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BioBrick Basics
The RUF briquetter makes Engel’s patented BioBricks from straw, wood, grass and other waste products. “It is so easy because it’s a hydraulic machine,” Engel says. “It uses 150 tons of force on the material.” The machine also does much of its work without supervision. Engel says he loads the briquetter with sawdust in the evening, it runs all night unattended and in the morning the bricks are ready to be packaged.
Engel sells the BioBricks to businesses and homeowners, who are looking for cheaper, cleaner heat sources. He also sells the RUF briquette systems. Selling the briquetter machine involves helping potential customers look for practical and cost-effective feedstocks. “Really, you can take most organic material and make a briquette,” Engel says. “For instance, I have a company in Kansas that is putting together a business plan to use switchgrass. I also have a company with a wood supply that just wants a briquetter to sell briquettes to the people in the community around them.” Engel is also working with a company in the sugarcane industry that wants to make briquettes out of the bagasse. The company plans to offset energy costs by using the bagasse briquettes to power the boiler in their factory.
One of the selling points that Engel stresses is the burnability of the bricks, which is determined by several factors. “The key is to get the moisture content below 8 percent [in the sawdust] for industrial briquettes, and for home heating you want the moisture in the briquettes below 10 percent,” Engel says. Although he often uses the term sawdust when he refers to the material that is used to make the bricks, this material can be as fine as dust or even courser.
Many manufacturing companies produce RUF briquettes using the waste that they generate. Thus they are able to reuse and recycle that waste into a profit center. Because the RUF briquetter can use so many different types of organic material, Engel is able to market it anywhere in the country. He sold one RUF machine to Sawmill Bill Lumber Co., a flooring and paneling mill in Interlochen, Mich. The owner, Bill Reitz, bought the briquetter to reduce wood waste. “Basically the sawdust comes off our plant and right into the RUF unit,” Reitz says. Sawmill Bill produces approximately three to five tons of briquettes daily from the waste. “We’ve been operating for about 1½ years and I’ve had very few problems with the machine,” Reitz says. “It makes a consistent product.”
Better For the Wallet and the Planet
RUF briquettes are designed to improve the efficiency of a wood stove. “It changes the way a wood stove burns,” Engel says. The briquettes make wood stoves more efficient because they burn longer, cleaner and more completely. The bricks stack close together, the moisture content is low and the material is dense so it burns consistently. “I regularly get a 12-hour burn with my wood stove at home,” Engel says. “I load it up in the morning, start the fire, close the door and go to work. When I come home no one has touched the fire and I push the coals back, load it up again and let it burn for another 12 hours. I can do that for two weeks without emptying the ash.”
When most material is burned, ash and other waste products are left behind. Engel says that certain feedstocks such as straw can leave more waste because of their mineral content. The BioBricks, however, can provide an efficient burn despite the feedstock that’s used to make them. “That’s the beauty of it,” he says. “You can turn a variety of material into a uniform RUF briquette with a certain density and moisture content. You can turn a variety of materials into one kind of fuel. Because of that a lot more of it burns inside the combustion chamber and the only thing left is the ash,” Engel says.
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