Home-made Eco block maker?

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I've been seeing some pretty good words about these wood bricks and how well they work. That got me thinking:

Has anyone tried making their own wood-brick press? I'm sure all it would take is a modification to a log splitter and you could press all that sawdust we generate into your own bio-brick. I think they mix the sawdust with some sugar-water to get it to stick together.

I think this might even work with compost. Our city has a municipal compost pile which is just composted organic matter. If you could press it into bricks then let it dry I would think it would be like having a peat brick or charcoal.

 

[Dune]

Do you have a splitter? Pellets can me made from organic matter so logs might work.

 

[blades]

Modified corn starch, for a binding agent. There is info on the net about a project using hand built wooden presses same article has some recipes for the bio mix.

 

[Delta-T]

no sugar water needed to make pellets/bio bricks from wood fiber. lignen (sp?) is the magical fiber in wood that makes them stick. not so much of that in a lot of other biomass materials. If you have a 30-ton splitter you might have enough pressure to make it work. pellets (not sure entirley how the bio brick process differs) usually start at around 40 tons psi...up to about 60 tons psi. I've seen the bricks made with a ram through a die, just have to fashion yourself a die. would be neat to see if you give it a try.

 

[blades]

The bio material when forced through a die generates heat which is what causes the ligen to plasticize and cause the particles to stick together. I do not remember the numbers exactly but around 170 degrees F is the bottom line. In a slow press that heat is not going to be generated. Hence the need for the bonding agent. Additionally the bonding agent tends to add a degree of moisture resistance. Some agents are better for this purpose than others. I can also say that straight saw dust ( like from a table saw) by itself, dampend slightly with water, formed in a die with 20 tons, did not work out. Larger more fiberous material needs to be added to accomplish our goal.

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Larger more fiberous material needs to be added to accomplish our goal.

Would chainsaw dust (shavings) be suitable? I'm thinking of merely making use of otherwise waste materials. If you had to "noodle" the wood with a chainsaw just to make the bricks, then it wouldn't be worthwhile.

However if you could gather the sawdust from under the sawbuck that is generated from normal wood processing then a guy might be able to get away with cutting and splitting a bit less wood and burn eco-bricks. Or - as I suggested just go to the city compost pile for your season's fuel that would be awesome.

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

This guy uses newspaper and woodchips! I didn't know Ireland had rednecks though. I'd definitely say that thar fuel briquette press is a fine display of redneck ingenuity.
http://whichfuel.com/blog/archives/998

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Wow. THIS one is worthy of Hearth.com

http://wn.com/Small_Micro_Biomass_Fuel_Briquette_Presses_made_from_Wood

From the looks of it you don't need anywhere CLOSE to 40 tons!

 

[fishingpol]

I was impressed that the bottom piece of wood bent on the last compound lever on the third press. There was some serious pressure exerted there. Interesting video.

 

[smokinj]

Just seems so much quickier to bust out cord wood.

 

[semipro]

I think about this often.
We have a lot of brush piles that we could chip.
We also get free chips from the local tree trimmers.
It would be great to be able to bind the chips somehow for burning in the stove.
I've though about compressing them into recycled cardboard tubes using my splitter.
I also envision making chip "sausages" somehow by adding a binder to the chips and "extruding" them into some sort of strong but combustible casing...hemp braid maybe?

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Just seems so much quickier to bust out cord wood.

True enough in some cases. But this can depend on how easily accessible that wood is. Muddy logging roads etc. can make wood gathering an adventure.

Plus, the last time I cut I noticed the owner of the land who lets me cut there has the land for sale. So for those who have easy access to timber making cordwood is likely quicker/easier. For those who must scrounge or buy wood homemade wood-bricks might make some sense.

 

[blades]

I have a lot of waste from processing some 10-15 cords a season, hate seeing all those btu's going to waste. Plus all the other derbis from my lot. I am not fond of pellet stoves, just because they rely on the grid to operate. So sooner or later I will figure out something for converting my waste into burnable blocks. Compression is the easy part, size reduction is the stumbling block. I saw a couple interesting ideas in rummaging the web involving concrete gears another was 2 discs with the aggregate exposed to accomplish reduction. Leaning towards the discs, simple, effective, low cost, and low power input.

 

[bluedogz]

I didn't know Ireland had rednecks though.

Allow me to introduce my ancestors... explains a lot, really.

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

size reduction is the stumbling block.

I don't understand. Reducing the size of the wood-block? Just use a smaller form say 2" PVC instead of 3". Although I would think bigger would be better I may be wrong though.

 

[begreen]

Can you find any btu info on one of these soft pucks? Let's say it's 500btu and 10 gets you 5000 btus. If you need 25,000 btus/hr to stay warm then that's 50 pucks per hour, 1200 per day. If that is close, you'd better eat your Wheaties. That is if your arm can raise a spoon after this workout.

If you have a lot of woodchips, here's another interesting experiment.

http://www.sredmond.com/vthr_index.htm

 

[blades]

To Black Jaque, In order to make the compressed bio mass blocks the raw material must be reduced in size to apx. 6mm chips. The density of the compressed product is proportional to the size of the raw material ( or mix of materials)
The use of shredded news paper acts as a type of bonding agent.

Just a thought, as corn here state side is a bit pricy, I wonder if potato starch would not work as well?