Wood Waste Briquette Making
5/11/21
Anyone out there process your own sawdust and wood shavings into wood briquettes or pellets for fire fuel? I have been trying to do homework on the feasibility but have found few resources to help... Any thoughts?
(As an aside, I am hoping to speak with someone in the Northern Hemisphere about this... There seems to be a fair amount of Asian websites out there but I am a bit of a sceptic on some of them...)
5/11/21 #2: Wood Waste Briquette Making ...
I bought a small used Wiema and used it for 7 years. It worked well and fairly trouble free. I also got a gravity box hopper with it and from there manually bagged them. I burned them in an out door wood furnace. It was a lot of work bagging them and they made a lot of creosote in the stove. So much so on both counts that after 7 years I called it quits and sold the equipment. No regrets at all for trying it. For me it is easier to make firewood.
5/12/21 #3: Wood Waste Briquette Making ...
Gary, Thanks for your response. That is good, practical information. I appreciate that.
5/12/21 #4: Wood Waste Briquette Making ...
Also keep in mind about how to efficiently get sawdust into the machine. A transfer fan under my dust collector blew sawdust into a small holding silo, which then augured it into the briquette machine. It was a lot of stuff to maintain and keep working. My silo would plug above the auger occasionally and was a pain to clean out. I am not trying to discourage you but it can be a lot of work. I bagged about 500 feed sacks a year.
5/13/21 #5: Wood Waste Briquette Making ...
Is all your waste from hardwood or sheet good also? I looked at this briefly and cost to create a system like this is prohibitive.
5/16/21 #6: Wood Waste Briquette Making ...
We have a biomass boiler system from Twin Heat out of Denmark. Sold and installed by global sales group out of California. We saw these types of systems in Europe in almost every shop where they use there wood waste for winter heating. They have the systems perfected. Some use briquettes but most we saw use straight sawdust/chips which to us makes the most sense as it eliminates those expensive briquette machines and then you still need a way to feed them to your boiler. We went with the sawdust/chip solution and it is working well for us. The down side to sawdust is you need a large storage silo or bunker, if you have the room like we do it’s an easy thing. We just finished our 2nd year heating with nearly zero winter fuel bill. Call or email if you have any questions or talk with Dave Schmucker at Global Sales Group they were extremely helpful along the way.