Charcoal is the only solid I know of with such an incredibly low flamability limit. I would have a care that the pellet mill doesn’t catch fire and over heat the metal. I don’t think it’s a big danger, but it’s something that would sneak up on you after you walk away.
4 Likes
Hopefully he’s moistening the charcoal. I do when I’m milling gunpowder, but I also use non sparking lead balls in a plastic rubber mill.
7 Likes
i have a 10 inch flat plate mill and have also tried compressing charcoal fines , getting the correct moisture is only the first of many problems , i gave up on the number of times i had to drill out my dia plate to unblock it , i tell you what does make great pellets though and that is all the gum leaf’s straight off the tree green as you like no grinding up just throw in and get pellets out , then burn pellets to make charcoal pellets .
Matt R made a heater that does just that heats his home and the by product is charcoal pellets that he uses in his down/cross draft gasifier to run his generator
Dave
8 Likes
I thought that pellets stick together because the pressure of the rollers and the heat of the die liquefies the volatiles which then act a a glue or binder to hold the lignins and celluloses together.
The volatile fatty acids, compounds that form into tars, stuff that is eaten by bacteria in anaerobic digestors.
Mixing that material back in would certainly make a stronger pellet. … But when I pyrolyze those pellets … I would gum up my engine.
Brings me back to searching for a relatively inert binder.
Thank you. I collect amendment recipe’s.
3 Likes
Yeah, we are watching that real damn close.
4 Likes
Thank you.
Your pellets survive the charcoal-ing process? They hold together?
I would really like to learn more about that.
I am hoping that is a post or thread that I missed. Please tell me there are links to this.
Thanks so much for the help.
2 Likes
Ok let’s take a different tack. Approach from the other end.
This is not “Johnson” grass. We call it “Tala-eib”. Saw grass.
Livestock won’t eat it. Can’t use it for bedding. Once it gets a foot hold it is almost impossible to kill off. You have to dig out and burn the root ball’s.
You do not run through this stuff. You will regret it. If you have to move through a patch … you do it slowly and gingerly. It will cut you to high heaven. And the injuries ITCH!.
So that tells me that there is a lot of Lignin/Celluose in there. And some sort of funky organic juice.
This is what I’ve got to work with. This is just a few days worth of accumulation.
We mow this with a standard 5’ tractor mower. A bush hog with no rear wheel. I’ve modified the deck to have an input “hopper”. This lets us shred to a fairly small length.
Right now we mow, gather, shred, and compost it. But aerobic composting is a SLOW process. Processing for this uses a lot of dino juice.
I could anaerobically compost it in a batch digester, but that is really labor intensive, and nasally offensive.
However at the end of that process I would be left with an empty husk of the Tala-eib which would be ideal for pryolysis.
Any and all thoughts are most gratefully welcome.
6 Likes
(Notespace)
Did you ever run those pellets in a gasifier?
1% tapioca binder … your killing me. 871 posts later and not one word on how they perform.
my head hurts
4 Likes
I think it actually may be easier to make sawdust pellets and process them in a TLUD. Then you wouldn’t need to worry about binders or charcoal slurry clogging your pellet mill.
3 Likes
@KristijanL has played around with carbonized wood pellets. I remember him writing about a friend buying bags of pellets for him and he carbonized them.
2 Likes
Ok. I’ve got smoke coming out of my ears and a nose bleed.
I’ve gotta take a break and swing a hammer or something.
I’d love to make pellets then charcoal them. It’s all the same to me. Tools in a tool box.
Please … anybody … point me to a picture, schematic, video of pellets being charcoaled.
2 Likes
Señor Ramos and Bruce made this TLUD. Sort of boosted with a blower for smaller sized feed stock.
I like this method because the air can only come in from one spot, and you can cap it off with a pipe. No more worrying about sand not sealing the TLUD well enough.
2 Likes
Yes thats correct. Not as dense as yours but clean sfuel.
3 Likes
Thank you. I’ll look at materials.
As an aside do you think G.G.'s pryamid Kon-Tiki would carbonize pellets?
I ask because I was thinking of making this the length of a standard barrel and suspending a KVL retort barrel above it.
That way I could carbonize large, odd size pieces and use the flame cap waste heat to retort chips, or possibly pellets at the same time.
What would you call that a Gilmore - Looken carbonizer?
1 Like
Mark, very real hand on work! I gave Dutch John a bag of pellets once. He used it in his Tiny lawnmower. Condens makes the pellets fall apart and block. I must say it was a thiny gasifier and very critical. The reason I abandoned pellets is the energy balance and time. You noticed the high loads too, on the die. If you manage to make pellets they are a super fuel. But the making comes with a price, time and parts. I sold everything last year. Managed to keep the house warm for a few winters, but now looking for another hobby. KISS is always the best path, dont let the pellets fool you. I build a drizzler and had it eat pellets. Worked super, but pellets I have to buy. So it has to eat other fuel. Looking for Laimet too, but first finish the Drizzler.
Another thing, GG documented his charcoal excellent. Everytime I fall back on his tips. The only thing I didnt try yet is the pyramid kiln. That looks good too.
So, if you are able to make pellets, they are superfuel. But the making aint easy. I have a pdf somewhere that I used for making them. Send me a pm if your interested. I have to dig in the dark.
3 Likes
Hi Mark , if you read through Thrive off grid post i think on there Matt R showed one of his new builds was a indoor pellet heater that also made charcoal pellets as a side line to run his generator .
At the moment we are coming up to winter and just to help the firewood along we bought 14 bulk bags of wood briquets very cheap between us to mix in with our not really dry enough fire wood , these briquets are made by compressing sawdust from kiln dried oak boards that are cut into parquet flooring tiles , they measure roughly 3 inches high by the same diameter , they make amazing charcoal when burnt that still sort of hold together and would for sure work in a downdraft gasifier
I will try posting some photo’s of the briquets once they come out of the fire to show you how they hold up , this is what they look like before .
Dave
3 Likes
Thank you. I knew that Matt had something like that. That “Thrive” thread is 1500 posts long, and I have not finished working through it.
Nice pictures. Awesome materials.
I’ll see your Briquette and raise you a charcoal cow pie I found while sieving today.
Here is the latest test run of pellets.
Thank you so much. It really helped. I had no clue what a “carpet” was.
6 Likes
I don’t think that one was pellets. He tried to made charcoal out of pellets a long time ago, but I think that attempt is prior to the thrive thread. I think they fell apart, since the binder chars as well. I think I pointed you to the product page for his charmaker.
Commericial briquettes use clay and some of the tar as a binder which is why they don’t work in gasifiers. However, I wonder if you had some ‘low temp’ char if it would have enough tar in it to bind it without anything else. IE not the high temp nice clinky ringing char.
1 Like
Looking good Mark! Really good job and thanks I helped you some. Not a hard job making pellets?
And nice looking briquettes Dave, from a 7,5 or 11 kW press in that size. Making briquettes is easier because it can de a discontinuous process, pellets never. Warm and cool the die, feeding etc.
Btw, I spend one evening servicing a briquette press this week. A good brand and a good precise client. So came home 19.00 from work and left 19.30 the help the man. Only because I knew it cant be much wrong with it. And it was, but lost another evening after a long day. Only a few people are allowed to buy a press from me. No press, no problems.
4 Likes
Not really.
This time I spent 30 minutes setting up. Staged a bucket of soapy water, brushes, and a drill before hand. I adjusted the rollers by shimming up off the flat die with a slice out of a soda can. About 1/10th of a mm, (sorry I forget what that is called).
Dumped Tala-eib charcoal into the hopper a liter at a time. I didn’t let the die get empty. Kept re-feeding the output until it got up to temperature.
Then it took off and started spitting out pellets. They were long-ish pellets because I removed the cutter from the inside. It was catching material and clogging the system.
Whats in the pictures is 4kg, (200L drum full), of raw saw-grass charcoal. That translated into just less than 1/2 of a 20L bucket of pellets.
I could have kept running but I decided to quit and evaluate before I used up all of my source material.
I did not bother weighing it because they are still full of water. I’ll process the last two drums and get FT the measurement he wanted.
Took about 30 minutes to process, and another 30 minutes to clean up.
6 Likes