Densified Biomass

Fuel Briquette Burning at Stoves Camp 2008
Rok Oblak, August 31, 2008
Briquette Burning Stove


Stove Diagram

This prototype was to check the hole of the briquette and how gasification can do a nice job. As said, starting the fire with few small sticks and then after preheating the chamber, briquettes ignite by themselves and burn throughly. You can help flames with having a stick in the hole while burning. I really liked how the briquette retained its shape after it burned out, so you could still push the next one it without preventing the draft..

But the briquette burned with the surface lit from the combustion chamber, as Larry predicted. You could literally walk away of the stove with the consistent flame going on all the time (I guess the briquettes were good quality :) The air inflow was only through the hole of the briquette.

Funny was, that even when one briquette burned out, the next one ignited and the airflow continued through the hole of the first briquette.

(Click image to enlarge in Gallery)

Mdula: A DIY Mud Cooking Stove
Rok Oblak, August 2008

Mdula

Mdula or Modular Mbaula (stove) is a design project aiming to simplify the construction of an efficient household mud cooking stove for extreme rural areas. It is based on a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) construction techique using a simple wooden mold.

Rok Oblak has started a blog on the development of the Mdula at:
http://mdulastove.wordpress.com/

Manually-operated biomass pelletizer - clay as a binder?
Charlie Sellers, May 10, 2008
Honeycomb Coal

Technology Packages: Screw-press briquetting machines and briquette-fired stoves
S.C. Bhattacharya, Coordinator RETs in Asia, 1997-2004, April 5, 2008

RET Asia Briquetting

Small-scale Torrefaction for Developing Countries
Gerald Van Koeverden, March 08, 2008

Vesto +_ Switchgrass Pellets
Crispin Pemberton-Pigott, New Dawn Engineering, Roger Samson, REAP Canada, January 5,2008

Densified Canadian switchgrass pellets were burned in a VESTO (New Dawn Engineering) stove in the gasification mode.

Dear Grass Burners

Roger Samson was here today with Stephanie and he brought along a Mayon Turbo stove with rice husks and a big bag of switchgrass pellets.

We tried this 'fuel of the future' in the Vesto which first required putting a small sheet of newspaper at the bottom to keep the little pellets in, and second perforating the sheet to let in a least a small amount of primary air.

It was packed pretty tightly. The pellets are about 15 MJ per litre.

We lit it on top with a small wood fire and it got going nicely. It burned very much like a Vesto with the 'gasifier mode' engaged meaning that it ran with very little primary air getting through and a floating bed of flame perhaps 7 cm above the fuel. Very pretty.

The CO/CO2 ratio was stable at 2% and had no odour or visible smoke. I will get some picture posted and a movie with a description by Roger.

The flamefront was shallow, as Alex describes with wood pellets. Nothing really to add - it burned completely and gave off lots of heat.

Regards
Crispin

Recent Posts to the Fuel Briquetting Discussion
Megan Hill, Richard Stanley, Kari Grady Grossman, Robert Deutsch, David Sawwah, September 4, 2007
David Sawwah, Northwest Thailand

Biomass Briquette Stoves: Nishant Bioenergy (P) Limited
Ramesh Kumar Nibhoria, July 2007

Paper Fireballs #1
Jeff Davis

Below you will find five links to short videos of fireballs being produced:

#1 Starting to reduce paper.

Small-Scale Carbon Briquetting in China
Tim Anderson, June 2005 courtesy fo Jim Mason, January 24, 2007