Briquette Making machine.

[rookery]

Afternoon Everyone,

Whos got one and do you use the woodchip for making the briquetts?. I"m looking at buying one to sell the briquetts, but what do you lot think?. any advise or info would be appreciated.

[renewablejohn]

I have a piston type pellet press very disappointed with it and currently trying to get my money back from the Italian manufacturer. I use woodchip but it has to be further reduced in size with a hammer mill.

[openspaceman]

I have a piston type pellet press very disappointed with it and currently trying to get my money back from the Italian manufacturer. I use woodchip but it has to be further reduced in size with a hammer mill.

 

The rule of thumb for the pellet mill was the biggest particle shouldn't exceed 0.4 of the finished pellet diameter ( 11, 8 and 6mm pellets) so yes there is a big comminution cost if you don't start with sawdust.

 

My old boss had a 50mm puck machine ( reciprocating rather than rolling) and that made some lovely briquettes from sawdust, he sold it before I could play with it as the electricity costs frightened him.

[bunnybasher100]

only used cf neilson piston presses first was a bp3200 round die with a cooling line making pucks. product going in was mainly pine wood dust including bark dust and some wood shavings mosture was about 9% made a good hard puck. second was a bp6000 square dies, lignin feed 20m forced air cooling line and bp350 saw. product was chip with no bark, put in a hammer mill with 16mm screens then dried to 12% moisture. made a ok briquitte. aslo have used large andritz roller pellet presses putting out 3.5ton an hour in 6 and 8mm dies.

dont be fooled in thinking this is easy its not as easy as people think. type of wood helps make a better briquitte/pellet, woods like western red and larch are good as the lignin content is higher otherwise you can add lignin to make a better briquitte but does clog up in the infeeds. product moisture is another big one +-2% can have a large affect on how well it all holds. Bark is a problem as it will bring the ash content up in the end product and stuffs fillters and wears dies out quicker.

ask away if you have any qestions and i will try to anwser then

[openspaceman]

dont be fooled in thinking this is easy its not as easy as people think. type of wood helps make a better briquitte/pellet, woods like western red and larch are good as the lignin content is higher otherwise you can add lignin to make a better briquitte but does clog up in the infeeds.

 

Yes softwoods in general have a higher lignin content ( and higher calorific value as a result). The pellet one I was involved with was a Sprout Matador5 tonne/hour, first time they ran it they let the wood cool in the die, I think it took a few days to drill out the die.

 

I went to look at a replacement for a lucas cuber I found and the firm that was producing the modern version was using a lignin additive which probably came as a by product of paper making. It did severely increase the ash content, I,m guessing it was a calcium ligno sulphite of some sort. It's the lignin platicising from heat released by friction in the die that holds a dry pellet together. Put it in water and it sinks and turns back to sawdust in an hour.

 

When we went into the pellet business the intention was to trade off the extra cost of making pellets against the simpler, cheaper, automatic stoking burners. The world moved on and pellets have tracked the price of oil and are really quite an expensive commodity on the retail market.

[rookery]

Hi All,

Thanks for the info. I think having read all that i may give it a miss. Sounds like to many probs. Thanks again,

Rookery

[ail901]

I am considering making my own briquettes from sawdust and wondered if anyone could advise me on a machine

 

theses are for personal use, I live in France, yes we have lots of wood but have a source of sawdust too, good idea to use it.

 

the machine is capable of producing briquettes at 50mm, but only at 140kg/hr, ok for me i think.

 

it uses a pressure of 15-20Mpa to screwpress the sawdust

 

will these briquettes be ok

 

ANY comments welcome