[Bioconversion] Algae binder

[Les Blevins]

Neal and list;

I've had experience with extruders and dies here at the Lawrence dog food 
plant which was a Quaker Oats facility back then, and we made thousands and 
thousands of tons of little balls each week that were called Tender Chunks 
(smile) and they were made mostly of such things as flour, meat and bone 
meal and animal fat among other things.

These ingredients were cooked in the extruders under heat and pressure and 
came out of the dies as soft balls that were about the same size as cheese 
puffs, and they firmed up somewhat as they cooled. Heat and pressure is what 
made them bind together once the proper balance between solid and liquid 
ingredients was obtained.

Later on I got involved in my furnace development ( 
http://www.aaecorp.com/ceo.html ) and I had the opportunity to experiment 
with various kinds of pellets and briquettes of various sizes that were made 
of wood sawdust, wood shavings, paper shreds from cardboard and newspapers 
etc., and the people who made these said they would bind together if enough 
pressure was applied in the making of them. I think when you were here I 
showed some of them to you and if you remember the pellets ran up to about 
the size of cigars and the briquettes sizes ran from about the diameter of 
beverage cans to about the size of juice cans like they put V-8 juice in.

The reason these would bind together I was told is because of the lignin in 
the materials which turns to a glue like material under heat and pressure. 
Now I don't know if the newspaper shreds had any lignin in them or not but 
of course the sawdust and wood shavings would have lignin in it.

So if the algae has lignin in it I would think they too would bind together 
if enough heat and pressure is applied in the process. If they don't have 
lignin in them, and I doubt if they do, how about combining other biomass 
such as switchgrass, dedicated energy crops, leaves or even weeds along with 
the algae in order to get the needed lignin?

Any comments or thoughts?

Les Blevins
AAEC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <CAVM at aol.com>
To: <bioconversion at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:05 PM
Subject: [Bioconversion] Algae binder


> Would you mind saying more about algae as a binder for pellets or other
> densification or for the fire balls? I can't find any information about 
> types of
> algae, processing to use as a binder, etc.
>
> Thanks
>
> Neal
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