E-Coal- better than wood pellets

DJ the guy we(imacman-schoondog and myself) Got the grass pellets from. He was playing around with making the bio-char. But he was making it for fertilizer for gardening.

Check out the BTU on them 13,500 is impressive, But the high ash content makes me think there grass pellets char-ed. Wonder what there getting for them?

Interesting concept but messy looking. Very curious though.

Looks like they are using a big rotary furnace like used in a asphault plant to heat the feed stock to different temps depending on end use. The ash content of the feedstock does carry through to the char. Lots of heat made in this process. I personally think that pellet stoves should be redesigned to do this same process B/C the heat generated is best used to heat your house. 75% of the pellet for heat the leftover 25% char can be mixed in your garden soil to improve yields. Best part no ash to deal with. We have a fixed amount of biomass feed stock available in his country it needs to be used wisely.

With 60% more heat output per pound, I'm not sure I could cut my stove back far enough to prevent overheating! Even if it has 3% ash, if you are using 1/2 as much fuel, you could live with 1-1 1/2% ash, especially if it is priced the same as coal. Every energy comparison chart I have ever seen shows that coal outstrips everything else on a btu/$ basis. Very, very interesting and my garage would be one heck of a lot less full!!

DJ said:

Looks like they are using a big rotary furnace like used in a asphault plant to heat the feed stock to different temps depending on end use. The ash content of the feedstock does carry through to the char. Lots of heat made in this process. I personally think that pellet stoves should be redesigned to do this same process B/C the heat generated is best used to heat your house. 75% of the pellet for heat the leftover 25% char can be mixed in your garden soil to improve yields. Best part no ash to deal with. We have a fixed amount of biomass feed stock available in his country it needs to be used wisely.

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I just do see how a pellet stove could do that. It requires fuel to heat the biomass to make the char. The fuel you would burn doesn't have high BTU's so it would require more than what I am using now(My though is its going to require more as you have to heat the char and that would absord some BTU's from the base fuel used to heat the stove and char).

Unless the biomass being char-ed is going to release BTU's during the process?

Otherwise I'm just not getting it.

I guess they are, essentially, charcoal, where more BTU's are packed into a more dense product. 12,000 BTU's per pound put into your pellet stove is like dumping a 5 gallon bucket of nitromethane in your car. These are probably best suited for coal burning stoves like the Reading stokers or the Harman coal burning insert. If they become reasonably priced, as the promised, I may have two quads for sale!

On the face it you could have heat equivalent to the higher setting but using the feed equivalent of a lower setting.

And it would increase your storage by over 50%.

I am sure a torified pellet would make a mess of the pellet stove, Pretty sure its a coal sub for coal stoves. Probably best for the hand loaders. But maybe a stoker too? Got to believe it will mess up any hopper you put them throw!

Stick your hands in coal, You get a little bit of black on ya. Stick your hands in a bag of charcoal and your filthy!

a little of topic but do they make a insert for pea coal like our wood burners.

i know that coal is real dirty and wicked hot how come we dont we see them more to big?

one thing for coal is there is sure a lot of it and we would not have to deal with so much logistics like pellets.

Como said:

On the face it you could have heat equivalent to the higher setting but using the feed equivalent of a lower setting.

And it would increase your storage by over 50%.

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This would work as long as you can increase your fan speed at the low feed rate. The Sante Fe and Castile can't do that without a slight mod. You would also need the combustion blower, I think, at a higher speed, but not sure about that one. Can't do that on my quads. I'm sure you'd kiss your warranty good bye.

Fish On said:

a little of topic but do they make a insert for pea coal like our wood burners.

i know that coal is real dirty and wicked hot how come we dont we see them more to big?

one thing for coal is there is sure a lot of it and we would not have to deal with so much logistics like pellets.

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I burned coal in a free standing stove for many years and coal is no dirtier than pellets if you think about what you are doing. It's an old fallacy like saying modern diesels stink, smoke, rattle, and have no power. All are total BS. :cheese:

Reading Stoker stoves use rice coal, I believe. 85,000 btu's should keep things toasty! http://www.readingstove.com/products_lehigh.html

Not sure about the Harman.

I expect that pellet stoves may slowly be replaced with torrefied wood stoves.The main reason is the Btu content is a lot higher than wood pellets and they dont absorb mositure which substantially reduces shipping and handling costs. As a major cost of a pellet is transportation, a product that requires less volume and weight for an equivalent btu content is going to reduce shipping costs. The packaging can also be less expensive as it doesnt have to be water resistant. On a btu basis they cost less to make than a pellets made from low grade logs (Pellets still are competitive where they are made of sawdust waste from an adjacent process since the drying and gringing is already done). There are several plants being built in the southeast that will be shipping boatloads to Europe. As most of the volatiles are driven off in the torrefaction process, the emisions could be lower than an equivalent pellet. Like Pellets, the amount of "ash" is related to the wood going into the process. Since it is a thermal process mostly fed by driven off volatiles but also requiring supplemental fuel, the manufacturer, can reject more bark (which tends to contain the most ash). Do note that torrefied wood and biochar is slightly different althought the terms are easy to confuse, generally torrefied wood is processed to leave the lignins in the char, so that when it is cooled, the lignin tends to seal off the wood from mositure, this is of less importance with a biochar that is destined for blending with organic wastes to form Terra Preta which is the much hyped "super soil".

For those still having a probem understanding the concept, the cost of the raw wood to the plant is very low, most of the cost of a pellet is the electricity required to grind the wood into powder, dry it to close to bone dry and then lots of electricty to extrude the pellets. Torrefied wood still needs to be chipped but not pulverized into powder, no need to predry the chips as the torrefaction process does that and the horsepower required to briquette the resulting char is several orders of magnitide less. Once the stuff is made it can be moved with a bobcat and stored in piles outdoors. The net result is lower manufacturing and shipping costs. Basically its acts like uniform sized coal without the inorganic ash.

My wood boiler was also rated for coal although the grate components were damaged when I got it. Once there is a local supply for torrefied wood, I plan to try it. I expect anyone with a bottom grate design where the combustion air comes up under the grate will be able to use it in place of wood.

... or you could just burn anthracite coal @ 12-13,000btu's/lb and typically available in the east for almost half the cost of pellets right now. I'm not sure that the energy input to the entire process from the tree (or "waste" product) to the "e-coal" is going to ever make them competitive on their own (w/ out gov't subsidy - encouraging energy inefficiency, renewable or not).

berlin said:

... or you could just burn anthracite coal @ 12-13,000btu's/lb and typically available in the east for almost half the cost of pellets right now. I'm not sure that the energy input to the entire process from the tree (or "waste" product) to the "e-coal" is going to ever make them competitive on their own (w/ out gov't subsidy - encouraging energy inefficiency, renewable or not).

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Amen to that! Look at any cost comparison chart for various fuels and it's a no brainer to use coal. People are so brainwashed into thinking coal is bad and dirty. They don't want to damage our poor environment and all the other excuses they have been led to believe, yet China starts up a new coal fired electric plant every month. Ooops, political no-no.

Anyway, if people are near a coal supply that is even close to the cost of pellets, they are crazy to go for pellets over coal.