[Stoves] coffee grounds as TLUD fuel?

Michael N Trevor mtrevor at ntamar.net
Mon Mar 17 18:04:58 CDT 2014


My grounds usually go in the garden.

In a stove they do now work per sec
Paper cigars sound interesting.
What about running them thru a meat grinder for small pellets?
Perhaps a dash a starch?

Please post more as you go.

Michael N Trevor

-----Original Message----- 
From: David Young
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 8:42 PM
To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: [Stoves] coffee grounds as TLUD fuel?

Dr. Paul Anderson suggested that I join this list and ask about the use of
coffee grounds as stove fuel.

At my house, coffee grounds are an energy-dense household waste that
usually ends up in the garbage.  I'm interested in turning them to fuel
for a natural-draft TLUD.

In order to keep the grounds from sifting out the bottom of the fuel
canister, or clogging the primary air supply, they have to be bound
together or encapsulated.  Dr. Anderson and I spoke about this problem
at a recent biochar meeting at the University of Illinois.  Let me tell
you some of the ideas that have come up so far.

Dr. Anderson suggested that I try to make "cigars" of the dried grounds:
sprinkle a line of grounds on a couple of layers of newspaper, wet an
edge of the newspaper, wrap it around the grounds and seal.  Then, twist
the ends closed.  Later, stand the dried cigars up and pack them into
the TLUD.  I will have to try that out.  I love the simplicity of it,
and I like the idea of reusing another form of waste to encapsulate
the grounds.

I have already experimented some with encapsulating grounds.  In my
first experiment, I packed a stainless-steel tea ball about 2-inches in
diameter with dried grounds, and embedded in that in fragments of twigs
1/4-inch in diameter or narrower.  My first experiment yielded a smelly,
smoldering mess.  In the mean time, I have learned more about how a TLUD
is supposed to behave, and I have modified my stove, so I will have to
try the tea ball again with my improved stove.

In second and third experiments, I created narrow "cups" to hold
dried grounds by drilling 1/2-inch holes lengthwise into the center
of windfall tree branches 1-inch in diameter and about 3 inches in
length.  I stopped drilling just short of the end.  I packed grounds
into the cavity that the drill left.  The cups went into the TLUD, with
commercial wood pellets surrounding and on top of the cups.  The cups
and the grounds burned to charcoal in the stove.  While that showed
that some grounds can be burned in the stove, there was too much labor
involved, and grounds contributed very little to the total fuel load.

I have an idea of how to bind the coffee grounds.  Some people are
growing mushrooms on coffee grounds---a neat demonstration can be found
on YouTube, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnLt0Xkm-Hs>.  Perhaps I can
grow mushrooms on coffee grounds in order for the mycelium to bind the
grounds into a solid mass that could be dried and used for TLUD fuel?
This has the advantage that the fungus would do most of the work.

Another of the ideas that Dr. Anderson had was to pulp some newspaper
and use that as a binder.  I hadn't thought of that, and I will have to
try it, too.

BTW, I have been following the Jock/Crispin conversation about ND-TLUD
stoves.  Reading it, I realize that I need to tune-up my stove on all
fuels before I carry on experimenting with coffee grounds: my stove
produces red-orange flames that reach past the the top of its chimney,
and it's my understanding that this is a sign of poor air/fuel mixing
or air and fuel in the wrong proportion.  I should have some questions
about how to tune up my stove in the next day or two.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung at pobox.com    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981

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