A method and an apparatus which defines the amount of wood material present in a bark flow and controls a debarking process on the basis of the data to reduce wood losses in the debarking process. In accordance with the invention, the bark flow is imaged by a camera and an image processing unit processes the image by using different whitenesses of the picture elements or pixels of the image as a basis for defining programmatically the amount of wood material in the bark flow. The image processing unit is adapted to produce an output signal for controlling the debarking process. In addition, the invention also provides a method and an apparatus which defines the amount of wood material in a bark flow being moved to a combustion process and controls the combustion process on the basis of the data.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
This is the United States National Phase of International application Ser. No. PCT/FI98/00420 filed May 19, 1998.
A conveyor between a log debarker and a flaker has three flat bottom plates which extend the length of the conveyor line, and two vertical side plates. Each of the five plates is driven to oscillate by a hydraulic piston. All five plates together move forward approximately 30 inches at a constant velocity, after the completion of the forward motion, each plate is retracted separately at approximately three times the velocity of the forward motion, to advance logs retained within a trough defined between the side plates in a stepwise forward motion.
