Dear Richard, I believe Brades, the Peracod funded company, uses electric or manual extruder. The manual one does not cost much I believe, less than 100 dollars. No high temperature, briquettes are dried in the sun, but a binder from 10 to 20% of the mix. Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was mentioning the Peracod website because I found a lot of good information on how to start a charcoal briquette project. A few weeks ago, I didn't know anything about charcoal briquettes, I thought there was everything needed on the website. But I would like, as a first step, to use another kind of press than the ones described in the Peracod papers. So I tried to search for manual presses on the web, easy to build, cheaper.
"The former is for and industry and distribtuion to a wide market area around it." That's what I would like to do in the medium to long term, but not for now, especially if I have to import the press. "The latter is more for a cottage industry in the pri urba areas to rural areas. althouth it can survive quite well in urban neighborhoods / other concentrated areas as well." That's more what I am aiming to at the moment. I want to make a pilot project, then scale-up if it shows potential. "You go on to say you have already made such a press with 25 cylinders." I didn't say that. I said I made a small press with 6 "square cylinders", and found on youtube one with 25 cylinders. Its inventor claims it is the fastest press there is. I don't know if it's true, I didn't try to build one. I don't know if he says it is the fastest in terms of unit/hour, or in terms of kilo or mass/hour. Of course, what is relevant is a press that can make a lot of kilo or mass per hour. That's what I am looking for. I am also looking for statistics, like, for example, a table with the production capacity for each press. In Benin, people measure the quantity of fuel in terms of mass, it is never weighted. Is your website www.legacyfound.org/ ? I tried again, it is the first result Google displayed, but I still couldn't access it ... I start to picture the plug for sausage briquettes in my head, but I can't quite figure out everything. I'd be happy to have more info when available, like images, video, etc. Now we'd like to sell without middlemen (who are women, most of the time). We want to keep it small for the coming weeks/months. But I am already calculating the costs and seeing if it is viable economically on a larger scale, with middlemen and increased transport costs. We would like to have a small industry, sooner or later. No problem for training people, but not for now, since I am a newcomer myself in the briquette world. I need first to learn how to run a small production unit. I try to give the recipe for briquettes to people around me, but they dont look like they are ready for the hassle ;) Thanks for the info, Xavier -----Message d'origine----- De : Richard Stanley [mailto:[email protected]] Envoyé : mardi 22 novembre 2011 14:59 À : Xavier Brandao; Stoves and biofuels network Objet : Re: [Stoves] sausage maker adaptor for manual briquette presses Xavier Where do we start You began by show links to mechanised briquettes thru Peracod, which is running some kind of mechanised extruder creating relatively high pressure and temperature and probably using a binder. Fine That is the classic method. But then you went on to show a hand operated levered 4 cylinder design using wet pulped material--probably paper and some charcoal fines or sawdust That involves a very different kind of process. The two cannot be compared really. The former is for and industry and distribtuion to a wide market area around it. The latter is more for a cottage industry in the pri urba areas to rural areas. althouth it can survive quite well in urban neighborhoods / other concentrated areas as well. You go on to say you have already made such a press with 25 cylinders. In terms of numbers of briquettes per unit time you certaily may well have the fastest press but that is not the kind of claim that makes sense without more qualifiers: What about the total mass being processed and more importantly as it is almost all labor cost as you recognised, I wonder about the mass per unit labor input per time being processed. Eg Our older Mini Bryant hand press produces abot 150 kgs of material day but requires 4 people to operate ---and simultaneously collect process and supply the feedstock. Our forthcoming ratchet press http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CivcY4XCCY&feature=youtube_gdata_player is designed around the notion of portability and ease of use. It will process the same amount of material as the larger press BUT with only one operator and one or two other persons supplying material. Either can be operated with use of dividing washers to produce great numbers of briquettes , or they can be making fewer larger briquettes . The general rule of thumb for the wet hand process, is that the briquette fuel, in whatever shape is appropriate, will cost the average 6 person family between 15 and 20% of one production workers daily wage. say 3.00 a day salarythen 45 to 60 US cents per family. That presumes direct distribution from producito site to the market, no middlemen and no transport ( These are after all miccroenterprises really small roadside operations lots of them . Scale it up and of course one has to re-calculate You can see the margins here and I am guessing that they will be pretty close to what you are already projecting, or ? . Still though, with free resources and the press tech we are talking about, the product production cost is + 90% dependent upon labor cost. Just checked our site and it is running fine from here. Hmmm. The insert is just a Google Sketchup (free 3 d drawing program) exerise as yet. I have an artisan in Tanzania who wants to try it. I will return to the US in December to develop it with him--online At its simplest form, its just a wood plug with 4 to 6 holes bored thru. The plug is then stuffed into the conventional perforated PVC cylinder and screwed in place. The conventional solid wood piston then does not pass all the way thru the ylinder but rather just rams material thru the holes . There are two design implications: 1) As the process expells lots of water, this has to be ducted away from the emerging sausage biquettes, Some sort of simple skirt would be necessary: _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://www.bioenergylists.org/
