biomass bricks

[tsquini]

This weekend with the kids we made some biomass bricks out of paper and sawdust. soaked them in water for 4 days then used a car jack to compress them.

Now we are letting them dry for a few week.

 

[My Oslo heats my home]

This weekend with the kids we made some biomass bricks out of paper and sawdust. soaked them in water for 4 days then used a car jack to compress them.

Now we are letting them dry for a few week.

Thats cool. Can you take me through the process of how you made them. What acted as the cylinder and how did you press it to hold its shape??

 

[blades]

Third world system , pipe of the diameter you desire ( typicaly 4") Pipe needs to be seamless and smooth inside (schedule 80 pvc will work ) Length maybe 4-6"
need a cap( note cap needs to be removable, plastic threads generally wont hold up) for one end and a tight fitting plug( still able to slide in pipe) for other side on top of jack plunger. Cap gets drilled with several holes around 3/16" to allow water to escape when compressing. News paper or paper of non shiny type ( news print best) shredded and soaked till it starts to become pasty this acts as binder for the biomass of your choice. Mixing the two together wet ( this part takes some playing around to come up with the proper ratio for your materials) compress until no more water is oozing from weep holes in cap, at this point it is time to expell the slug from the pipe by removing cap using some fixture to retain pipe while agian useing jack and plunge to expell slug, set aside and let dry ( time factor here varies also) Well That's the abridged version.

 

[blades]

Added notes: adding some cornstarch to mix helps to bind things together . This is sold under fancy names as a binder agent, also heard of things like molasses used. Straight sawdust is generally too fine by itself for this type of low pressure system ( commercial units use very high pressure as well as about 150 deg. or so preheat of the biomass before compression) This to plasticize the lignin ( natural binding agent in plant cell structure) for their products. so for you to get stuff to stick together the biomass needs to be some what courser so the material can interlock. What you are aiming for is a lot like a fine grained OSB material but not as fine as particle board. Bunch of info On web, a lot of misinformation as well due to people pushing there products, difficult to sort through. I have messed around with this awhile back using a 20 ton press, due to a lack of time ( an abundance of free wood) I have not done much else with it over the last 7 years. Many firms use the low compression plus wax to produce fire starters commercially , note that you do not want to use wax as a binding agent.

One more note: you want your material mix to be about the consistancy of paste just before compression.