Wood Shaving Processing: When Size Being Problems

Wood shaving of barecore mill has a particle size that is big enough but has a small moisture content (MC = 4-6%) or dried. In addition in the form of waste-sawdust shavings also has a low bulk density, at around 150 kg / m3 or about half of sawdust. Densification technology (compaction) suitable for processing the waste. Briquettes and pellets are the two densification technology products are very popular today.

Wood shaving characteristics as mentioned above make some adjustments need to be used directly on the densification technology. The advantage of the dry shaving wood so it does not require longer drying with a dryer (dryer), even as it is too dry so even need water/moisture level is lowered (wetted). While on the other hand because of the small particle size and density, making it hard for densification (compaction) for densification of some densification equipment  that require these materials get into the small diel eg wood pellets or wood briquette type of screw (extruder).

In many cases the wood shaving can be used to manufacture wood pellets or wood briquette (type screw extruder) directly by use waste of barecore that form of wood shaving is used as a mixture (mixed material) with the limited percentage , for example, 10% of wood shaving and 90% sawdust. The densification equipments can run that because the average particle size of the raw material is accepted in the tolerance range of densification technology with small die size.

Hydraulic Press type briquette

Specifically on high pressure briquetting is known three groups of technologies that are currently used, namely:

1. Screw press (Extruder)
2. Piston / ram mechanical press
3. Piston hydraulic press

In piston / ram mechanical technology and piston hydraulic press, wood shaving can be press directly into briquettes and without any additional sawdust or 100% of the wood shaving (single material). This is because the equipment does not encourage the raw materials into the small size of die, but the raw materials are simply filling a particular room and then compacted. While the briquette type of screw (extruder) raw materials pushed and pressed at the same time / simultaneous and entered the mold (die) with small size, so the big size of the particle and low density of raw materials that make the briquette failed to form. In briquetting equipment with type screw (extruder) if it will use 100% wood shaving it needs some modifications from the standard machine so that it can adapt to the characteristics of the wood shaving. Comparison between piston with screw-type briquettes can also be read here.

In the end,the quality or briquette product specifications requested by buyers (market) and manufacturing costs of the use of the densification technologies will be the driving factor of the wood shaving processing business. The mindset of waste management is the early stage is how to cope with such waste, which does not disturb the environment and so while the next stage how such waste can also take advantage or financial profit.