Wood chips are the cheapest (free) fuel readily available. But to make them usable they must be dried and screened and then have a reliable feed mechanism to the burn tube.
The biggest problem that i have with going to pelletized fuel is the issue with moisture causing them to return to dust and swelling to a clogging mass.
Pellet stoves solve this by only exposing an even flow of burning fuel.
A DOW situation requires a significant quantity of charcoal in the reduction zone to allow varying power requirements,
So the best of wishes on the next of your revolutionary designs.
Yup you bring out some points I missed with the additional processes for creating usable chips. vs pellets the drying process is in part of the pellet milling process The pellets that come out of a good mill are above 200*f. So even though the pellet mill process may be more energy intensive it makes up for it self as no later processing is required.
In a stationary system it is easy to plan out runs so you are not leaving excess in the hopper and on auger feed systems we can set the level so its never excessive. This makes the drying zone more effective as well.
I have a back of the head plan for a mill as well if I end up needing one. The reciprocating mechanical presses you see on YouTube usually have electric elements heating up the die to char the exterior of the briquettes. I wonder if torrefied wood pellets would resist coming apart in a traditional hopper, the charing should put a significant dent in the water absorption.
I heat with pellets. When I clean my stove I scrape out the burn pot into the ash pan and bury the still red hot pellets into the ash to stop them from smoking up the house as I carry the pan outside to my dump area. These half burnt pellets essentially turn into semi-charcoal as the ash cuts off the oxygen. These same pellets are later uncovered outside from the ash piles by wind and so on, and they are kicking around on the ground out where I dump. They don’t come apart.
Torrefied pellets has been explored and described here by others, and just as your astute observation, the reports are stable pellets. Others may provide details, but there was some experimentation on charcoaling pellets in a modified Chinese pellet stove, I believe.