Briquette or pellet maker from sawdust
 

Using a circular saw blade on a rack bench generates lots of sawdust. I have long had the idea of converting it into briquettes or pellets for the wood burner. Currently we have several 1 tonne bags full of semi dry softwood saw dust.

Please has anyone got a second hand briquette or pellet maker for hire, sale or gift? Single or 3 phase, deisel all can be used.

Has anyone tried to convert sawdust to use on a wood burner etc???

Any help or offers gratefully recieved.

JW

Jonathan, have a look on ebay for 'paper log briquette maker' and you will find one/some. Maybe one could be adapted or reinforced to suit your needs ?

Hope it is of help.

There are stoves that burn saw dust, can't remember the name, but there was one in the wood shed once.... Has a Chute on the top, into the fire.... used to keep us warm....

We use both a sawdust burner and an off-cuts stove in the workshop. The latter will also burn sawdust; but a mixture works best.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/6088463...57626233345495

link only, as can't find the small image to post!

StoneRoad

Thanks for the replies. I am looking to convert the saw dust into a fuel which can be carried into the house and burnt in the front room... Mrs W does not apreciate my attempts to burn the 'raw' sawdust on our conventional wood burner, due to the trail I have been leaving on the carpet from the front door to the stove!!

I think I have seen the paper briquette machines which appear to be very 'manual' needing soaked shredded paper. I am looking for a simple means of compressing the loose dust into a solid form mechanically.

Cheers

JW

You could make a large longish briquette maker without too much hassle I would think, then you'd only need to make it the log length to suit your stove, maybe a power pack or better still off the tractor hydraulics, would save a bit of effort the manual ones require.

No real easy answer to this. Commercial ram and screw briquetters rely on pressure forcing the material through a set of dies, you need friction through the dies to cook the wood and get the lignin to turn "tarry" and bind it all together. You then need a long run of briquette trough to allow it to cool back down and solidify. I know one briquette plant that has to run almost a tonne through every time it starts up before the dies are hot enough to get it to bind together.

You need dry sawdust, wet stuff doesnt cook up properly in the dies and wont bind. You will also get steam formed in the hot dies, at the very least this will bubble and pop the briquettes apart before they have bound. In worst case they can explode in the dies; again I know of a plant that blew the back wall out with nothing more that pressing a bit of sawdust into briquettes.

You can use additional binders to reduce the pressure etc, things like molasses were traditionally used; but this is very much (literally) a black art. And I cant see you being very popular carting sawdust logs coated in molasses through the living room!!

I just dont know of a way of doing it on a small scale. maybe get some small paper bags and bring in a bit at at time to go on the log burner? Or, as previously suggested, there are a number of good workshop heaters that will burn sawdust.

There is a chap who runs the Salvage Yard at Wilminstone Quarry in Tavistock who produces 'bars' of the stuff, about 2" diameter. The ones in the bags I have seen there are broken off into roughly 6" lengths. Sorry, I didn't see the machine, or enquire as to the process...I was there to collect a 20ft length of angle iron at a quarter of the price of the steel suppliers up the road!