[Stoves] material processing for briquettes few tips on technique

ajheggie at gmail.com ajheggie at gmail.com
Sat Aug 4 12:04:00 CDT 2012


On Fri, 3 Aug 2012 10:32:14 -0700, Richard Stanley wrote:

>If processed correctly,  natural fibers will flex and then tend to interlock once blended with other materials in a water slurry.  
>One does not  achieve this by simple chopping or even direct use of the fiber without some form of softening (thru partial decompsition, in a hot humid anerobic environment,  (under such as a black plastic bag), or as we are learning from our Mayan colleagues in Guatemala,  use of agricultural lime (which is traditionally discarded after its use in hot water to soften and de-shell their corn kernals).

As always I find your posts on briquetting educational.

Alkalis, lime being calcium hydroxide, dissolve lignin and I expect
this is what the bugs do in retting fibres out of the stem
(simplistically wood rotting fungi can be classified into brown, white
and soft rots, the white rots attack lignin and leave the cellulose,
brown eat the cellulose and soft rots invade all the cells), it's
lignin that hold all the stringy fibres together. So I can see how
lime would separate out the fibres.

Your observation that the bugs work better in anaerobic conditions
may be that this is what favours a white rot. Flax sheaves where laid
in a water filled ditch to ret.

I may have missed something in Rok's post: Rok mentions 16cms diameter
briquettes with a 5 cms hole, I take it it is the length he is varying
between 3-12 cms and favouring a length of between 5 and 7cms?

AJH





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