[Bioconversion] RE:making pellets

[Andrew Heggie]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 10:19:30 -0800, doug wrote:

>
>Hey Doug,
>I have spent quite a few hours over the last few months
>looking for small pellet mills, cpm makes a small research 
>version, but  The company is no help for info, I found used models
>of varying capacity in the $20,000 to $50,000 range. These were
>full scale production pieces. Far beyond my budget, but by accident,
>I found this unit, designed as an oil press, it extrudes a compressed
>pellet. This is lower priced and may be adaptable to your needs.
>
>http://www.oilpress.com/hemsida.html


I also saw a small bench mounted die at one of UK's  national coal
research establishments before it disbanded. I spoke with the
operator, who also had a full sized 200hp machine to experiment on, he
was making paper+plystyrene pellets for co firing at the time. He said
the smaller unit was quite difficult to get to make good pellets. I
put this down to higher heat losses from the die meaning it did not
attain the same working temperature as the larger unit.

Have you seen the pellets out of the above oil press? It still looks a
bit expensive to deploy in the third world.

On the stoves list AD Karve recently reported on a chap who was
creating a less than "densified" pellet in a pestle and mortar, with
the mortar having the die holes in the bottom. The rotating plus
pounding motion of the pestle forcing small amounts through the holes.
He suggested certain green leaves were a good binder, he used the term
"muciliganeous" for the pulp from the leaves, which seems evocative to
me.

I'm left wondering on powering a small scale pelleter from a non
shcedulable source, I'm torn between the idea of allowing it to
operate like a pinch roller when the power comes online, and needing a
means to keep the die up to temperature, or a forging system where the
hammer is raised by the power and then falls in a predictable manner.

I have begun sorting through the backlog of requests on this list and
may well post some dated messages to see if they stimulate discussion.

AJH