Pelletising woodchip / sawdust

[firewood]

Has anyone ever tried to pelletise their own woodchip?

I know that to do it commercially you need to buy a mill at £10k plus, dry the chip prior to compression etc etc.

 

I'm thinking more of doing it for my own consumption so the end product can be a bit rough and ready

 

 

I've seen seen hand presses advertised burt they only make an egg cup full at a time.

 

Ideally I need to find or make or adapt a device that can run off a pto shaft or tractor hydraulics

 

 

Anyone tried something already? did it work? Any ideas????

[Marko]

A way of automating the manual device shown on Pressing Matters - The quest to turn garden waste into fire Briquettes for a wood boiler would be good.

 

Has anyone ever made something to make briquettes using a hydraulic log splitter? If something could be made to fit into a standard splitter it would be a good seller.

[County4x4]

The device in the link is basically the same as the paper log makers in principle - using water to soften everything up and hopefully get it to hold together a bit like papier-mache when it dries.

 

The newspaper briquettes I've found disappointing. Very time consuming, take an age to dry and then produce an awful lot of ash and not a great deal of heat.

 

"Proper" briquetting machines use very high pressures and extrude the material through a die in it's dry state. The high pressure (80tons/sq.in and upwards from memory) heat up the material and soften the resins and lignins in it to form a "glue" of sorts that holds the stuff together when it cools. Moisture content is important - too dry and it won't soften up under pressure, and too wet and you can get briquettes that "blow" due to steam pockets expanding inside them.

 

There are some Chinese built small electric briquette presses available for under a grand as I recall - Alibaba would be a good place to look. These are hand fed - though again - a lot of it is down to the qualoty/consistency of the feedstock.

 

Andy

[firewood]

The device in the link is basically the same as the paper log makers in principle - using water to soften everything up and hopefully get it to hold together a bit like papier-mache when it dries.

 

The newspaper briquettes I've found disappointing. Very time consuming, take an age to dry and then produce an awful lot of ash and not a great deal of heat.

 

"Proper" briquetting machines use very high pressures and extrude the material through a die in it's dry state. The high pressure (80tons/sq.in and upwards from memory) heat up the material and soften the resins and lignins in it to form a "glue" of sorts that holds the stuff together when it cools. Moisture content is important - too dry and it won't soften up under pressure, and too wet and you can get briquettes that "blow" due to steam pockets expanding inside them.

 

There are some Chinese built small electric briquette presses available for under a grand as I recall - Alibaba would be a good place to look. These are hand fed - though again - a lot of it is down to the qualoty/consistency of the feedstock.

 

Andy

 

 

I've seen these on Alibaba but was a bit dubious about quality. also alibaba is renowned for scams and fraud.

 

has anyone had experience of buying and using one of these cheaper briquetting presses?

[dazlog]

There`s bloke over at stamfordam got one, not sure what make he started up about 2 years ago. Tried selling me the stuff wasn`t really that impressed.

[Marko]

The exruders are a big investment - even for a crap one - and I understand maintenance costs can be a bob or two. I do think that an engineering type could come up with a "newspaper press" type of device to fit in a hydraulic log splitter - feed in a mix of of wet newspaper (as a binder) but the bulk of it being sawdust and splitter shavings. A decent splitter should get the bulk of the moisture out and press it hard enough for it to hold together. Waiting for the briquette to dry would be no longer than for a log to season?

[County4x4]

But unless the finished product performs a LOT better than the newspaper briquettes, I'd question whether it was worth the effort and mess involved in making them. I was very keen on the paper briquettes, and had several 205 litre barrels in the workshop with paper shreds soaking in them and a bench with briquettes stacked up to dry. Very keen that is until I actually tried them in the stove! I guess they padded out the firewood supply to an extent - but only in the same way as putting a big green log on the fire - AND they produced a hell of a lot of ash. The press is still out there somewhere but hasn't been used again since. Fatha in law knocked up a similar device to use with a jack for extra pressure - and he's not used that again either.

 

Andy

[firewood]

It seems that the newspaper type presses are therefore to labour intensive.

 

 

There must be some sort of pto driven agricultural tool for processing animal feed that could be adapted

[Chris Sheppard]

 

There must be some sort of pto driven agricultural tool for processing animal feed that could be adapted

 

 

I've heard of this being done but the dies don't last very long and by the time you've had a proper strong one made the cost makes it hardly worth bothering. Not really looked into it deeply but that's what they told us on the ignite course.

[firewood]

I've heard of this being done but the dies don't last very long and by the time you've had a proper strong one made the cost makes it hardly worth bothering. Not really looked into it deeply but that's what they told us on the ignite course.

 

 

hence the small number of suppliers in the market and the fact that the pellets are almost as expensive as coal!