[genewitch]

It can, but it requires building around heated seating in a building. You have an intake, a horizontal inlet pipe, a firebox, and then a 90° into a chimney inside of a dome, made of thick clay. You then use a horizontal outlet to the dome near the floor, with a rectangular cross section a ratio to the interior chimney size, ideally, and you build concrete or clay benches, bedframes, etc around your room, with these rectangular exhausts in the middle.

The fire gets going very hot, burns off all of the stuff that comes out of wood, on purpose, to turn into heat, which heats the masonry, which will stay warm for a very long time. The dome also radiates heat for a very long time. The final outlet, out of the house, expels tepid, wet, clean air; contains only CO2 as a byproduct, iirc.

[InvaderFizz]

For others reading along, just lookup rocket mass heater. You'll find plenty of pictures and YouTube videos.

[nerdponx]

My question was specifically about burning of deadwood for forest management, which apparently is available in huge quantities that need to be disposed of, but perhaps not consistently enough to e.g. use it to heat a city hall or gymnasium.

[hkt]

Wood pellets might be an answer. Some houses use pellet burning furnaces as an alternative to gas fuelled boilers etc. It is niche though.

[ahartmetz]

There seemed to be a small wave of pellet furnace installations in Germany 5-10 years ago or so. From what I heard, pellets became so expensive in the meantime that new installations declined. Long story short: there is demand for wood pellets. The price is about 300€/(metric) ton right now.

[hkt]

Drax[0] in the UK have outfitted their old coal plants with wood pellets which are apparently sourced from the US. Questionable how much value there is in it given the carbon footprint of the shipping and the unclear stewardship of some of the wood.

[0]: https://www.drax.com/