How to Make Fuel Briquettes – Sawdust Briquettes –and Wood Pellets
By ngureco
Lignin - Lignen
The secondary cell walls of wood and biomass are put together by a complex chemical called lignin (lignen). If you saw wood into powder and then melt the lignin in the powder, the lignin will again bind the powder together into solid wood. This is the idea used in binding sawdust into sawdust briquettes. To melt the lignin from sawdust requires a lot of pressure which can not be achieved by the simple briquettes press used in simple briquette making.
Starch Is Expensive
Sawdust can also be mixed with a starch paste and be bonded together as a briquette by pressing using simple briquette making presses. Such a briquette is very light, and it burns very fast, and produces a lot of smoke. To make it stable and last longer, just mix sawdust and charcoal fines at the ratio of 20/75 and add 5 - 6% starch binder. Starch is relatively very expensive and can be replaced by mashed newsprint/waste paper pulp as a binder. To read more on possible recipes of making charcoal briquettes using starch as a binder go to the article How to Make Briquettes – Charcoal Briquettes - Charcoal Briquette Ingredients and Composition.
Sawdust is Easily Available
Sawdust is the by-product you get after cutting lumber with a saw. Sawdust is composed of fine particles of wood which takes a long time to discompose. High concentration of sawdust in one area is considered an environmental problem. Sawdust is easily available at almost free of charge from saw mills as well as from individual carpenters within many societies. Sawdust contains a lot of energy and is therefore ideal for making inexpensive fuel briquettes. The good thing about sawdust is that we can utilize its lignin to bind the briquettes instead of using starch binder which is the most expensive component in charcoal briquettes.
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Sawdust Briquettes
To get sawdust to bind together using its own lignin, you need to press the sawdust at such high pressure of 60 tonnes per cm². This is a very high pressure that the briquette comes out the orifice charred and steaming hot. It is this compression pressure that heats up the sawdust to a temperature of about 120°C. This temperature in turn melts up the lignin in the sawdust and upon reduction of pressure and cooling the sawdust is bonded together as a solid briquette. It is very important that the sawdust should be completely dry and at moisture content of about 8% and 12%. In addition, the sawdust should be of consistent size with fines and shavings. These sawdust briquettes are smoky and need to be carbonized to fit in the high end market. One good thing about fuel briquettes pressed that much is that they are compact and dense than wood and occupy less space for economical transportation and storage.
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Wood Pellet Making Machines/Sawdust Briquette Making Machine
In order to achieve the pressure required to press the sawdust to release lignin, you will need to purchase a wood pellet making machines or sawdust briquette making machine. Ideally, they actually are the same machines and by changing the dies and rollers you can get pellets, briquettes or those other tubular shapes.
In china you can purchase a good wood pellet making machines or sawdust briquette making machine for about $6000 ex-works. You will then have to add the cost of transportation, handling and clearing and with roughly a total of $10,000 you should have the machine in your manufacturing yard. A good machine should be able to produce about 1000 kg of pellets/briquettes per hour.
Maintenance of Briquette Making Machine
The moving parts, rollers and dies will need to be replaced from time to time and this can turn out to be a big cost. And in addition you will need to pay for electricity that you will use in running the machine. The electricity can be about 7% the energy of the fuel briquettes made.
Calorific Values of Typical Fuels
Type of Fuel
| Energy Kcal/Kg
|
|---|---|
LPG
| 11,100
|
Heating Oil
| 10,100
|
Natural Gas
| 9,100
|
Wood Charcoal
| 7,500
|
Charcoal Fines Briquettes (No Adulteration)
| 7,400
|
Paper Briquettes
| 4,800
|
Sawdust Briquettes
| 4,800
|
Wood Pellets
| 4,500
|
Raw Wood
| 4,100
|
If you would like to learn How to Make a Simple Briquette Press, you can check it here.
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Comments
Thank you, Plinka.
The calorific value of wood pellets will vary from the type of wood used in making the pellets.
I have now added a table showing the approximate calorific values of sawdust briquettes, wood pellets and charcoal briquettes which one can compare with to the calorific values of other standard fuels.
Thank you for this brilliant idea and hub.
Very interesting hub, having recently moved back to the UK from South Africa were everyone burns wood I was wondering?
Has anyone done any calculations on the energy required to make the brickettes. i.e. is it cost effective.
Paper Briquettes
4,800
Sawdust Briquettes
4,800
Wood Pellets
4,500
Raw Wood
4,100
To get those extra calories into the brickettes I mean?
thanks for the great info. Voted up and useful
Thank you, for your comment, Molometer.
Ideally, paper briquettes, sawdust briquettes, wood pellets, and raw wood should have the same energy density if they are made from same species of wood because energy is neither created nor destroyed. Unfortunately, each of the above mentioned types of briquettes goes a different process in making them. The variation in energy difference is mainly due to how the manufacturing process is able to control the levels of ash contaminants such as heavy metals, chlorides, sulphur, and the level of moisture content.
When you grind the wood to fine sawdust/particles and press it through a die at high pressure, you are in essence embedding some extra energy in the briquette since the particle structures will have been altered from that of raw wood, and therefore, each of the above mentioned products will use different energy to decompose/burn.
Making briquettes in Africa and selling the same in Africa may not be cost effective due to the prices people there are willing to pay for them unless you are getting the raw materials at very low cost. In the first world, where electricity is inexpensive, making fuel briquettes should be cost effective as people there are more than willing to pay good money for clean, smoke free, quality products.
Drying the briquettes uses a lot of energy and is the single most important cost that will determine if your briquettes will be cost effective. In countries around the equator, this should not be a significant cost as they can dry their briquettes using the sun/solar energy which is free.
i am at the moment building a briquette press. it is hydrauilc wioth approx i ton pressure the trouble is i am finding it hard to get the briquetts out of the mould without them breaking up any of you good people out there have any ideas regards ken barker
Hi ken,
I get what you mean. Try to remove them by forcing them upwards, instead of forcing them downwards. Being anti-gravity when you eject the briquettes out should reduce most of the breakages. Check this article: http://ngureco.hubpages.com/hub/Homemade-Briquetti
Hi could you put me onto someone that sells a machine that can make pine wood briqquetts, surely here in Africa it must be cheaper than buying firewood as there isnt much left where i am and also people have to walk kms to find it.Also do you have to add anything to turn the pine wood briqquetts into charcoal briqquetts? I would like to find someone who sells a complete plant as i would have to dry the pine saw dust as well.
Hi Ed,
1. You can check with:
Anyang GEMCO Energy Machinery Co., Ltd.
East Haihe Road, New High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, Anyang, Henan, China
Email address: biomass@ayimpex.com
2. The machine will press the non-carbonized material until they produce a liquid called lignin (lignen). The lignin will then bind the materials into briquettes.
Hi, i made saw dust briquettes with paper waste as binder but they are producing a lot of smoke how can i restify this?
Hi Mary,
Briquettes made from sawdust and paper will certainly produce a lot of smoke. If you would ferment the sawdust by dampening it in water for about 4 days, you can reduce the running tears from eyes that are associated with smoke from such briquettes.
Briquettes that are not carbonized will produce lots of smoke. Briquettes made from sawdust and paper can not be carbonized after they have been made as they will not hold together. Lignin is the chemical that binds the sawdust together into solid wood and these briquettes can be carbonized after they have been made and still hold together just like lump charcoal. To get lignin from sawdust, you need to press your briquettes at very high pressure and this can only be done by special briquettes making machines.
To reduce the amount of smoke in your briquettes, try mixing about 10% sawdust and 84% charcoal dust and 6% paper bidder. This way, you will get briquettes that will burn faster and with reduced amount of smoke.
Briquettes made from sawdust and paper requires sufficient drying to achieve a moisture content of no more than 8%, otherwise, a lot of smoke is produced. To dry sawdust briquettes to a moisture content of about 8% will require several days of strong sun drying, and this is not easy as it may sounds.
lovely info,am from nigeria and i thinking dis sawdust briquetting can be a big money spinner in nigeria cost d cost of kerosene which about 2/3 of the population uses to cook had increase n people are fighting their way for an alternative whch hapen to b electricity bt its aint stable..so i blive there is a big market i can create a niche in. But i jst av some few question i need answer to:
-can i get a cheaper briquettin machine that might xpensive as the 6k dollar or a middle production one that wont produce 2k or a used one?
-where can i get a company that could design a sawdust or charcoal bruquitte stove basically for cooking.thanks.
Hi Motaiye,
If you want cheap briquette press, you can easily make yours for about $10. You will need to use 94% charcoal dust, 6% cassava starch as raw materials and solar energy for drying briquettes. These materials are plenty and almost free in Nigeria. There is plenty of charcoal dust from lump charcoal stores some deposited as early as 1940s. You will need to dig out and sweep it from your cities. You can check how to make the $10 briquette presses here: http://ngureco.hubpages.com/hub/Homemade-Briquetti . These briquettes will not have the problem of producing smoke as the charcoal dust is already carbonized.
Making briquettes from sawdust is an art. The saw dust will need to be pressed to a pressure of about 60,000 kg/cm². This is a lot of pressure that makes the briquette comes out the orifice charred and steaming hot, and at a workable density of more than 1g/cc. This compression pressure will heat up the sawdust to a temperature of about 120 degree Celsius. This can not be done by briquette presses of $2,000. The 6k for a sawdust briquetting press is actually on the lower side, you may need a little bit more. You may also need a kiln for carbonization. The good thing is that if you can set it up, then you have an industry that will generate for you lots of money from the local markets as well as foreign markets.
As regard to designing a sawdust or charcoal briquette stove for cooking in Nigeria, this can be done by local metal artisans at very low prices. Just check it out with them in your neighborhoods.
thanks for ur quick respond,i can take a loan to start it if there is no lower briquette press machine..bt can d 6k press make a charcoal briquette too and whch manufacturer can u recommend to get one from..please sir i dont knw if u could help wit the foriegn market prospect.THANKS.
Hi motaiye
There are different briquette presses for charcoal dust, biomass briquettes, sawdust briquettes and woodchips. What you may aim at is a press where you can interchange some components to make briquettes from different materials. You can get superior and inexpensive presses from manufactures in China.
I would recommend you start on a small scale so that if anything goes wrong then the loss is a minimum. My observation has been people who are used to using lump charcoal are very difficult to change into using briquettes. If you would start with your briquettes priced at half the price of lump charcoal and you provide briquette stoves (different from those of lump charcoal) then you can have the mega market of the low income groups. Selling briquettes to the big hotels and institutions like schools is easier compared to selling to low income people who just keep on preferring lump charcoal.
If you can make good quality sawdust briquettes and your prices are workable, then foreign markets are plenty. Ideally, you should think of good briquettes to have a density greater than 1gm/cc, moisture content below 10% and ash content below 2%. The ‘free on board’ price of a container load should be about US$ 0.25 per kilogram of briquettes. With a density of 1 gm/cc, you should be able to load about 14,000 kg in a 20 feet container which should give you about $3,500 at your local sea port. Now, the question is: is it economically viable to get only $3500 for all that load of briquettes? The answer may be ‘no’. But then if you were to ship at least one container every week, it may still be worthy the effort, more so when you reflect on the possibility your government should compensate you with extra money from carbon credit. $3,500 may not look like a lot of money but then the material to make your briquettes are obtained free of charge, even though the whole process of making briquettes is labour intensive.
The decision to go into briquettes-making business is very difficult but it’s only you who can make it.
thanks for ur enlightenment responses,sir from ur above respond it is obvious that i can only go wit d sawdust briquette cos here in nigeria sawdust is free n in sum cases u can b askd to pay a token..bt sir can d 6k press produce a sawdust briquettes of such density to make d international market.
Thank you, Motaiye.
A briquette pressing machine of 6k will produce high quality briquettes that will meet international standards. What may vary is the output per hour. Large briquette presses produces several tonnes of briquettes per hour but then they may cost as much as a million dollars.
With $6,000 you should be able to get a medium sized briquette making machine. You can check with: Anyang GEMCO Energy Machinery Co., Ltd., East Haihe Road, New High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, Anyang, Henan, China, Email address: biomass@ayimpex.com.
They should be able to give you their current prices as well as an explanation of what you will need for their briquetting presses technology. There are also many other manufacturers of briquetting machines in that country and you can ask them for their prices so that you can compare.
@ngureco: As per your comment, "Briquettes made from sawdust and paper will certainly produce a lot of smoke."
Just want to know if the sawdust briquettes produced by applying high pressure of 60 tonnes per cm² will also produce lot of smoke?
Also, what is the current price/tonne of these biomass briquettes & which country is currently huge importer?
Thanks in anticipation for your time.
Hi Inception,
Sawdust briquettes produced by applying high pressure of 60 tonnes per cm² will still emit smoke because they have not been carbonized. The high pressure helps the sawdust particles to bind together by lignin (lignen) and at this stage the briquettes are as good as dry firewood. Carbonization is the conversion (through burning) of organic substances into carbon in the absence of oxygen to remove gases such as hydrogen, methane and tar. These gases are what come out as smoke.
Briquettes fall under fuels and as long as they can burn cleanly and the prices are workable, the market is unlimited anywhere on planet earth.
Thanks for this hub. I produced charcoal dust briquettes and used molasses as the starch binder at the ratio of 10:1 but they do not have enough heat. They burn up quickly and produce a lot of ash. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Susan,
First I would like to congratulate you for making briquettes that can stand solid and can burn and cook something no matter how slow the fire is. You just need to keep on experimenting until when you get the right combination of ingredients, and once you get to know the right combination, do not let it go. Your briquettes are made from materials that would otherwise have been a waste, and that in itself is a great achievement for you.
There is an obvious difference between briquettes and lump charcoal in that briquettes do not burn as hot as charcoal because briquettes are not able to facilitate as much oxygen for combustion as lump charcoal can. This is why sodium nitrate is added as an oxidizer in briquettes. Sodium nitrate is expensive and can be very dangerous, so, avoid it. Lump charcoal has an irregular shape whilst briquettes have a regular shape defined by the die/press. This makes a lot of difference for the two in terms of surface area. To make your briquettes burn with much fire and faster, you would need to break them into smaller pieces about 1 to 2 inches in diameter before putting them into the stove. How you arrange them in the stove can also make a lot of difference because if there are no spaces for sufficient circulation of air (oxygen) then they will burn slowly. It is also important to ensure that the briquettes have dried enough to a moisture content of under 10 percent so that they burn faster and cleanly.
People have a tendency of seeing illusions when they compare the ash being produced by briquettes and that being produced by lump charcoal. Take for example: lump charcoal with a density of about 0.4 grams/cc and briquettes with a density of 1.2 grams/cc. A 2 liters container of briquettes will produce thrice as much ashes as lump charcoal in the same container. This is because the briquette in that container weighs three times as much weight as lump charcoal.
If there is complete combustion, then there would be no difference to the ash-content between lump charcoal and briquettes made from charcoal fines of the same wood. But the difference in ash content comes because of this: The fine charcoal dust that you are using have a very low purity than lump charcoal. Your charcoal dust contains, in addition to charcoal, fragments, mineral sand, soil and dirt picked up from the earth and the surface of the wood and its bark. The fact that the charcoal is breaking into fine dust before reaching the buyer means the charcoal layer was over-burnt into almost ash, or the charcoal was produced from bark, twigs and leaves which have higher ash content than normal wood charcoal that did not break into dust. The fine dust that you find in charcoal stores and charcoal bags may contain less than 50 percent charcoal. The other 50% is fragments, mineral sand, soil and dirt that may have been deliberately added by charcoal vendors to improve on the weight of a bag of charcoal, and this may be what is making your briquettes have more ashes than expected. These undesired high ash materials can be separated by screening the fines and rejecting undersize (extra fine) material by passing through a 2 to 4 mm screen. The materials that remain on the screen are fragments of good charcoal and this is what should be hammer-milled to make good briquettes with less ash content of about 2 percent.
I hope after reading this you won’t start thinking that the economics of briquetting charcoal ‘dust’ are not workable.
@ngureco: Thank you very much for the advice. I will apply what you advise and let you know how it works. Many many thanks for this and keep up the good work.
is it saw dust +94 percent of charcoal dust +6 percent cassava starch.
Hi Seun,
It’s 94 percent of charcoal fines (dust) plus 6 percent of cassava starch. For every 94 Kg of charcoal fines (from broken lump charcoal) add 6 Kg of cassava starch mixed in water and then press the mixture into briquettes.
In case of sawdust briquettes, you press sawdust at very high pressure to produce lignin and that lignin acts as the binder to bind the briquette together.
Thanks for lot of information given above.
I have a question how much Raw Material (Sawdust) is required to Make 1Kg Brquette Charcoal?
Thank you, Kiran Repe.
The average density of raw sawdust is about 0.21g/cc or 0.21kg in a 1 litre container. The average density of high quality sawdust briquettes is 1.2g/cc or 1.2kg in a 1 litre container. This would mean that you will need the equivalent of 5.7 litres of raw sawdust to make 1 kg of high quality sawdust briquettes.
plinka 7 months ago
I wonder how much calorific value wood pellets have. I mean it can vary over a wide range. Anyway, it looks like rabbit chow. :-)