How to make briquettes?

Many investors who want to start business in the field of making briquettes always ask this question. Well, to answer it, let’s figure out one thing first: what materials are you plan to use? After that, please answer the second question: what kind of briquettes do you want to produce? If you have answers of these two questions, things will be much easier.

First of all, we should know there are a lot of raw material that can be used to produce briquettes. Thus, the finished briquettes are various. For example, finished briquettes include sawdust charcoal briquettes, coconut shell charcoal briquettes, bamboo charcoal briquettes, rice husk charcoal briquettes, coffee husk briquettes, coconut husk briquettes, briquettes from agricultural waste. Among them, except the last three kinds of briquettes, they are all charcoal briquettes.

What machines can make charcoal briquettes?

It depends on what charcoal briquettes you want to make. To make shisha charcoal briquettes, rotary press and hydraulic shisha charcoal press are suitable. To make briquettes as fuel or BBQ charcoal briquettes, E.P suggest you use charcoal briquette extruder.

How do these machines make charcoal briquettes?

In fact, the three charcoal briquette machines share a similar production process. It goes like: carbonizing raw material, crushing, mixing and briquetting. The core part is the briquetting process. Usually, some binders are necessary for the mixing process.

What are the most common-used binders?

Starch

Starch is one of the most common-used binder. Generally speaking, to make high-quality charcoal briquettes, it’s necessary to add 4%-8% starch in the charcoal powder during mixing process. What starch is suitable for that? Wheat starch, maize flour, wheat flour, rice flour, cassava flour, potato starch and so on. There is one thing that you should notice. When using starch as the binder, you must mix starch and hot water together before putting the mixer into the charcoal powder.

Clay

Clay is also used in many areas. For your information, the content of clay in the charcoal briquettes should be less than 15%. If too much clay is added, the finished charcoal briquette will burn poorly or even be inflammable.

Gum Arabic

We also call it as acacia gum, which is a kind of natural gum generated by acacia trees. Acacia trees are very common in Africa, especially in Senegal, Sudan, Somalia… Gum Arabic is widely used. If you can get it near you, using it as the binding agent will be a great choice.  

Molasses

Do you know what is molasses? Molasses is the by-product of making sugar from sugarcanes. Molasses is the first-class binding agent for making high-quality charcoal briquettes.

How to make biomass briquettes?

The answer is the biomass briquette making machine. The process for making biomass briquette is simpler than that for making charcoal briquettes. Only two machines are needed: a crushing machine and a biomass briquette making machine. Some people might ask if we need to add binders to the crushed raw material. Well, there is no need to add binders. Under high temperature, the lignin in the raw material will function as binding agent.