Small round bales for fire

idunnoshur

Good morning all, did anyone here see the small briquette sized blocks of straw on ear to the ground yesterday?

I wonder if a small round baler could make something similar to these briquettes. I think it's possible if the straw was chopped first. What are you're thoughts on this?

If the baler did make a suitable bale where could one be bought and for how much roughly?

I haven't done much research into this so am unsure if I could make money out of it.

Thanks
ids

Also what holds the bale together, is it twine or netting?

Another thing, the bale would most likely have to be cut to fit into a fire, what would be the best way to do that?

reilig

Weren't they briquettes as opposed to bales? They are made by running chopped straw through a hammer mill to break it up. Then it is put through a briquette press at extremely high pressure to make briquettes which are solid and will burn for 2 to 3 hours.

A couple of thought on your idea:

With a mini round baler, how would you make bales small enough to fit into a standard solid fuel burner? It would be kind of impossible - that's why people run it through a hammer mill and press. This equipment could cost close to €50k for a commercial outfit. Also, it would be impossible to compact a bale enough with a round baler in order to have it burn for a significant period of time.

It is possible to get a boiler that would take mini-round bales or small square bales or even big round bales. However, there are very few of these in Ireland - any that do exist are on farms that can produce their own bales of straw.

Other factors to consider are the amount of ash that is produced when you burn straw - boilers need to be equiped to remove this simply.

Not to be a pessimist, but I imagine that if making briquettes with a small baler was all that simple, then a lot of people would be doing it. In reality, it involves using specialist equipment which has a very high capital investment and a very large marketing campaign and distribution network in order to recoup the capital investment.

idunnoshur wrote: »

Good morning all, did anyone here see the small briquette sized blocks of straw on ear to the ground yesterday?

I wonder if a small round baler could make something similar to these briquettes. I think it's possible if the straw was chopped first. What are you're thoughts on this?

If the baler did make a suitable bale where could one be bought and for how much roughly?

I haven't done much research into this so am unsure if I could make money out of it.

Thanks
ids

Also what holds the bale together, is it twine or netting?

Another thing, the bale would most likely have to be cut to fit into a fire, what would be the best way to do that?

idunnoshur

reilig wrote: »

Weren't they briquettes as opposed to bales? They are made by running chopped straw through a hammer mill to break it up. Then it is put through a briquette press at extremely high pressure to make briquettes which are solid and will burn for 2 to 3 hours.

A couple of thought on your idea:

With a mini round baler, how would you make bales small enough to fit into a standard solid fuel burner? It would be kind of impossible - that's why people run it through a hammer mill and press. This equipment could cost close to €50k for a commercial outfit. Also, it would be impossible to compact a bale enough with a round baler in order to have it burn for a significant period of time.

It is possible to get a boiler that would take mini-round bales or small square bales or even big round bales. However, there are very few of these in Ireland - any that do exist are on farms that can produce their own bales of straw.

Other factors to consider are the amount of ash that is produced when you burn straw - boilers need to be equiped to remove this simply.

Not to be a pessimist, but I imagine that if making briquettes with a small baler was all that simple, then a lot of people would be doing it. In reality, it involves using specialist equipment which has a very high capital investment and a very large marketing campaign and distribution network in order to recoup the capital investment.

Thanks for the reply, the more I think about it the less appealing it sounds.
Think I'll just stick with the small squares.

idunnoshur

Does anyone else have any ideas on this?

hammer73

idunnoshur wrote: »

Does anyone else have any ideas on this?

Yes, I agree with what Reilig said. I've looked into making briquettes myself and it would be difficult to make money on it even at a commercial scale.