Torrefied pellets

Hi there!
Just a quick question …

Any experiences with torrified wood pellets?

Regards!
L

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Not personally, but it is essentially charcoal gasification. I thought someone at some point tried to char wood pellets and use them though.

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My machines are now specific pellet fueled machines. I plan to build pellet fueled processing units powered by a char pellet charcoal unit. The char pellets will come from the Char ash produced by the pellet gasifier. It goes round and round. :slight_smile:

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I make pellet charcoal in a covered bain marie pot that I place in my wood stove when stoking. I was hoping that pellet char would be more dense than plain wood char, but it doesn’t appear so. The advantage is uniform fuel that works well in a charcoal gasifier without grinding. This is helpful to limit fuel variables that might skew results when testing equipment modifications. Pellets are pretty dry at around 8%. Torrefaction dries them even more and makes pellets less susceptible to drawing moisture.

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Hi all, do not confuse torrified pellets with charcoal pellets. Two different animals. Torrified pellets are made from wood that is raise to 350 C. (I have to check my notes) The idea is to make the pellet at a temperature just before the lignin decomposes. This makes a product that is more energy dense than plain wood while also making it water resistant. There is still a lot of hydrogen and oxygen present in a torrified peller making it burn more like wood. Charcoal pellets on the other hand have most of the oxygen and hydrogen removed.
Gary in PA.

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Many good observations here…

And it all points out towards ?.. yes, fuel prep and fuel uniformity are the keywords in gasification.

A very uniform fuel, same sized particles, requires another setup then a large spread with small and larger particles mixed…

A simple fire works the best with the latter (imho) and is so far the easiest to build and handle…

If i had to choose between pellets and GGGF ( GaryGilmoreGasifierFuel aka charcoal)
The charcoal it would be…

Certainly where the opportunity arises to use the heat from the charcoaling process to do house heating…

Build a “huge” WK gasifier, for house heating, slip some extra char for a GG style gasifier to run some generator or some mobile stuff…
You name it, it can be done…

If you can’t build by yourself, or like the comfort of easy fuel you can buy, then a Matt Ryders gasifier, with pellets and as per recent design, would be a better choice for those who can’t or won’t build for whatever reason…

my 2 cents worth of opinion :grin:

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Another option for creating charcoal pellets without wasting the heat energy is to use pellets in a TLUD (aka gasifier) cooking stove. When flames die down, close top and bottom to cool charcoal or dump glowing char into a covered container for cooling. My latest version below is made from double walled flue pipe that has a SS liner, 1" airspace and galvanized outer shell:

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Yes, torrefied pellets are brown and dense, charcoal pellets are black and crush easily.

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Koen,

My thods exactly on the house heating/char making boiler. I plan to make just that once our house boiler kicks it in a few years.

The heater in the greenhouse is actualy a prototype just for that.

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