[Stoves] sausage maker adaptor for manual briquette presses

[Xavier Brandao]

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 don’t look like they are ready for the hassle ;)

Thanks for the info,

Xavier

-----Message d'origine-----
De : Richard Stanley [mailto:rstanley at legacyfound.org] 
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: