Alternative way to prepare biomass for burning.

I just read this article on an alternative method of lowering the water content in biomass fuel.
It involves no heat, relying on pressure applied via rollers.
The best result came from wood that has not been chipped, followed by ginger root.
The process did not work nearly as well on wood chips.
Potentially valuable compounds are removed along with the water and the  heat free process preserves the best characteristics.
The leftover wood or herbaceous pulp burns quite well as pellets.

I am always thinking about small scale uses.
I'm doubtful, but there are a lot of saps with useful properties.

Here's the link:https://newatlas.com/science/heat-free-plant-press-biofuel-antivirals/

I guess it depends if the goal is to derive extracts or simply speed drying of biomass.

Regarding the latter, farmers have been doing this forever. Hay cutting machines (haybines) have adjustable crimpers that partially crush the swath of material moving through the machine. This effectively opens the stalks and increases the evaporative surface area so the hay dries more quickly, preserving its quality and nutrient value.

Lauri at the Hydraulic Press Channel has done a demonstration of this:

It is really not surprising that it did not work so well on wood chips.

Wood fiber under a microscope looks like straws in a way, so to keep the rollers pressing them out, would push moisture out of the wood in a predictable path. With wood chips it would orient the straw-like-structure in any possible configuration, and make water removal much harder.

As for making wood pellets burn better, I guess that is rather subjective. I have played around with my pellet stove with the simple idea that if making wood pellets via hammer mill and pellet maker was too expensive ($12,000) and time consuming, (600 pounds per hour), then why not burn what is already sized. My foray into the realm netted me this; corn burns incredibly hot, but is also hard to start. The idea ratio between higher temps, price, and ash content is about 1/3 corn to 2/3 wood pellets.

Sunflowers are even less in ratio, and while there is almost ZERO ash from burning sunflower seeds unhulled, black oil sunflower seeds was like pouring diesel fuel on the fire. IT WAS HOT.

In either case, playing with the programming of the plc on the wood pellet stove could reduce the feed rates to manageable levels and make it all work. In that case a person could grow their own corn or sunflowers as an energy crop without having to make a wood pellet.

As usual, the crew here knows relevant information on even the oddest ideas!
On a homestead scale, generating heat is easier than generating kinetic energy, so rollers or crushers might not be the right fit.
I do like options and new ideas, and this is new to me.

All biomass needs some refining to be useable as fuel for combustion, but too much invested in refinement leaves deficits elsewhere.
I'm interested in pelletized biomass because it eases charcoal production and also allows for automation.

I'm still interested in a  drum tumbler pellet making design, also in "chunking" and sifting branches to get a relatively uniform fuel, and now I'm wondering if branches could be compressed into a self contained bundle , while also removing some of the moisture content in the process.
Storing branches is rather messy and processing them for burning can be time consuming, so if we can more easily tap into this waste stream, it would be great.

I've thought about both of these ideas, the compressing/bundling of sticks, and the chunking of sticks, to gain some sort of uniform result, and make handling easier.

The bundling idea I had was similar to a log grapple, which would allow a large volume of loose sticks to be closed down upon then tied with twine in that shape, trimmed to length, repeat... Thinking that if mostly green sticks were bundled, they would bend into the new shape and dry that way. Hopefully when the twine burns away, the bundle wouldn't spring open violently as the green sticks had dried holding the bundle shape? Maybe iron wire would avoid that, but be something to clean from the fire.

The chunking idea, I've seen YouTube videos of home-built machines that were just a set of feed rollers with sharp knives that would cut a branch into 4-inch chunks as it pulled it through.
I've also cut sticks on my bandsaw... the straight sections into uniform length kindling, while "chunking" the curvy, or forked sections as I encountered them. It is slow, but I was doing prunings and deadfall, not whole treetops, so not an ordeal.

I've also got a homebuilt trommel screen, which I want to use to use to classify the woodchips we get, into a few sizes that would be useful: big chips for fuel, small chips for mulch, sawdust and leafy bits for compost, while also removing stringy sticks and litter.

I've done a bit of bundling with willow rods from my coppice plantings. It works pretty well, although my principal objective is just for them to dry relatively straight so that I can experiment with them in making light straw structural panels. The next time I do some (this winter) I will alternate the direction of the rods so that all the fat ends aren't bunched together.

Kenneth Elwell wrote:The chunking idea, I've seen YouTube videos of home-built machines that were just a set of feed rollers with sharp knives that would cut a branch into 4-inch chunks as it pulled it through.

I thought about the chunking idea as well. I even went so far as to build a mechanical device to cut down and gather the sapling trees so it would not be such a pain with a chainsaw. It worked, and while I never built the chunking machine, in doing so I would have an all-mechanical means in which to harvest saplings and turn them into wood to burn.

For stoves to burn chunk-wood. I got two options, a coal/firewood boiler, and a pot bellied stove.

I am looking at a house now that is pretty big and will be hard to heat with it's hydronic heat. If I add the wood/coal boiler onto it, I could conceivably shovel wood chunks into it, and heat this new house that way. The part I am not sure about is how to dry the chunked wood. Sitting in a big, loose pile does not seem like it would dry that well, or hence: burn that well.

I got a home inspector coming today, so that will tell me if things are a deal-breaker.