what fuels can you burn?

[bergw]

We all of course know of the standard

wood
coal
pellets
corn
biomass

what other fuels have folks expieremented with?

i've seen some posts speaking of burning the following in large amounts (assuming you have a supplier)

cherry pits
waste vegetable oil
waste motor oil

are there any other options available .. .perhpas

corn cobs?
nut shells?
peach pits?
soy beans?

 

[wg_bent]

Books
Cars
soda bottles
old phones
roof shingles
tires
old carpet
Those little chinese umbrellas you get in drinks

 

[jqgs214]

vOMIT
Dog Poop
Cow Poop
All poop
My wifes hair
my cats tail.

 

[Harley]

Spam (well it looks like a bio-brick :roll: )

 

[Kenny1]

Bridges

 

[Highbeam]

Railroad ties.... once.

Blue jays, well stellars jays actually.

Your item "biomass" is pretty all inclusive.

 

[begreen]

Money! Just try some serious remodeling!

 

[Backwoods Savage]

We all of course know of the standard

wood
coal
pellets
corn
biomass

what other fuels have folks expieremented with?

i've seen some posts speaking of burning the following in large amounts (assuming you have a supplier)

cherry pits
waste vegetable oil
waste motor oil

are there any other options available .. .perhpas

corn cobs?
nut shells?
peach pits?
soy beans?

To get back on the serious side, when I was young we used to burn corn cobs, especially in the wood cook stove. We also used to start fires with corn cobs soaked in some kerosene. And yes, the cherry and peach pits burn nicely when dry.

Out in the prairie states they burned buffalo and cow chips a lot too but we decided to not use them at home. Actually, after laying out in the hot sun and dry air, they burn nicely, give off quite a bit of heat but do not last very long. Not sure what the nieghbors might think or do if we tried that now.

 

[JustWood]

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

 

[begreen]

Not a big deal Backwoods, they might think you just got back from India though. Now if you start playing with them like frisbees, well...

 

[Harley]

Now if you start playing with them like frisbees, well...

Oh - you're not supposed to do that? I thought that helps to dry them out... plus - it's fun for the kids.

(I guess no-one's going to be signing up for Harley's Day Care after that) :lol:

 

[BrotherBart]

The cow patties work fine but the used motor oil makes a real mess in the 30-NC.

 

[jpl1nh]

The cow patties work fine but the used motor oil makes a real mess in the 30-NC.

not even gonna ask how you know that BB!! :snake:

 

[karl]

Duplicate. Sorry

 

[karl]

I was wondering if I had enough wood for this year and I was talking to my brother about it and I said ,"I'll probably run out and wake up one morning and walk into the living room with socks on my hands and break a chair to thow in the stove like BJ did on Mash."

We did have a thing when I was kid that was for rolling up newspapers to burn. We didnt have a stove then just a fire place, but this thing rolled them tighter than a joint and they were great for starting a fire. We never did try burning just them, but that's what the thing was made for.

 

[North of 60]

90,000 tons of used chopsticks in Japan every year. Check out discovery channel news on the net. :ahhh:

 

[Gooserider]

Well I remember when my aunt had a grass fire in her pasture - she needed to go around and pick up all the cow patties afterward as they were continuing to smoulder and would re-ignite the fire...

As to throwing same, they have competitions on tossing for distance, and there are apparently two main schools of technique - do the frisbee method with a well dried specimen, or the "shot put" method with a very fresh one...

Gooserider

 

[BrotherBart]

90,000 tons of used chopsticks in Japan every year. Check out discovery channel news on the net. :ahhh:

Wow! And the Chinese throw away 45 billion pair a year. If I filled the 30-NC with those little bamboo and aspen suckers their would be a mushroom cloud over the entire Mid Atlantic area.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/08/22/chopsticks_pla.html?category=earth

 

[bergw]

I've seen the newspaper "logs" before. I guess that was a major depression era invention, they even sold rollers to assist you in making htem tight enough. I think a few places still probably do. I've heard that to make them properly you need to soak them in water, then roll them.

does it work? well the results seem mixed. tons of ash, little heat. but yeah they burn. too much work though most folks say.


I've also seen people filling milk cartons with sawdust and glycerin from the bio-diesel making process, that's supposed to work fairly well.


motor oil and WVO oil work well, you just need to put a burner plate in the bottom of the stove.

 

[fbelec]

90,000 tons of used chopsticks in Japan every year. Check out discovery channel news on the net. :ahhh:

does anyone know the btu rating of a chopstick :-/

 

[Gooserider]

I've seen the newspaper "logs" before. I guess that was a major depression era invention, they even sold rollers to assist you in making htem tight enough. I think a few places still probably do. I've heard that to make them properly you need to soak them in water, then roll them.

does it work? well the results seem mixed. tons of ash, little heat. but yeah they burn. too much work though most folks say.


I've also seen people filling milk cartons with sawdust and glycerin from the bio-diesel making process, that's supposed to work fairly well.


motor oil and WVO oil work well, you just need to put a burner plate in the bottom of the stove.

I've used one, takes longer to make one 4" 'log' than it does to make a round into a bunch of splits - maybe more work. The idea is you put water in the trough so the papers get wet as you roll them. However I found the process to make them slow and a general PITA. The end result didn't burn all that well either, lots of ash and more of a smolder than a burn, usually would have to poke it up a few times to get it burned up all the way.

The other thing that may be a concern to some is whether the inks and such in modern paper might be a problem for the cats in a cat stove. I was rolling anything we could put in the recycle bin, which included a lot of catalogs and other glossy paper stuff. (we don't get that much from the weekly paper, and even newspapers use a lot of colored ink these days.)

(If anyone would like a free used paper log roller, let me know...)

Gooserider

 

[bergw]

The end result didn't burn all that well either, lots of ash and more of a smolder than a burn, usually would have to poke it up a few times to get it burned up all the way.


Gooserider

the idea seemed neat to me, i don't know that'd i'd actually do it, but it warrented some research. one post said that during the paper making process something is removed that is important in the burning process. it didn't make much sense to me since i thought paper was just mushed up wood.

the concept of burning certain waste materials is appealing to me, i'm not entirely sure why. free fuel maybe. WVO burns really well, but in a stove by itself you have to keep it at full bore just to make sure it burns. thats not really useful for heating a small space like i do.

EDIT: WVO might work well in a boiler

 

[jpl1nh]

90,000 tons of used chopsticks in Japan every year. Check out discovery channel news on the net. :ahhh:

Hmmm, if i really damped down the stove real low, I wonder how many used chopsticks it would take for an overnight burn?

 

[BrotherBart]

90,000 tons of used chopsticks in Japan every year. Check out discovery channel news on the net. :ahhh:

Hmmm, if i really damped down the stove real low, I wonder how many used chopsticks it would take for an overnight burn?

29,613

Or in a PE Summit, six.

 

[Nofossil]

I'll deny it if asked, but a tightly rolled newspaper log soaked in waste motor oil, drained, then wrapped in a few layers of clean paper makes a fine addition to a load of logs in a gasification burner. No smoke, no odor, no half-burned paper residue, lots of heat. Works for other non-volatile flammables as well.

Small amounts of non-recyclable plastic also burn with no problems and no odor. 2000 degrees and lots of oxygen work wonders. Just another alternative to throwing stuff in the landfill.