3 replies to this topic

[nuicafyl]

I live in a pine forest in Nicaragua. While there are other options, using fallen pine needles seems like my best approach for fuel.

I was initially thinking of pelletizing them and posted a thread at http://www.permies.c...hp?topic=8635.0 to get some ideas. The result has been very good. I am now leaning toward the idea of making briquettes rather than pellets.

Still at the research stage but I felt "permies" offered some good information. The community is large and responsive.

[bd354]

Interesting idea,I have access to lots of pine needles. I don't have a gasifier yet but I plan to build one. I wonder how a straw chopper from an old combine would work for processing the straw before compressing into briquettes.

[HarryN]

Hi, all of the parts of a pine tree have a lot of moisture and tar AFAIK.  I grew up near a pine wooded area, and it was neat - but you would get coated in tar just passing through and playing a bit.

If I were faced with using pine needles as my primary fuel, I would consider to do something to pre-dry and lower the tar level before using them, sort of like either torrifying or charcoal making.

Some ideas to ponder / experiment with:

Sequence A
- warm up the needles to about 100 - 150 C to drive off the moisture and soften the tar
- press the still warm needles into a briquette
- drive the bulk of the tar off in a charcoal making process
- use the waste tar as fuel for the charcoal process
- expect a size shrink of about 2 - 3 x after charcoal making

Sequence B
- Press them into briquettes and see if it holds together
- warm to dry, then on to charcoal

If you are really ambitious, you could potentially capture some of that tar from the needles for other uses.  At temperatures around 250 - 300C, you can sometimes obtain fairly good quality resins.  In some countries, this has a market.

As you go hotter to drive off the harder to extract tars, the liquid gets more stiff - sort of like road tar.

At least this up-front work for fuel preparation testing can be done with almost no tools, as you can make a simple briquette press from a pipe, wood blocks, and a lever.  There are a lot of videos about marking charcoal on youtube.

[TreeHuggingTreeCutter]

If you're serious about using pellets you should call this guy.

http://www.alaskapelletmill.com/

He has a number of youtube videos creating pellets from material sent to him from clients.  He could probably tell you how pine needles pellet from experience and sell you a pellet mill that will match a power pallet.