[Stoves] Hand-makng small roundish briquettes:

Mon Jul 29 09:57:49 CDT 2013

Ron, 

Often squeezing pressure is th the solution. Its most often about blending
hte right amount of fibrus material and combustible infiller. Its the
combination of fibers that are conditioned to flex plastically and infilling
material that is dense yet relatively porous, With the right combination you
can indeed create denst briquetts by hand without , no amount of force will
create a good briquette. I do not knwo what aprovecho uses as we lost
contact with them after they visited here to gather what we were doing, but
I would say that it is very likely that if you found paper blends there (
and fomr your description they are paper based) it would be workable but
paper is far from the ideal in terms of  good hot combustion.

So its easy to dive in and make a pancake  but to get to crepes.

Assuming you are using a realtively good blend,  Here is a multiport
cylinder design we came up with a few years ago: please note that I have
never built it! So caveat emptor eh ..

cid:B4F8D033-20B0-4FE7-A18E-18970856D934cid:09B0D435-697B-409F-801E-31C76A3D
F1AEcid:0B5B0BD7-00CF-4723-A084-F6A2EC70AB81cid:81C20FB2-F69B-49DD-BACF-8579
0D11082Dcid:F91FF435-FB21-43D5-9C81-D5BAB32884A7cid:3348FDD0-C53F-429A-B212-
26F76E17A4FCcid:BA77C963-3C32-4F5F-925A-6879171BE6BBAgh but the greatest
plans of mice and men often go astray.. 

IE., with the above options it'd be relatively easy to findout which would
work best with realtivley little investment in time and materials..Go astray
you may but may you return wiser for another day.

. I would also invite you to contact Lee Hite for his rectangular stick
briquettes  for on his ingenious micro compound lever briquette press, which
he has built and tested both in His Ohio base and in many parts of the thrid
world we well.

http://www.cleanstove.org/1/post/2011/12/meetup-with-lee-hite-zan-smith-and-
ron-gorley.html

 or consult Paul Anderson to see how his wedgies worked out.

On Jul 27, 2013, at 4:16 PM, rongretlarson at comcast.net wrote:

List:

    This below is the follow-up from a few minutes ago,  when I wrote on
this list
       " I am going to write something next about my thoughts after trying
to produce a third shaped-briquette"..

   This below is from from the perspective of using briquettes in TLUDs,
where (except for in the last note),  I haven't seen any way to as easily
make char as in a TLUD.   The holey briquette approach championed by Richard
Stanley gives some very nice flames in modified rockets, but those
briquettes are being broken up to use in TLUDs.  I think the same will be
true for the long rectangular "sticks" being produced by InStove folk in
Cottage Grove

    The question I have had in mind for a long time is whether there is a
"best" shape for briquettes intended for TLUDs.  So I took the opportunty to
get my hands wet (literally) when I found several large vats of material
prepared for our (and InStove) experiments.  I (and a few others, but others
just for a few minutes)  tried making small spheres  (small -  thinking I
might need a sphere diameter in the range of 1/5-1/10 of a chamber diameter)
- so never more than 3-4 cm.  The first attempts all seemed to keep coming
out more like small snowballs.  I cut many of the larger in half and,
repacking, still got a sphere that seemed too big.

    Even when getting down to a relatively small size, the hand-packing
ddn't seem natural.  I couldn't see a way to make a sphere with one hand -
and it was only after quite a while that I got down to four
"water-squeezes", using both hands,  that the quasi-sphere looked worth
testing in a stove.   I still don't know if that has been done  - as drying
was not complete enough as of yesterday afternoon.   The final "dry" density
seemed pretty loose - but no worse than other briquettes sitting around and
a lot better than some..

    Yesterday,  I tried a few more experiments.  I found that I could move
much faster making long "ellipsoids" - creating a fist with the paper pulp
inside the fist shape.  I used my left hand with just one squeeze and
passing to the right hand,for a second squeeze  (imagine milking a cow).
Eventually, I  was moving pretty fast - when I could be squeezing two units
with two hands at the same time.  The final product was sort of like a
"furry" finger or a  furry link-breakfast-sausage  (other makers will surely
think of another biological shape whose name is not to be used in polite
internet traffic).  No test results, but again the same feeling that the
density was pretty good  (that the human hand can produce a quite strong
squeeze, when directed of a surface area  that is not too large.).

   One advantage of this approach could be more kg per hour.  It may fit
well with a social gathering - no needed movement from a sitting position.
Another is zero capital equipment expense.  But mainly,  the advantage is in
having a final briquette fuel shape that fits with TLUD designs - at least
the larger 

   I look forward to hearing that others have tried "t*rdquettes" in a
stove.

Ron

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