Was bored and tried something of interest

I was bored on Sunday as the Steelers were not playing so I fabricated a Pellet Basket (http://www.thepelleteer.com/) to see if it would work in my Econoburn 150. I thought "Hmmmm....this might work... same principle of gasification..." so it tried it. I built the basket for about $30. It was able to hold about 40lbs of wood pellets. I lit it and it and it burned for about 5 hours. my boiler had no problem building up to 180 +' and it was produced excess heat. An Interesting thought occurred to me. If I had a pellet mill and/or a hammer mill I could actually produce pellets out of straw,grass,leaves, sawdust or anything that is readily available for little to no cost with minimal work and I could use the wood boiler I already have. All I would have to do, is build a bigger basket (I feel I can fit 100+lbs. of pellets in it)

my son who helps me cut and split the wood (10 cords) is encouraging me to continue to experiment and seriously consider moving to the use pellets in our boiler. He mentioned building a silo behind the garage where I house my boiler so that we could load the pellets into it with our skid steer and gravity flow them into the garage as need to load the boiler. (funny how all that work splitting and cutting makes you think of ways that are easier on the body)

The biggest problem is, I would have to produce somewhere around 20 ton of pellets to meet my needs, I guess its all relative to 10 cord of wood i use now. I have to say I am intrigued by the idea of a totally mechanized production system of the pellets using what I have readily available on my property. My cost to buy a pellet mill and hammer mill would be about $5000.

Love to hear your thoughts?

Musclecar Joe
Econoburn 150

as far as the "pellet basket" my camera does not work so all you have to do is go to the website in my original post. there is a picture of a the manufacturers basket there. as you will see it is quite simple to fabricate yourself. mine is identical.
If i can get my camera to work i will post my own picture or video. the only difference in my basket is I had to make it so it would fit through the door and drop into the boiler. I am quite sure i could simply add an extention to it as a second piece to accommodate more pellets. It was not a tight fit once inside the boiler, so air could circulate around the entire basket. there is about 1 inch clearance on all sides. as far as lighting the pellets I just used some fire starter gel and lit it with a lighter.

I like the wood chip idea. I have a pile a local tree company dumped on my property and I will try it out this weekend and report how it worked. the compressed pucks are interesting as well.

thanks,

musclecar joe
econoburn 150

yes i did get gasification. actually quite good. I did get my camera to work. i think i attached it to this post. if nothing is there then i need to get more help from someone more computer savy.

mwk1000 said:

I was thinking many of these same thoughts. I looked at this gadget as a way to make pellets for my eko but it's not here (US) yet and I'm not sure on the lifespan of the drum. But funny how many are all thinking of ways to use other biomass to burn.

http://www.ecoworxx.com/index_en.html

50kg / hour and I was thinking of a simple grate system to close up the slots a bit. ( I also had the exact same thought on the lava rock, funny ). I saw some simple cast iron grates that would lay over the slots at tractor supply. They only had small pellets or I might have bough a bag or two to try, This gadget above had at 20 mm diameter pellet ( I think )

The pellets seem to be denser so you would need less, as well as the moisture is controlled as part of the high pressure process to make them. Seemed nice to be able to use whatever was handy to heat your home.

That steel looks perfect to just lay a piece say 6"x 30" over the slots and try it out. What is it called, where do you buy it ?

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I bought the grating new at a local salvage yard that sells steel also. 4x8 sheet was $75. I used most of it to build cooking grate for a hog roaster. I used what was left over to build the basket. I am sure the larger briquettes would work better than pellets with the larger size and I think youu are correct I think as you say laying a piece of metal grating or installing a grate of sorts would work and allow you to really load up the boiler. I have found quite a few briquette presses on line but they are quite expensive.


musclecar joe.
Econoburn 150

wvwoodchuck said:

I'm kind of curious about this. How would this work (pellets) in a non-gasser boiler?

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Mine is a gaser. however I think you can do the same with a non gaser by controling the air with your draft, I know people tend to choke down the wood fire so it smolders the wood to get a longer burn time. I assume it would work the same but you may have to open the draft more. I tend to think you might have less creasote build up in your chimney using the pellets or the briquettes. dont quote me, i am just guessing. try it out.

musclecar joe

as far as coal beds, i had a great coal bed of smoldering pellets pretty much the whole time except for the very end. there was no problem achieving gasification. from a cold start up i think you may want to start with wood at first but otherwise it was great. I would really like to get my hands on bio bricks or bio pucks to try. those being larger i dont know if it could create the coal bed you all have talked about. if someone out there has any bio bricks let me know how they work.

m-joe