Patent ID: 7328808

Claim:
An apparatus for sorting wood chips, said apparatus having a flow of wood chips in a variety of sizes and similar, substantially hexahedral pieces having a length, a width, and a thickness less than the width, for sorting by means of an impulse action, to separate excess thickness wood chips from accepts wood chips in said flow of wood chips to form separate wood chip fractions, said chips being sorted from each other by way of various trajectories established by the impulse action, said apparatus comprising: a feeder supplying said wood chips onto a solid, flat, continuous downward sloping support surface where said wood chips slide along said support surface in a substantially single layer over a slit extending there across, said slit being adapted to provide an impulse action therethrough by an uninterrupted continuous gas flow, wherein said slit has a width that is smaller in size than the wood chips to be sorted; alongside the impulse-action generating gas flow discharging from the slit is mounted a baffle plate to reduce turbulence created by the gas flow, wherein said baffle plate has one end substantially parallel to said slit, extends in said direction of said gas flow and has a bottom side disposed such that said wood chips to be sorted subjected to said impulse action follow different trajectories below the baffle plate without colliding with the bottom side of said baffle plate; and below the baffle plate a divider is situated between said different trajectories for separating one fraction of the wood chips from another fraction of the wood chips having various trajectories established by the impulse action.