Multifuel burner

buteman

We are moving to a bungalow with a multifuel fire and have been reading various threads about paper briquettes. They generally seem to say they are not as good as people originally thought. it occurs to me that if I could get a supply of waste vegetable oil i could make briquettes using the paper mixed with the oil instead of water. Once the paper has been soaked in the oil it could be pressed in one of the usual devices to remove the excess oil which could be re-used and would not need to be left to dry out. I would like to hear any thoughts on this idea. Does it sound like a practical thing to do?

Ectophile

The main trouble with the paper briquettes is that they take a lot of time and effort to make, take forever to dry, and are then disappointingly poor when burned.

Having seen vegetable oil burning, I suspect that paper-and-oil briquettes would burn really fast, and create vast quantities of evil black smoke while doing so.

buteman

Ectophile wrote: »

Having seen vegetable oil burning, I suspect that paper-and-oil briquettes would burn really fast, and create vast quantities of evil black smoke while doing so.

Yes I did think they would burn faster although that would depend upon the percentage of oil left clinging to the paper after squeezing it. Maybe they would be useful as fire lighters. I'm not sure there would be a lot of black smoke, that would depend on how hot it burned as well. I have poured vegetable oil on bonfires which were beginning to to die down and so were quite hot and the oil hardly smoked at all.

Ectophile

You could always try it. People have made briquettes without the expensive gadgets, so there's nothing to stop you making a few. The oily smoke I've seem is from burning oily paper. It may be if you can limit the oil content and make them dense enough, they might burn more like coal.