Recycled Fule for Wood Stove

[Somdin]

So Im in the Hardwear store and I see these ECO Bricks for sale beside the Wood Stoves and Fire Accessories
I ask the Salesmen what makes them "ECO" and he tells me that they are made from compressed Sawdust and being a wasteproduct for the most part keeps trees from being cut down just for firewood

That got me thinking
Could a person do the same thing with lets say Cardboard and paper scraps? they are wood products and they burn all be it faster than wood does but cardboard especially seems to burn slow enough to light wood on fire when Im starting the fire for the furnace in the winter

I work in the shipping dept of the warehouse i work for and its unreal how much cardboard gets thrown out

[DanG]

Probably safe to say most shipping cardboards have been fire suppression-flame retardant treated, warehouses think that is especially wonderful their bays of cased widgets won't willingly incinerate the campus! They are also treated to temper the fiber layers and glues against weakening excessively in high humidity and not readily harbor pests & molds/mildew, and there is probably a lot of mineral content to provide rigidity and act as a filler to make smooth printable surfaces.

The only way I see is test each flavor of cardboard to find a source that burns readily and does not leave huge amounts of near-unburnable char solids behind. A recycling plant reduces the box-board to slurry and reuses the water-soluble inorganic salts (Borax/Boric Acid) that would make a hell of a mess to try on a small scale. Also, I am guessing, recycled cardboard may be even less fire-friendly for the above reason.

[TomW]

Yeah "some" cardboard burns well.

All cardboard produces huge amounts of ash.

It is nice for a fast hot fire.

I have access to bales of it but quit using it because of the ash and hassle of using it in a stove.

If I had one of those outdoor boilers I might take time to sort out feeding  bales to that but otherwise not worth the hassle.

Just from here.

Tom

[SteveCH]

Cardboard burns readily and puts out a lot of heat in a short time. You need to be careful because of this. You can get your stove red-hot in no time.

Cardboard that has tape on it with the stringy reinforcement fibers leaves those fibers in the ash; that has to  be cleared out now and then, it does not burn. Or, at least it does not burn at the temp's in my stove.

For starting fires, putting a small piece of cardboard in with crumpled newspaper or whatever you are using will help get the fire going. But that is the only thing I use cardboard for. If you stuff your stove with a bunch of cardboard and light it off, you will find yourself scared in no time. It can burn furiously.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Essentially any cellulose can be pelletized.  Grind it up a bit, add a sprinkle of water to dampen it, and shove it through a pellet mill.  Then burn it in a pellet stove (if it isn't so saturated with flame retardants or toxic metallic inks that it wouldn't burn even with forced air, or would rot out the stove or poison the neighbors.)

I've been looking for a small pellet mill, to pelletize waste paper, cardboard, weeds, and the leftover stems/leaves/etc. of garden plants.  (I already have a paper shredder and an electric-motor-powered wood chipper with a hammer-mill for brush, which should do a good job of breaking stuff up to a suitable size for a pellet mill.)  But so far all the small mills I've seen are running about 4 to 5 grand.   At the townhouse we burn a tad over a ton per year for heating and the garbage collection service doesn't charge for paper and  yard waste.  So at $300ish per ton for high-grade commercial pellets (and transport) it makes no sense to buy one of those mills.

(Might work out at the retirement place, which has more of a heating load even with the solar windows.  But we can't switch over from propane until we're moved over there to babysit a pellet stove.)

[KraigM]

I've read about guys turning their sawdust into pellets to burn. The only thing I would worry about burning cardboard is whether there are any bad chemicals in the cardboard that would be unhealthy to burn. I do use paper or cardboard to start a fire sometime but never burn all my paper or cardboard. I throw it in the recycle bin.

[WindriderNM]

At one time I had a hand operated metal roller to roll up newspapers into logs to burn. I think that it also used some lamp oil or kerosene. In cub scouts we made camp stoves with a coffee can and a roll of cardboard in a tuna fish can with wax poured over it for fuel.