Dear Roger, Hum that's interesting, and that could be the explanation of the failure of my cooking test today : Just out of curiosity, I tried to make briquettes with 80% charcoal dust, 20% paper, and press them by hand. I could make a round shape, but they constantly lose material when they are shaped and when they are transported. Still they can dry, and go in the stove pretty much under the ball shape. It seems like with the heat, they fall into pieces, then to dust. The result: I wasn't able to boil 1 liter of water, the stove was full of charcoal dust, and the fire almost extinguished by itself. I read, heard from the cooks who test the briquettes, and saw by myself that the 80% charcoal dust / 20% paper briquettes were burning for a long time. The cooking is also very clean. But they are almost impossible to light.
Would we have, if no high pressure exerted during the production process : - briquettes with a lot of binder : long duration, but energy is radiated over time, so it is difficult to boil water. That is actually what an experienced food vendor told me about my briquettes : good for heating food, not for cooking food. - briquettes with small to no binder : easy to light, makes smoke, but more energy is radiated in a short amount of time. Can fall into pieces and ultimately into dust. Or am I wrong? I guess high pressure solves the problem, and also high temperature by "cooking the briquettes" during production. Cheers, Xavier ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:10:24 -0800 From: Fireside Hearth <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Stoves] sausage maker adaptor for manual briquette Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hello Xavier, Here in the States we have sold various "prest logs" for years. I think we have tested, burned and sold every thing that has ever been made of saw dust and wood chipping materials. This information may not help you as you are working with different materials, but here's what we have found. "pressed logs" tend to expand in the firebox giving off allot of heat at the beginning of the burn cycle, but then you end up with allot of unburned product in the bottom of the stove which often extinguishes the fire. The extruded logs (450,000 lbs pressure) come to an internal temperature of about 650 degrees f> during the extrusion process. This causes the lignents in the wood pulp to melt and once cooled is the "glue" which holds the material together in log form. These logs are harder to light by a long shot, but are much longer lasting in the firebox, burn completely, and VERY cleanly. Our burn temps get so high that we often find the ash will become molten in the bottom of the firebox. In our stove...one of these 5 lb logs will give us an 8.5 to 10 hour burn with a fairly constant btu output. The pressed logs are only good for a 5 to 6 hour burn time. Food for thought, Roger _______________________________________________ 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/
