I have access to a HUGE amount of these things and was wondering what you guys think. The ones I have access to are 3 inch dia. and 1 inch thick.
Will they work? it seems they are pretty tightly packed, and possibly glued together, maybe steam pressed… its hard saying. Will be using them in a typical WK system.
Hello, Joseph. I don’t believe I have passed my welcme to you yet, so I shall do so now.
Wayne tried a similar product, designed for furnace boilers IIRC, and it worked OK the frist trip (some plugging in the deep firetube). When he tried to start up the second time, they had ALL turned to a pastey mush in his hopper from condensate steam as shut-down. No go after that.
I work as a maintenance electrician at a paper plant and they use these as plugs that the stick in the core of those huge paper rolls you see come from paper mills. I am not sure of the moisture content in these but I would assume they are pretty dry. If I can find a way to get these things to work I would be in business as I would have enough to get me to and from work without ever having the chop/chunk a piece of wood (other then the stuff I heat with)
Maybe you can send some to a current woodgas driver for testing. Like Brian said, the problem will be disintegration under moist conditions. Water is a byproduct of all combustion, even bone dry paper/wood. If these turn to mush you’re going to have trouble. You could try soaking one in water to see what happens.
Vesa Mikkonen has tested wood pellet gasification, it is decribed in his book, results are the same as given above, the pellets disintegrate in moist condition. He give one possible solution, to empty the gasifier after use.
So I ended up soaking one of these in 130 degree water for about 24 hours and it has not fallen apart at all. This really makes me happy. It seems to not be like a wood pellet. It looks like someone took a sheet of OSB ground it up, and then pressed and glued it into a core plug. Where as a wood pellet is mainly sawdust. I torched it with a oxy/ace torch while it was still quite wet and it seems to turn to char and smoke pretty good. This makes me happy as well!