The Truth about Making fuel Briquettes from Newspapers

Mary was here for Christmas and on walking through the garden I commented how much tidying-up we needed to do when the weather improved. Just at that point we were walking by the water tub which was full of wet newspapers waiting to be processed through our fuel briquette maker. Since the tub gives off a bit of an odour in warm weather I have been in denial that this was an urgent job for about four years. ‘Well, we can start right here!’ were the fateful words which uttered forth. Not even a pre-snows bike ride would tempt our offspring away from this smelly, cold and wet task.

I opened the shed door hoping that the briquette maker would have sunk without trace among the detritus I like to place under the heading, ‘it might come in useful one day’. Not a bit of it. There it is was looking at me smugly from the vantage point of the boxes which one day will bring forth a replacement tin shed for the old bomb shelter from Madley Airfield which serves as a store. It is more like a large colander when it rains, if you get my drift.

Unfortunately the cheap folding work bench I had bought in Wilko for this very purpose was also clearly visible nearby. So I performed my last task as tool setter and left Mary to her self -imposed suffering in the cause of renewable energy. I did however find a pair of rubber gloves as I suspected that the slime, if not infectious, would have a lot of unpleasant residues which had leached out from the news print and its ink. Unfortunately some of the dates were still visible on the now sodden papers which put the founding of this rotting sump back in 2004. (Mary called it, 'the bog of eternal stench'.) I, of course, was able to remember that I had been storing dry papers for a long time before they went in the water but this seemed to be regarded somewhat sceptically by both Mary and Sian.

Enough of this. What is the truth about this instrument of torture? Having observed Mary make all the effort I can now make the following observations.

Firstly, each newspaper should be slightly shredded by hand. Using electricity seems a bit self defeating. I had put the papers in whole with a view to later mashing. Since I now see this is a very unattractive proposition it should be done at the outset. I had also contemplated putting some coal dust in but who ever suggested this may well have never done it, so be warned. In fact, it is very hard to find out whether anyone who has a paper briquette maker ever uses it apart from during the initial rush of enthusiasm. The model we have was bought via a Guardian reader purchase about five years ago.

Secondly, the process of pressing down on the two levers becomes very painful, as the angle the leavers end up at is an awkward 45 degrees.

Thirdly, disengaging the mould from the frame which holds the handles is very awkward and can take some time.
Fourthly, you have to get quite a bit of space off the ground to place the soggy briquettes on once they have been disgorged from the moulding frame. You then have to find somewhere for them to dry. Since the ground was quickly turning very wet and muddy, a bit of hard standing would have been useful.

Fifthly, it is not a quick process. After about 3 hours Mary had produced 40 briquettes and they are now stored in some old bread baskets we acquired off a dump years ago. I usually use these to dry the shredded hedge cuttings which we use as a bio-mass fire reviver. I would think we will have to wait a while for the briquettes to dry.Perhaps freeze-drying in the present weather will help! In the meantime after a cook on the hotplate of the Yorkist Stove and time in its oven, which is always slightly warm, our two samples were dry enough to burn three days later.

Sixthly, bearing in mind that each briquette takes between 3 to 5 painful minutes to produce the heat output and burn rate are important. Compared with the glow of self satisfaction that Mary was giving off, the briquettes' performance could be seen as disappointing, but our preliminary test is too small to go by. The visual effect of the briquettes glow alongside the logs in the wood burner was very pleasing, and they certainly gave off some heat. Whether or not their calorific output was greater than that consumed by Mary in their production we do not have the means to tell.

Conclusion: This is a nice idea ideally suited for the advertising gadget mags and adds in worthy papers but as a means of keeping you warm, their effect has more to do with the process of production rather than that of combustion. Now we have newspaper collection for re-cycling, and possibly energy production, I think my time will be better spent cutting the large piles of wood from our own very small orchard. Nevertheless Sian and I extend our thanks to Mary for improving a very smelly corner of our domain.

Dacier

Look out for a further post on other methods of making this type of fuel.

Gathering Winter Fuel

Our county is very green. If you don’t like green you had better not come. I am not referring to politics but to the many woods and green pastures we have. That said our communities try to be green and wood burners of various types are popular. Likewise growing your own vegetables and trying to confine shopping trips to either market days or the local shops are other green habits. Although 25% of the nation’s gas passes us by just a few miles away, we don’t have mains gas. Electricity arrived up here in 1963 so solid fuel, especially wood and coal for Rayburn Regents was very popular. There contemporaries are usually oil fired now with bottled gas and electricity being the other choices. We have several heating and cooking facilities. We have storage heaters for background heating, a Clearview wood burner which provides the bulk of our space heating and a fifty year old York Stove. We also have a solar panel. All these sources will soon feeding a five foot tall heat store which has two Economy 7 immersion heaters for times when one or more of the other inputs are not working. We are hoping that our plumbing system which was installed 50 years ago when we had a gravity fed system from a well across the fields will now make more sense. Ever since we went onto the mains in 1977/8 it has been rather eccentric.

The Yorkist was designed to burn house coal, not anthracite, and will heat water, run a main oven, a warming oven, and will convert to an open fire from a closed stove when it has a hotplate. We have a lot of soup and stews in winter as a result. This very efficient miracle was installed before the electric came and when Welsh coal was available. Unfortunately, coal is no longer cheap and has never been green and so we now burn well seasoned wood and dried shredded hedge cuttings. The only problem is keeping it in at night, especially when a strong westerly is blowing. The solution is to use about 250 kilos of coal per winter, but the guilt weighs much more. There are wood fuels manufactured from waste wood but these are still very expensive (barbecue premium really) and so until the price comes down we will still burn a mix of wood and coal in extreme weather.

For this winter we will be trying some Forest of Dean coal. It is a bit greener in that it won’t have come far, unlike some coal which could, it seems, have come from anywhere on the planet. For years I have been searching in vain for any statement of origin on house coal bags. I can hear the less compromising green folk tut tutting from here and I don’t like using even this small amount, much like I am sure many of you don’t like using gas from Quatar or Oil from Alaska, Nigeria and anywhere else. Not to mention the coal fired power stations and nuclear plants that account for much of your electricity bill. But until a good slow burning recycled product arrives at a reasonable price, we have little alternative for our much loved stove when there is a high wind coming at us from off the hill.

It is estimated that some 70% of our woodland is not being managed and that present supplies could be increased by 2 million tonnes. Although wood is not supposed to go to landfill, there is still a lot of wood being wasted. It is particularly distressing to see developers’ and foresters burning timber rather than putting it into the green energy market. We have a lot of such fuel going to waste and such is the stupidity of the system, if you want to make arrangements to collect such material from factories etc you will have to buy a licence to keep within the law.

Meanwhile, as all kinds of alternative fuels are sough, thousands of old houses are wasting fuel and the costs of doing something about it are a major discouragement to occupiers. The answer lies not in meeting demand per se but in reducing it along with reducing waste. This involves both avoiding wasted heat and wasted potential fuel. But all the promoters of environmental tokenism can do is promote wind and nuclear power, while cutting grants and increasing the complexities and costs for those of us who would like to be micro generators. Even simpler, would be a wide spread subsidy for all types of insulation, including double glazing. However, this is unlikely while environmental tokenism stalks the corridors of Whitehall and bankers’ bonuses need to be paid. Even worse, nothing much is said of the water power which powered so many industries before the shift to fossil fuels and the path to global warming was taken.

Dacier