In article , s
wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 19:18:03 -0500, Robatoy
wrote:

In article ,
Andy Dingley wrote:

Anyone have experience of bulk sawdust disposal? I'm looking into the
possibility of a pelletising press as a way of turning useless sawdust
into a storable and possibly saleable pellet fuel. However all the
pellet presses I've seen have been huge and expensive, intended for use
by a pellet-making plant, rather than just intermittently disposing of
waste from a small timberyard.

I also note that meat-packing screw presses are cheap and commonplace
S/H, but sawdust pellet presses are anything but. Anyone heard of a DIY
conversion process ? I'm expecting that hard-facing the screws would be
needed, but a little engineering work is no problem.

I found that pressed sawdust logs are invariably mixed with some sort of
binder. I'm trying to understand if it is even possible to get sawdust
to stay together after a shape has been made from it...pellet, log,
whatever.

I think I'd start with parraffin wax.

I was thinking some kind of animal fat. I don't think you'd need a lot of it
either.


If one is going to have mix it with a binder, is a lot of pressure even
needed or can it be done passively in say, a muffin tin-like form?
Can some information be gleaned from the folks that make feed pellets?

feed pelletization might involve some accessible technology.
definitely worth a look.




Just mulling things over..

Is applying 'work' to the making of a pellet of sawdust in the hope of
it yielding energy when burned going to give you a positive yield?


probably. there's quite a bit of energy in the sawdust, and when you
consider that this processing is saving you the work of otherwise
disposing of the stuff, you're coming out ahead- as long as the
pelletization process isn't terribly inefficient. making them one at a
time in a hydraulic press would probably count as being terribly
inefficient

The size the of pellet would enter into this equation, eh?