[Bioconversion] News Paper Fireballs

[Thomas Reed]

Dear Les and All:

I went through these steps on a small scale to produce paper/trash 
pellets for a DOE contract last year.  I put newspaper down my wife's 
disposal (when she was out) and collected the pulp.  I could hand 
squeeze it to a density of about 0.4 g/ml, about like softwoods - 
adequate for many combustion situations. 

I believe that a compression screw could increase the density to about 
0.6 g/ml with further dewatering. 

Paper is inherently dense - and sinks in water, so density > 1.0.  It 
has already been densified to this level in the paper making process.  
It can incorporate reasonable amounts of other fuel/waste in its fibers 
(including charcoal dust?). 

Could you recommend a simple compression/dewatering screw?

TOM REED     BEF RHF

Les Blevins wrote:

> Jeff,
>
> I have had experience working in an old fashioned paper mill here in 
> Lawrence Kansas. This mill was at that time the oldest paper mill west 
> of the Mississippi River. It was powered mainly by three Monarch 250 
> horse-power steam engines and various electric motors up to about 250 
> horse-power. This mill was shut down, dismantled and scrapped out 
> sometime in the 1960s or 70s as I recall. It was quite an experience 
> working there when I was a young man.
>
> Anyway his paper mill was used to make a brown paper that was used in 
> the making of corrugated box board. At different times this paper mill 
> used such diverse feedstocks as wheat straw, corrugated boxes and many 
> other waste paper forms including newsprint. When I worked there in 
> the early 1960s it used only waste paper as the primary ingredient in 
> the making of new paper.
>
> The scrap paper was dumped in big rotating cookers called "rotaries" 
> where it was soaked in water and the rotary was capped and rotated for 
> hours on end while the contents were put under low steam pressure. 
> After soaking and "cooking" for about 24 hours it was dumped out and 
> augured into "beaters" where it was circulated around and around and 
> beat to a "pulped" condition to get it ready to be made into paper 
> once again. Recycling ain't anything new, I can attest to that.
>
> Anyway I remember you could stick your hand into the warm paper pulp 
> and water in the beaters and pull out a handful of pulp and make a 
> ball out of it like making a snowball and by pressing it tight in your 
> hands squeeze some but not all of the water out. The balls of wet 
> paper pulp when dried out would stick together very well but could 
> also be easily pulled apart if one wanted to.
>
> I think these paper-pulp "snowballs" would be easy to make today; if 
> one had the proper pulping equipment and a steady supply of scrap 
> paper, straws, husks or other fibrous materials like switchgrass, wood 
> shavings or sawdust and it wouldn't be difficult to dry them into a 
> commercial fuel that could be used in heaters and boilers that could 
> be either manually or automatically stoked with Bio-Balls and a wide 
> variety of other fuel forms such as pellets, cubes, or briquettes made 
> of similar materials.
>
> My own patented furnace design ( see www.aaecorp.com/ceo.html ) can 
> use any of these fuel forms and others in either manual or automatic 
> mode to heat water, spaces or processes such as the drying of 
> "Bio-Ball" fuels or grain.
>
> My BlackJack furnace employs automatic pivoting grates and it is also 
> designed to pyrolyze or gasify various solid fuels to produce carbon 
> based fuels and synthetic gases (syngas) for use as clean renewable 
> fuel in various heaters, boilers, internal combustion engines, 
> combustion turbines and in various other ways.
>
> Les Blevins
> AAEC
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Davis" <jeff0124 at velocity.net>
> To: <bioconversion at listserv.repp.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2005 9:52 PM
> Subject: [Bioconversion] News Paper Fireball
>
>
> Dear List,
>
> Today I have made my first news paper fireballs in a cement mixer with 
> paddles removed. They also had some ground up switchgrass and sawdust 
> mixed with the paper. The paper was first wetted then ran through a 
> desposal. The fireballs are not dry yet, so only time will tell if 
> they stick together.
>
> I want to skip the depsosal (grinding) process. Right now I am soaking 
> a 55 gallon drum of paper in water. I hope that in time the paper will 
> be reduced enough to feed straight in to the mixer.
>
> So one can make fireballs from paper!
>
>
>
> Jeff Davis
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