Briquetting Machine Review

About biomass briquettes

Making briquettes from biomass is a high efficient way to save your energy bill as well as to dispose of biomass waste. As a kind of renewable energy, the biomass briquettes, such as wood briquettes, saw dust briquettes or charcoal briquettes, made by briquetting machine, is widely used both in industry and civil scale for heating as a substitute of conventional fossil fuel - coal in particular. Biomass briquettes can be made from wood, sawdust, crop straw, grass, civil waste and animal waste.
A briquette is manufactured by briquetting machine, also known as briquette maker or briquette press But how does a biomass briquetting machines work? Take making wood briquettes for example, under circumstance of high pressure and temperature, the lignin, which is a kind of polymer in the wood, originally working as a support of wood cell wall, will turn to a sort of plastic matter that stick the briquettes together. That is also why any glue, or binder namely is not necessary in briquetting process, and it is also the reason why the outside of a wood briquette is smooth and shinning.

Benefits of briquettes?

The briquettes, known as a compact heating fuel, has several advantages over the traditional fossil fuel:
 

• Better burning efficiency. Heat value is highly concentrated in briquettes because of its compactness so that more thermal heat can be produced compared with other fuel with the same size. From our years experience as well as feedbacks of the customers, the biomass briquettes, especially wood briquettes are 40% higher in term of burning efficiency.
• Tiny size. In GEMCO, we are proud of reducing size of the biomass feedstock up to 90%. This results in high bulk density. Unlike raw biomass material whose density is about 60-180kg/m³, the briquettes have a much higher density of around 1200kg/m³.
• Smoke and ash free. One of the reason why you can burn biomass briquettes or wood briquettes in fireplace or stove at home is that they produce no smoke or very subtle ash based on what specific material used for making briquettes. As manufacture technology and relevant fuel energy standardization revamp, to burning biomass fuel: pellets, briquettes and suchlike is getting more and more clean and environmental friendly.
• Easy get easy keep. Chances are when you own a saw mill, a furniture factory or a farm, you might have been in trouble dealing with those biomass by-products. One of the easiest way to solve your problem is making them into biomass briquettes. No matter what shapes of briquettes you get: square, hexagon, round, etc. they are always convenient to pack and transport.

How to choose briquetting machine?

Given that briquetting industry is an overwhelming trend that will continue being hot and will contribute more and more portion in renewable energy marketing, different designs of briquetting machines are rolled out. By and large, two essential kind of briquette press can be observed in the market: stamping type briquette press, screw press briquetting machine, and hydraulic briquetting machine, each type has its unique power driven pattern. What interesting is that In Chinese market, especially an integrated machinery that can both make briquettes and pellets is eye catching. Scientifically speaking, by looking at its working theory, this dual function machine is just a improved type of stamping briquette press.
From the view of feedstock that a briquette machine is processing, there are charcoal briquettes maker, wood briquettes maker, paper briquettes maker, even metal briquettes maker.
 
Below a presentation of comparison among 3 types of biomass briquetting machine that are mainstream on the market:

Briquetting machine review

	hydraulic briquetting machine	stamping type briquetting machine	screw press briquetting machine
Raw material size /mm	3 - 20 mm	3  - 20 mm	3-5mm
Raw material moister required	6% - 18%	10% - 20%	8% - 12%
Product profile	Φ=70mm	Φ=70mm Pellet: 8mm,10mm,22mm,30mm	Φ=40mm, 50mm, 60mm, 70mm
Product density/ g/cm3	0.8 - 1.2	0.9 - 1.3	1 – 1.3
Capacity/ kg/h	125	800 - 1200	180 - 1000
Energy consumption/ kW/t	40 - 60	40 - 50	70-80
Mould lifetime	1000h - 1500h, cooling not required to mould	1000h - 1500h, cooling required to mould	1500-2000
PLC	yes	Yes, and vibration resistance	N/A
noise	Lower than 70db	Higher than 85db	Around 80db
Working environment	Dust free	Dust free	With smoke and ash
Users	High requirement with automatic control and working environment, complicated raw material component	High requirement with capacity (1 - 5 t/h)	Typically the briquettes will be further processed to charcoal briquettes

Looking into the figures in the table, you will find that all 3 types of briquetting machines are eligible for making quality briquettes. The difference lies in users’ requirement. Which one will you choose?