistic test of slash removal, the conveyor sections
were overlapped.