[Stoves] torrefied biomass and plastic

[AJH]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:11:32 -0700 (PDT), Charlie Sellers wrote:

>Why not make your own, using a superventilated oven

I still have the domestic modular electric fan oven that I used 10
years ago for drying experiments prior to building our large dryer. 
The thermostat is marked to 250C and goes round a bit further, so it
may have enough power to get to those temperatures ( at 120C it has a
loss of 500W IIRC). When the weather is a bit better and I can run it
out doors I'll give it a try.

I do know that both our 10th scale and full size dryers will char wood
because they have both inadvertently done so! So given a bit of
control to prevent runaway I'm sure they would do the job.

As Adam said we always produced some brands (aka brown ends) in the
ring kilns but how do we ensure we have reached the stage at which the
wood becomes hydrophobic rather than just super dry, is it just
uniform temperature or is there a soaking element?

Will Richard's retted fiber briquettes stay together at 250C?

I've never previously become enthusiastic about torrefied wood, rather
preferring a high yield (45% of dry weight) high volatiles char,
simply because the offgas was available to do the cooking.

AJH