How to make DIY fuel briquettes

Earlier, our site has already written in detail about how to make fuel briquettes from manure, now let’s talk about other options. We will tell you how and from what you can make briquettes for stoves and boilers in order to provide yourself with fuel of our own production.

As an alternative to wood, fuel briquettes have a number of advantages:

• Firewood burns longer, give more heat;
• No sparks, much less smoke;
• Very economical, because you can make briquettes with your own hands from waste, that is, there will actually be no costs;
• Ash does not need to be thrown away, it will be an excellent fertilizer for the beds;
• When stored, identical briquettes take up less space than a traditional wood burning stove;
• Can be used not only for fireplaces and stoves, but also for solid fuel boilers.

In general, as experts note, the production of fuel briquettes can be a profitable business.

For the production of fuel briquettes, you can use a variety of materials, and the overwhelming majority are waste that is in every household:

• Waste paper. Newspapers, cardboard boxes, scribbled notebooks – everything that is idle around at home;
• Agricultural waste. For example, straw, sunflower husks, dry plant stems;
• Waste from the garden and vegetable garden. Fallen foliage is also used, like the tops of root crops, dry grass, pulled out weeds;
• Branches, shavings, wood chips, sawdust, that is, all wood waste, including those remaining after trimming trees on the site.

Important! Some owners add plastic bags, film to plant and wood pulp. Experts are against this approach, because in this case, briquettes will no longer be called environmentally friendly fuel. And you don’t use ash as fertilizer. In general, there are no official recommendations for adding plastic wrap to briquettes, everything is at the risk of the owners.

To get started, you need to grind the raw materials, everything except sawdust, seed husks and small chips. For this purpose, a garden shredder is used, the choice of which we have already written about. All branches, sticks, leaves, wood chips, dry grass, straw are carefully chopped to obtain prepared raw materials for fuel briquettes.

Important! An ordinary garden shredder will not cope with paper, waste paper. You have to tear it with your hands, cut it, use a shredder.

Clay and starch, as well as wax are most often used as binders in the mixture for fuel briquettes. Portland cement is sometimes added, but it greatly increases the ash content of the fuel. Sugar and molasses are also an option, but they are expensive. If it is possible to find waste from the pulp and paper industry, you can use sulphite yeast mash. However, it contains too much moisture..

Important! If fuel briquettes are made from sawdust and other wood waste, then binders are not needed. They are lignin, a natural polymer found in wood initially and released at high temperatures and under pressure. But this rule applies if baking is used, and not natural drying..

In addition, binders are not needed if the mixture contains paper. It softens with water, and by itself serves as a good glue that holds all the other components of the briquette..

If clay acts as a binder, then its proportion with waste should be 1:10, no more. Water is added little by little so that the whole mixture takes on a paste consistency, which will be easy to shape..

You can use a concrete mixer or construction mixer to mix the mixture. This will speed up the process and make the mixture smooth. Next, you need a mold for pressing. Sometimes summer residents even use old pots, wooden boxes, and other items that are no longer needed in everyday life..

The easiest way is to manually compress the mixture into the shape of your choice, and then dry it in the sun, naturally. But manual efforts may not be enough to obtain a high-quality, non-crumbling fuel briquette. Therefore, DIYers usually use a variety of mechanized presses. If there is a vibrating table, then the press is not needed.

The process of creating a mixture for fuel briquettes and their pressing-molding is simple, but laborious. That is why many people prefer to either buy ready-made briquettes, or purchase special machines that greatly facilitate production. In addition, we admit that factory briquettes, which are formed under 20-ton presses, are much denser, therefore they will burn longer..